Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand/Draft 2023 General Support

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THIS IS DOCUMENT IS OUT OF DATE AS AT 5 APRIL 2023 This is a draft document for the 2023 General Support Grant for WANZ, for the WANZ committee to edit and discuss prior to submitting to Fluxx. Initial discussion meeting Tuesday February 21, 2023,

Applicant details[edit]

Wikimedia username(s):

The Committee of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc

  • User:Einebillion (President)
  • User:Giantflightlessbirds (Vice-President)
  • User:Noracrentiss (Secretary)
  • User:Pakoire (Committee member)
  • User:Schwede66 (Committee member)
  • User:MurielMary (Committee member)
  • User:Marshelec (Treasurer)

Organization:

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc (WANZ)

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and received 2022 General Support Grant under Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes

H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

InternetNZ https://internetnz.nz/ NZ$1500 to provide support to encourage inclusion at 2021 NZ WikiCons
Auckland War Memorial Museum In kind support to help run 2021 Auckland WikiCon and transfer of remaining Wikisource project funds to support the 2021 WikiCon Wellington that was deferred due to COVID.

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Additional information[edit]

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

New Zealand

S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:

Local

S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand https://twitter.com/wikiprojectnz https://www.facebook.com/Wikipedia.Aotearoa.NZ https://www.facebook.com/groups/833075710196955 (Private group)

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Proposal[edit]

1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?

The New Zealand user group transitioned into legal incorporation in 2022. Our kaupapa (principles) ensures that our kaupapa continues to fit our needs and to ensure that we are working in an inclusive way. We recognise that we are citizens of a bicultural nation with Tangata Whenua (people of the land) and Tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty). We regularly revisit our kaupapa to ensure we acknowledge, support, and provide space to enact biculturalism and acknowledge the Treaty of Waitangi (New Zealand’s founding document) including practical recognition of Te Ao Māori (The Māori world view) and ensure our members have the ability to act from a position of cultural competence. We are committed to building a common understanding in the management committee in order to develop our strategic direction in an inclusive way from the ground up.
Kaupapa is a Māori word meaning: principles and ideas which act as a base or foundation for action. A kaupapa is a set of values, principles and plans which people have agreed on as a foundation for their actions.

https://teara.govt.nz/en/papatuanuku-the-land/page-8 Accessed 30.03.2022

Background

The Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand (WANZ) was incorporated as a non-profit organisation on 7 April 2022 and registered as a charity within New Zealand on 21 April 2022. The group elected the committee for this organisation on 17 March 2022. All of the committee members are members of WANZ and have worked on WANZ projects and initiatives over the past three years. See annual reports from the User Group:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand/Annual_Report_2020

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand/Annual_Report_2021

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand/Annual_Report_2022

Overall Vision We are invested in the vision of the Wikimedia Foundation: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.

Our kaupapa | mission is:

  • To support the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission in New Zealand: To empower and engage people to collect and develop educational content under a free licence, so it can be shared and reused freely for any purpose
  • To represent the New Zealand contributors to Wikimedia projects
  • To provide qualified support to our members and the public
  • To empower our members and support their activities
  • To develop and maintain long-lasting supportive relationships with New Zealand institutions that share the same or similar goals

We need this grant to build on the strengths of the previous three years of acheivements. Our aim is for Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand to be a well supported, resilient, and well-known legal entity to support New Zealanders and New Zealand organisations contributing to Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, and other Wikimedia projects. Our strategic focus continues to be on providing support to:

  • Ensure Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc is an effectively organised and high performing affiliate that New Zealand editors / organisers want to belong to
  • Develop the New Zealand editor base of Wikimedia projects and New Zealand organisers in numbers and diversity
  • Develop and maintain productive relationships with New Zealand institutions that share the same or similar goals and encourage them to engage with Wikimedia projects as part of their workflow / project outputs
  • Increase Wikimedia membership diversity (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity etc)
  • Create and support major projects to fill the gaps in Aotearoa New Zealand information on Wikimedia projects

Our strategic focus areas for the next three years can be found in our strategy

2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?

