Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Art+Feminism/2017-2018

Eligibility

Eligibility is confirmed for this applicant to apply for a grant starting 15 November, for a grant up to the maximum threshold (120,000 US dollars), and including staff. This application is open for review! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 15:11, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Note to committee members on supporting documentation

Simple APG committee friends, please make sure you read the annual and strategic plan for this application. The bulk of the relevant information that you need is contained there, rather than in the application form itself. So please look to the linked documents when you do your review. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 15:11, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Committee recommendation

Committee recommendations

Funding recommendations: After considering this request, we recommend that this grant is funded in the requested amount of US$119,795. We are providing the following rationale: This important program is continuing to expand and improve, and so this organization needs a similar level of funding to maintain its core program activities in the coming year. At the same time, costs of institutionalization and formalization are needed for this group to continue to function in the long term, so we support an increase to accommodate these costs. While some expenses, such as support for local groups, could theoretically be diverted to another WMF grants program if funding is reduced, the Art+Feminism team will be better placed to manage these funding decisions and relationships through a unified grant amount.

Comments on the next year's plan: The Art+Feminism User Group is a returning applicant, who has received one SAPG in the past and also worked within the IEG program for several years as they were building their program and organization. They are requesting to maintain their 0.6 FTE part-time staff person. The international organizing team puts together the successful flagship event at MOMA each year, but they also provide the backbone for organizations and teams that are running Art+Feminism events in different parts of the world. This includes supporting regional coordinators, creating and distributing training materials, and running the global campaign to recruit more local organizers and participants.

Comments on the current year's focus and achievements: In 2016, before applying to the Simple APG program, the Art+Feminism User Group became an official Wikimedia User Group. This was part of a transition from operating as a team of individuals to operating within an organizational framework. This campaign has been growing from year to year as it gains more momentum and spreads around the world. This method has proved so successful that the team is challenged to manage this level of growth, and so we are looking toward future solutions for securing more funding and helping the organization become more robust and self-reliant. In 2017, the Art+Feminism focused on integrating intersectionality into their work. For example, in 2017, Art+Feminism has also been expanding their work to include, for example, collaborations with AfroCROWD, to improve the diversity of content and participants at their events and in their campaign worldwide. They will continue to expand this in 2018. In 2017, we continued our focus on helping the Art+Feminism team to integrate with the international community of Wikimedia Chapters; while they are doing work all around the world, they are often connected to individuals and groups of contributors. Closer collaboration with chapters outside of the US is likely to benefit the movement as a whole, as more and more chapters move toward emphasizing diversity of content or contributors in their work. In 2017, Art+Feminism ran another successful campaign, involving thousands of participants and hundreds of events. While we are still awaiting data on the final results, estimates indicate that they have far surpassed their previous year’s achievements.

Other considerations: Throughout their time as a WMF grantee, Art+Feminism has modeled exemplary practices in learning and documentation. We recommend reading their past analysis of their work following their Individual Engagement Grants. This learning orientation has also increased their ability to improve results, year after year. This team brings important expertise to our movement in working to address systemic bias, and this expertise is needed if we are to move toward our strategic direction. This expertise is provided by both the staff and volunteer team. Despite being at the forefront of some difficult discussions in our movement around the importance of involving more non-male contributors and focusing on diversity of content for many years (and even before this was ever a strategic priority in the movement), this team has persevered in their dedication to this work and the Wikimedia communities, year after year. 2017 presented some significant challenges for the team. As an informal group, they have been relying on other US-based chapters for support, including using WMUS-DC as a fiscal sponsor and relying on the metrics staff of WMUS-NYC to complete their reporting and evaluation. Unfortunately, neither chapter was able to deliver on their commitments to the A+F team. This has made it difficult for the team to recover precise data on their financial situation and programmatic achievements. This is part of what is influencing our decision to move toward creating a more formal organization that can be self-reliant. Their team is small, and the risk of burnout is very real; however, funding this group’s institutionalization costs is likely to reduce this risk in the long term as greater access to funding opportunities can help them to mitigate this risk.

Comments on the next year's focus: Art+Feminism is planning to take some significant steps in 2018. They will be legally incorporating as a non-profit organization, which will enable them to administer their own finances, and may eventually make them eligible to request different types of funding from the WMF and from other funders. Accordingly, their grant amount has increased to include these administrative expenses. In 2018, Art+Feminism is developing a strategy to address their long term challenges. Art+Feminism has emphasized how the grants metrics that we use to compare results across organizations aren’t able to capture the value of their work, but has had limited capacity to address this evaluation gap. We hope to start to address this in 2018 or 2019. Addressing and mitigating the challenge of burn-out among the core organizers and others involved with this work will continue to be a major focus of 2018. Beyond the amount of work organizers are taking on, there is a significant emotional cost to doing gender-focused work in the Wikimedia movement.

Suggestion and apologies

Hello,

I am on a tenuous Internet connection and just figured out that I posted by comment on the wrong page. Here it goes again: Firstly, I would like to commend and thank the Art+Feminism project for its work towards establishing gender equity over the past few years. As another member of the Wikimedia movement who works on issues of diversity and inclusion, I am aware from personal experience of how challenging and emotionally taxing and your work can be.

Secondly, I have a suggestion about the subscription-based meeting platform used by A+F. The cost of the subscription is a tiny percentage of the project's budget, so my concern is more related to digital rights than expenditure. It would be useful to explore platforms that are dencentralised and oriented towards maintaining the digital security and privacy of their users. This is especially important when working with marginalised communities, minorities, sensitive geographies, and individuals and groups who are at risk of profiled and/ or surveilled. I will be happy to recommend some of these alternatives if the A+F team decides to take up my suggestion. -- Rohini (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Rohini, apologies for the long delay. We are open to suggestions. Some of our tools are not really likely to be replaceable with an FLOSS alternative (e.g. Streak) as we looked very closely and carefully and were not able to find one. Others are less specific and more possible to replace, like Join.me. --Theredproject (talk) 21:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

WMF decision

Decision from WMF

Funding decision: Thanks to the committee for these recommendations. This grant is approved in the recommended amount of US$119,795 for a period of 12 months starting immediately. We are looking forward to working on implementing these suggestions in the coming year, and supporting the Art+Feminism team's work in 2018. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 08:18, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Ending grant early to accommodate start of next grant

In consultation with the grantee we have agreed to end this grant early on 31 August 2018, in order to accommodate the start date of the next grant. Grantee has agreed to return unspent funds budgeted for the remainder of the grant upon the grant's new completion date. Final report due 30 September 2018. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:57, 27 August 2018 (UTC)