Challenges:

The administration of the Wikimedia movement in New Zealand (NZ) is concentrated in a small group of volunteers doing this mahi (work) whilst maintaining busy employment. To grow, build more momentum, and leverage off the previous work of the User Group and now the members of the incorporated society, paid staff are required. Given the lack of depth in capacity, we are pacing the work by focussing on establishing a well run, well governed & effective society. We are seeking funding for paid assistance for general administration, event organisation, and development of a comms strategy.

Diversity: The demographics of NZ Wikimedia project editors do not represent the demographic makeup of NZ. The Māori & Pasifika populations are under-represented in the NZ Wikimedia movement. There are cultural, socioeconomic, & digital divide barriers to overcome to rectify this. The committee of the society continues to grow our understanding of cultural competence in order to provide equitable & culturally welcoming spaces is the initial objective. We are also setting strategic directions that will welcome participation & inclusion. We are targetting support of activities and projects proposed by members of these under-represented communities for these under-represented communities. This year we have two activities proposed - a pilot Pasifika project and an activity to engage Māori knowledge professionals.

We will continue to focus on encouraging NZ GLAMs to engage with Wikimedia projects. Capacity building within these institutions will help over time as the GLAM sector in NZ is small & knowledge transfers easily from institution to institution. WANZ will continue focus on maintaining its relationship with Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa & the Parliamentary Libraries. We will contribute to building awareness of our group to the GLAM community via presentations under the umbrella of National Services Te Paerangi and the National Digital Forum conference attendence.

Longer term (i.e. year 3) WANZ will focus on NZ universities providing courses that use Wikimedia projects as learning activities. The lack of capacity in the New Zealand movement is stopping systematic support of these courses in the near future. This reduces the impact of these courses. More support could convert the participating students into long term, committed editors & contributors as well as provide a larger pool of contributors that might become organisers within NZ.

Lack of a well designed learning journey for new editors created by education specialists remains an issue. While this issue is global, the lack of this learning journey is hindering the NZ movement from onboarding new editors effectively & encouraging retention. We are interested in contributing to any wider WMF initiatives in this area.

Ongoing support of current editors is a challenge. Our organisation has work to do to deliver a regular meetup, editathon, wikicon schedule of events across the country & to maintain the editing hotspots in the 4 main centres. This year we will maintain the regular meetups in Aotearoa NZ Online, Christchurch, & Wellington. Continue to support a regular Auckland meetup by adding additional events and holding the annual WikiCon in Auckland. We will also begin build the editing community in Dunedin.


3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

Our Approach

The New Zealand community is small and widely distributed across New Zealand’s islands. Prior to 2019 national organisation was sporadic at best. This changed with the move to video conferencing resulting from the first New Zealand COVID19 lockdown. Since 2020 our Activity reports indicate the areas of activity where editors have made impact. The strategies and activities outlined below are based on the planned activities arising from incorporation in 2022 and known existing activities where we have active participation and discussion is already occurring. The recent national WikiCon in March 2023 included a brainstorming session on possible activities desired by community member, confirming what events are of high interest to the editing community and that they wish the society to support.

Strategies and Activities

Strategy 1: Ensure Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand Inc is an effectively organised and high performing affiliate that New Zealand editors / organisers want to belong to

By developing the capability of committee members


Activity 1 Activity 2

Renewing the community endorsed 3–5 year strategic plan

Activity 3 Activity 4

Continuing to develop resilient policy, processes and procedures

Activity 5 Activity 6

By having good infrastructure

By providing additional support human resources

Activity 7 Activity 8

Strategy 2: Develop the New Zealand editor base of Wikimedia projects and New Zealand organisers in numbers and diversity

Activity 9 Activity 10 Activity 11

Strategy 3: Develop and maintain productive relationships with New Zealand institutions that share the same or similar goals and encourage them to engage with Wikimedia projects as part of their workflow / project outputs

Activity 12 Activity 13 Activity 14 Activity 15 Activity 16 Activity 17 Activity 18 Activity 19 Activity 20 Activity 21

Strategy 4: Increase Wikimedia membership diversity (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity etc)

Activity 22 Activity 23 Activity 24 Activity 25

Strategy 5: Create and support major projects to fill the gaps in Aotearoa New Zealand information on Wikimedia projects

Activity 26 Activity 27

Victoria's edit got up to here

4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

Activities[edit]

A1: Provide committee with governance training

A2: Provide committee with Treaty of Waitangi awareness & training to incorporate the Treaty into business practices

A3: Conducting a consultation round after 1st strategy weekend

A4: Run a 2nd strategy workshop refine the 3-5 year strategy to incorporate any feedback by the community

A5: Develop resilient policies and processes including reporting and impact analysis

A6: Develop a comms strategy including identifying key stakeholders with whom to communicate, make alliances, and/or leverage relationships

A7: Improve a society website

A8: Establish agreed administration platforms and products including committee administration, financial management, and the development of organisational branding, templates, and openly licensed images

A9: Contribute regularly to ESEAP discussions

A10: Advocate for NZ’s time zone with WMF staff and projects to allow the user group to participate at a reasonable time

A11: Work with WMF representatives to identify where the NZ user group can best contribute with a particular focus on resources to train new editors 2024–25

A12: Continue to encourage regular meetups nationally, at the 4 main centres and regional hotspots containing groups of editors

A13: Expand a NZ Wikidata Fellowship in partnership with Wikimedia Australia’s annual Wikidata Fellowship offer https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Wikidata_Fellowships

A14: Work with Wikimedia Australia on a joint Australasian 1Lib1Ref campaign https://wikimedia.org.au/w/index.php?title=1Lib1Ref_2022&fbclid=IwAR0Gn_9OYZLYUpa0xkk8waeEO42Ts5pf4eSgtXh0Ub2yPQAI_VdEIneVrms

A15: Deliver an annual WikiCon

A16: Deliver an online NZ WikiCon

A17: Support three in-person edit-a-thons 3–4 K

A18: Run 2 competitions for editing community push out

A19: Support NZ editors to attend national and international conferences to promote WF project workflows, build relationships with influential individuals in like-minded organisations e.g. GLAMs, government research institutions FIVE A YEAR

A20: Support editor/organisers to develop Projects and request WMF funding support

A21: Keep a watching brief on the Open Refine update Project https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OpenRefine and promote the tool and provide training opportunities to NZ Users once the updates have been rolled into production

A22: Regular communication with Auckland War Memorial Museum and support for their Wikipedia Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Auckland_Museum and any additional projects they decide to advance.

A23: Regular communication with and encouragement of Parliamentary Libraries staff to contribute to Wikipedia

A24: Regular communication with and support of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) with their emerging GLAMWiki strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Museum_of_New_Zealand_Te_Papa_Tongarewa This may include supporting mix’n’match work, running staff editing workshops, engagement with the #1Lib1Ref campaign for 2022, support of the recently appointed Te Papa Digital Channels Outreach Manager and any public programming that Te Papa develops in the wiki space.

A25: Supporting the project to upload to Wikidata the metadata of NZ thesis (66,000 items) held in NZ University libraries. This joint project involves University research librarians and three User Group editors. Support includes contracting the services of a data wrangler to accelerate the preparation of the dataset in Open Refine for bulk upload to Wikidata. The intention is to have this dataset ready for the citation use for the joint australasian 1Lib1Ref campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/NZThesisProject

A26: Engage with the NZ team of the Open Government Partnership and provide ideas on the theme of Access to and usability of public information to help create the 4th National Action Plan.

A27: Consider what outputs from the 3rd National Action Plan could be contributed to Wikimedia Foundation platforms.

A28: Hire an administrator

5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?      

No/Yes?

5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?

N/A

6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.

The society is changing it's reporting from a January to December timing to July 2023–June 2024 to align with the financial reporting.
TO UPDATE
Quarter 1 (July–Sept 2023)[edit]
  • Building inclusiveness - have the committee members complete training in Treaty of Waitangi principles and training in incorporating the Treaty in operational practice.
  • Building capability - complete governance training
  • Setting up the administration tools and resources required to achieve a resilient incorporated organisation.
  • Develop policy and practices
  • Develop comms strategy
  • Commission website development
  • Agree on administration platforms
  • Check on progress of Open Refine platform upgrades and make user community aware
  • Connect with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa)’s Digital Channels Outreach Manager to offer to contribute to Te Papa’s GLAM strategy and to build partnership
  • Connect with Auckland War Memorial Museum to check if any assistance can be provided
  • Support the New Zealand Thesis Project and contract a data wrangler to assist with the data cleanup and bulk upload with Wikidata.
  • Advance the previous conversations with the Parliamentary Librarians
Quarter 2 (October–December 2023)[edit]
  • Continue to develop policy and procedures
  • Continue to develop comms strategy
  • November: Run an in-person Wellington 2022 WikiCon - provides an exciting opportunity for Wiki editors to meet each other and gain support. We will need funding for catering, venue hire, speaker support (flights, accommodation, meals), and conference organisation. We also have financial support in the form of scholarships from InternetNZ to improve inclusiveness but these scholarships have not been taken up in previous WikiCons. We have learnt from this experience to target those editors we know struggle to be included or are unable to attend a Wikicon because of their financial circumstances. We recognise we need to develop an equitable process to target Māori and Pacific editors or other would-be editors so we can actively support them, rather than expecting them to ask for help, noting that asking for help is culturally challenging for some members of the groups we are targeting.
  • December: Run a second strategy workshop to incorporate feedback from the community and check our assumptions of the feasibility of the strategy
Quarter 3 (January–March 2024)[edit]
  • Work with Wikimedia Australia on Wikidata Fellowship in Feb/March
  • Possible Edit-a-thon International Women’s Day 8 March 2023
  • March: Run an Online small in-person Wellington 2022 WikiCon - provides an exciting opportunity for Wiki editors to meet each other and gain support. We will need funding for catering, venue hire, speaker support (flights, accommodation, meals), and conference organisation. We also have previously offered financial support in the form of scholarships from InternetNZ to improve inclusiveness but these scholarships have not been taken up. We have learnt from this experience to target those editors we know struggle to be included or are unable to attend a Wikicon because of their financial circumstances. We recognise we need to develop an equitable process to target Māori and Pacific editors or would-be editors so we can actively support them, rather than expecting them to ask for help, noting that asking for help is culturally challenging for some members of the groups we are targeting.
Quarter 4 (April–June 2024)[edit]
  • Work with Wikimedia Australia on 1Lib1Ref 2023 activities
  • Run another edit-a-thon on a to-be-confirmed theme
  • Check in with Te Papa and Auckland War Memorial Museum
All quarters[edit]
  • Continuing to encourage meetups in the four main cities. We know from surveys held at the Wikicons completed in 2021 that users value connecting with each other and learning about new skills and tools. We are aware there needs to be at least one but preferably two committed leaders to administer the regular meetups and encourage attendance. COVID has encouraged attendance at the national online meetups but equally has reduced the momentum that was building with in-person meetups across the four centers. We can rebuild this momentum when the time is right, as we know that in person editathons and WikiCons build community engagement. We want to encourage meetups by providing targeting certain users and encouraging them to become meetup administrators. We are still developing what might work in terms of encouragement / reward.
  • Continuing a national monthly meetup by video conference. This is a key way of continuing effective communication across the country and a communication channel back into those smaller groups meeting in a city / town. We aim to improve the regularity of reporting the outputs from meetups on the user group social media channels, in Wikipedia, and within WikiProject NZ.
  • Engage with Wikimedia Foundation more regularly by attending ESEAP discussions, advocating for wider acknowledgement of and accommodation for New Zealand time zone.
  • Outreach by supporting conference speaking engagements focussed on incorporating Wikimedia project work into larger knowledge connected workflows. User:Ambrosia10 is an example of an extremely active editor often called on to promote her wiki-workflow to communities with an interest in the platforms she also engages in and moves between during her knowledge exchange workflow. Often these communities have limited understanding of the value and connectedness wikimedia projects can provide their bespoke tools and platforms to leverage their knowledge base into a more effective and impactful space.

7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

The current team of volunteer organisers are:

  • User:Einebillion (President of WANZ). Main contact with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa as this organisation is her employer.
  • User:Giantflightlessbirds (Vice-President of WANZ). Has successfully applied for Wikimedian in residence themed grants from Wikimedia Foundation in the past.
  • User:Noracrentiss (Secretary of WANZ)
  • User:Pakoire (Committee member of WANZ). Has successfully applied for Wikipedia themed project grants from Wikimedia Foundation in the past.
  • User:Schwede66 (Committee member of WANZ). Wikipedia Administrator.
  • User:MurielMary (Committee member of WANZ). Very experienced Wikipedia editor
  • User:Marshelec (Treasurer of WANZ). Very experienced Wikipedia editor

In addition there is a group of active volunteer organisers that can be drafted in to support those initiatives that they are interested in. The organisers that are already working on a number of initiatives include:

  • User:Ambrosia10 - biodiversity workflows, outreach, and connections with Wikidata admins, Biodiversity Heritage Library and others.
  • User:DrThneed - currently leading the New Zealand Wikidata Thesis Project with User:Ambrosia10 and User:Giantflightlessbirds
  • User:Gertrude206 - training new Wikipedia editors in Wellington
  • User:Prosperosity - Auckland War Memorial Museum wikipedian in residence
  • User:Kowhaiarewhana - Pasifika editor and Wiki event organiser developing a project to engage with the Pasifika community and outreach into the Pacific.
  • User:AtticEdit - in person event organiser
  • User:Stitchbird2 - botany curator and advocate with other botanists internationally
  • User:Dactylantha - Auckland Museum staff member facilitating regular Auckland meetups
  • User:Beeswaxcandle - Wikisource admin and advocate for Wikisource in New Zealand


ANY OTHERS?

8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Content Gender gap

8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

Our group is already active with the Women in Red project, identifying and recording in Wikidata historic women natural environment collectors, and also has recently successfully contributed content during an edit-a-thon themed around International Women’s Day. Work on this content focus will continue as part of this plan as the committee anticipates that at least one of the edit-a-thons and some portion of the WikiCons will build on and support this current editing focus that is also a focus of a number of high profile community members.

9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Culture, heritage or GLAM

10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background

11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?

Whilst the user group is still to develop a collaborative strategy, a key pillar of our group has been the acknowledgement that the User group needs to find effective ways to encourage younger, Māori, and Pasifika people to become editors. Ideally we would like our user group membership to reflect the New Zealand demographic.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Infographics/New-Zealand-as-a-village-of-100-people-education-and-employment/new-zealand-village-100-people-2018-census-poster.pdf

The group demographic is currently older and pale. We have acknowledged previously in this application the work the committee needs to do towards agreeing and achieving cultural competency and to enable space for Te Ao Māori to exist in partnership and reflect New Zealand’s founding document the Treaty of Waitangi. We feel this work is an essential stepping stone to have in place so that we can effectively engage with participants in those communities that are currently non-Wikimedia. Without cultural competence we run the risk of discouraging participation in training sessions and being unable to convert new recruits to life-long editors.

There has been a recent successful project that trained 3 Pasifika editors from the Arts sector. The group is reviewing this project's success over time to inform the group whether retention of new editors occurs and whether this type of project should be run in a similar fasion in future years.

We recognise that, in the future, we will need to plan specific programmes that include financial support to enable members of these demographic groups to focus their time on learning editing skills. There is work to be done to analyse whether this type of programme will convert new editors to a long term editorial commitment to Wikimedia Foundation projects.

12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?

As a user group we’ve actively discussed online meetup behaviour mores at the Aotearoa New Zealand meetup and this has resulted in a documented practice, escalation of actions, and script to challenge those that breach those mores see the Meetup Code of Conduct and Anonymity when Meeting Via Video Conference section on this meetup page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Aotearoa_New_Zealand_Online

As the User Group incorporation advances and as New Zealand omicron cases reduce and we once again start to meet in physical spaces and begin User Group activities, it is likely that more work will need to be done by the group, to ensure we have adequate practices to meet the Safe Space Policy. By doing this work, discussing it in meet ups and generally setting expectations and providing tools for handling difficult conversations, we anticipate that safer spaces will be supported by our group.

13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

WANZ is an active affiliate with members participating in regular online meetups, a private Facebook group, and engagement via the Wikipedia project pages. We have made this community aware of this funding bid by:

We also have a relationship with Wikimedia Australia. We have asked the administrator from that group to review and comment on our funding application. This has led to agreed collaboration on a number of activities over the period of the funding bid.

14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

The User group already has a strong relationship with Auckland War Memorial Museum and a growing relationship with the Parliamentary Library, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and a University Librarian’s group. We have active contacts in a number of other New Zealand GLAM organisations and tertiary education institutions. These GLAM organisations and groups have a similar mission to Wikimedia Foundation and see the Wikimedia Foundation projects the user group contributes to as a vital digital channel providing them digital reach and engagement with their content and collections. Once incorporation is achieved, it is likely more formal partnerships will develop and be entered into.

In the past we have also been supported by NESI to deliver a The Carpentries course in Open Refine for our users. NESI and The Carpentries are focussed on delivering data skills to Library and like communities and wikidata editors meet their participation requirements. This workshop was supported by InternetNZ funding. InternetNZ has also provided digital inclusion funding for previous 2021 WikiCons. Digital inclusion is a key strategic goal for Internet New Zealand https://internetnz.nz/access-and-security-online/digital-inclusion

As incorporation is achieved, as we refine our priorities and grow our capacity and capabilities as an organisation, we anticipate that partnerships will develop from these relationships, in particular around public programme delivery and themed Wiki events.

It is uncertain where other relationships may develop as a result of incorporation. However, the User group thinks this is likely in the mid-term as more like-organisations and government agencies become aware of our existence, legal status, and contact information.

15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

This funding bid, should it be successful, will accelerate the organisation and outputs of the Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand. This funding bid is focussed on supporting the incorporation and thus the sustainability of the group. The coordination and collaboration we are currently experiencing as a group is the most productive it has been to date. The user group anticipates that following incorporation, and with sufficient funding, it will be able to grow the participation of New Zealanders in Wikimedia Foundation projects. It will also build more capacity in administration, training, and advocacy roles. The past two years of User Group reports are showing outputs expanding year on year as more New Zealanders join our group and as more editors become organisers to develop the initiatives they want to undertake. Obtaining this funding will ensure that work already achieved by the User group can be expanded. By encouraging prioritisation and planning around certain focal points, the User group will be able to continue its mission and make the most of the funding provided.

16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.

There are two main risks:
  • Burn out of current organisers. The organiser pool in New Zealand is small and busy running projects and initiatives. The current plan is ambitious and achievable with the support of all of New Zealand's organisers. The mitigation is to ensure that other editors and attendees to the Online and in person meet ups are aware they may need to help the committee to achieve its goals. Splitting up tasks and spreading these evenly amoung the organisers as well as encouraging other editors to organise is the mitigation plan.
  • COVID - with two lockdowns preventing community transmission of COVID until 2022 and the emergency of the Omicron varient, New Zealanders are currently dealing with the mental load of a pandemic in the community with a daily death rate that sometimes exceeds the COVID death rate for the previous year combined. This is something that other nations faced two years ago. The fratigue of this mental load and anxiety is noticably impacting New Zealanders. Uncertainty as to the continued impact of COVID is also a risk when considering the delivery of the in person components of the plan. There is little we can do to mitigate other than ensure mask wearing, vaccination passes, and physical distancing.

17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Identify Topics for Impact

18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.  

To upload

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]

19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

Learn

Effective committee governance Impactful strategy To identify activities that are high impact and connect with the current user base of editors and organisers To identify activities that are high impact and increase the number of committed and active volunteers in the movement To identify activities that are high impact and develop supportive relationships with like-organisations Effective retrospectives / reviews/ surveys of our activities so we can learn from our mistakes and improve our performance

Share

Communicate well with our community including building on and developing our social media strategy Conduct outreach that leads to more long term editors and organisers More engagement with the Wikimedia Foundation movement

20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.

Main Metrics Description Target
# of volunteer hours organising Committee meetings, grant application hours, organising and facilitating events 500
Participant satisfaction % of participants satisfied or very satisfied with events (meetups, edit-a-thons, WikiCons) organised by Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand 75
# NZ GLAM partnerships sustained # of NZ GLAMs contributing to WMF projects and actively engaging with NZ User group community 4
Second month new editor retention percentage of editors who, having made at least 1 edit in the first 30 days after registration made at least 1 edit during the second 30 days 10
N/A N/A N/A

Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.

Additional Metrics Description Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities N/A N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities Organisers that organise/contribute to organising more than 1 event / programme during the grant period 10
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability N/A N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors N/A N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees N/A N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications N/A N/A
Number of activities developed # activities and programs developed and delivered by User Group and user base. 27 activities detailed in grant application + 3 additional programs/activities developed by users 30
Number of volunteer hours N/A N/A

21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants The number of participants in all activities is 75.

New participants: 15 Returning participants: 60 Measurement technique: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview and manual attendence numbers tracking for in person events, liaison, contacts.

75
Number of editors The number of people who edit Wikimedia projects as a result of grantee activities is 50.

New editor: 5 Inexperienced editors < year: 10 Established and active editors: 35 Measurement technique: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview and manual attendence numbers tracking for in person events.

50
Number of organizers The number of organisers (Implementors, Connectors, Supporters) in all activities is 12. Of these, our target is that 2 will be new organisers that begin to contribute.

Measure: Manually list per activity / event in the User Group annual report https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_User_Group_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand/Annual_Report_2022

12
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikipedia EN-Wikipedia

Number of articles created: 100 Number of articles improved: 400 Measure: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview

500
Wikidata EN-Wikidata

Number of items created: 66,000 Number of revisions created: 250,000 Measure: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview

316000
Wikimedia Commons Number of commons uploads: 2000

Measure: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview

2000
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

N/A

22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

We'll mainly be using the dashboard Measure: The overarching dashboard https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/wikimedia_aotearoa_new_zealand_2022/overview as this is something we are familar with. We'd be interested in learning from WMF aobut other tools.

Financial Proposal[edit]

23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

45754.35 NZD

23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

31304 USD

23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zgWrRUOC0iqa20czbIUB4uQ1MG93h8Nt/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107989438205577828845&rtpof=true&sd=true

23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.

I realise that the metrics aren't as good as they could be. As a group we need to learn more about this type of activity. We're still developing our strategy and we're yet to have a detailed discussion on what we want to measure for our impact and how we are going to track success over multiple years. Previously we've managed to track activities and success by delegating responsibility to each of the organisers to report back in the annual report. I'm not sure if this approach is going to scale as the organisation accellerates it's growth with the investment from this grant (should we be successful). This is the first year we've set formal metrics in addition to recording general activity. As a group we are aiming to iteratively improve our approach to metrics to ensure we are not counting for the sake of counting but in order to inform our planning and target our efforts over multiple years.

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Other public document(s):

Final Message[edit]

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes