Community Resources/Reports/Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact 2022/Contributors

All Wikimedia Foundation Funds reports

Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact
Contributors: Growing, diversifying, and sustaining

• Key takeaways
• Contributors
• Content contribution
• Building organisational capacity
• Awareness-raising and advocacy
• Partnerships
• Regional learning sessions

Executive summary

Challenges:

• Grantees are concerned about their limited or diminishing volunteer base and seek programming to expand and diversify the existing volunteer communities, whilst keeping the existing community engaged. It is often seen as a difficult balance.
• There is a concern about burnout or volunteers losing interest if contributor growth is not quick enough, and at the same time encouraging longer-term editors to value newcomer diversity and playing a role in mentoring newcomers to improve their Wiki-skills.

Strategies:

• Bringing in newcomers from underrepresented communities is a priority for 65% of grantees, particularly from different geographies, ethnic, cultural, racial, or religious backgrounds, and languages. Gender, socioeconomic status, age, and disabilities are less so.
• Education and GLAM, continue to be the top programmatic areas, with more than 60% of grantees placing them as their top priorities.
  • Educational programs prioritise broader awareness and literacy skills outcomes, however, some grantees working in education expect these efforts will also bring in new editors through teacher and student engagement and this was debated during the learning regional sessions.
  • There is also the open question of whether the emerging communities of practice in education, as part of the Train the Trainers program, are promoting a pool of “teacher organisers,  that can be important in multiplying awareness work in the educational system and also new Movement leadership.
  • Culture, Heritage & GLAM is seen as an entry point for professionals to become active organisers (particularly librarians and museum workers), potentially bringing in their own networks.
  • Campaigns around topics of interest (such as gender, climate, and human rights) are seen as a straightforward entry point for activists to collectively engage with the movement.

• Grantees are starting to question the value of one-off events/workshops and are keen to discover new ways of engaging contributors, by exploring approaches, such as ongoing activities that can engage organised collectives, or offer professional development opportunities. Also in mobilizing activities across programs, this transversality can prove more cost/effective, prevent silos, and be exciting for contributors.
• Experienced grantees view bringing in new organisers and retaining these as a more relevant aspect than focusing on editors- more organisers means more opportunities for newcomers to find a supportive path into the movement. A key challenge is how to create skills development paths for organisers' and give them the necessary on and offline tools to multiply their work. However, most affiliate-led training and programming is still editing-centered.

• There is a clear need for more understanding of different audiences,  creating different volunteer paths, and having a volunteer management system to track these effectively - this involves not only technologies to do so (like a movement-wide CRM), but also investing in staff/team's skills, time, procedures and resources to do this. This also involves the age-old issue of having accessible tools to measure retention.
• Addressing harassment and creating safe environments is recognised as key in defining newcomer engagement, as well as Movement Strategy and Universal Code of Conduct. This does not seem to be an area where grantees are, at least explicitly, focusing their attention. Only 15% mention something related to this area in the strategy description. This requires greater prioritisation and resource investment - training in skills and mechanisms that address these on a cultural and procedural level, involving longer-term editors and administrators and access to culturally sensitive mediators that can help communities transform conflict.
• Grantees also reference a number of other open issues to think about: Should youth (18-24) be more of a priority?  Should we be thinking about incorporating more effective social media and communications strategies? How to guarantee easy, exciting, and diverse ways for contributors to engage? In the words of one grantee ``a low barrier to participation and a high level of continual excitement”. It is interesting to note that whilst this is not a global tendency,  youth-centred initiative are becoming more prevalent in some regions, such as ESEAP.

Learning and evaluation

• Over 80% of grantees have metrics and targets for the number of participants, editors, and organisers. Further efforts need to be made to unify definitions and criteria. Less than a third disaggregate data beyond this: new or existing (32% of grantees), retention (22% have metrics but with different definitions and timeframes), diversity (11%), and feedback of participant’s perceptions (21% of grantees but only representing 1.3% of participants) and volunteer hours (14%). It will be hard to measure effective strategies and results without more grantees being better supported to measure this.
• Grantee partners hope to bring in almost 103K participants, 50% of which will be editors involved in grantee-led activities and around 3% organisers. In comparison with Movement-wide data, this is an important contribution. There are regional variations that are interesting to look into in the detailed analysis.
• Numbers serve as benchmarks, but should be contextualised to be valued and compared and can not tell the story of effectiveness: Grantees with higher funding but a smaller number of participants, editors, or organisers are often making efforts in terms of training or researching and testing new approaches, or bringing in smaller groups from underrepresented communities.
• Despite the interest in training and capacity building and understanding what are effective strategies, few grantees have made training outcome metrics explicit in their proposals.  
• Organisers are a key aspect of grantee work, but there does not seem to be an emphasis on measuring things like their engagement, rotation, skills development needs, etc.
• For grantees to answer the interesting learning questions they have about whether their strategies are effective or not, we need better data collection efforts, and it is a joint responsibility that requires financial and technical support from the Foundation.

Detailed report

Challenges grantees want to address/changes they seek

Wikimedia community-related challenges:

• Grantees are concerned about their limited or diminishing volunteer base and seek to use the grant to expand the existing volunteer communities. Grantees, particularly in NWE and CEE, express concern with a somewhat “stagnant, overworked” group of volunteers. In smaller countries, there is a concern about depending on very few editors. Grantees in MEA and SA also identify the lack of volunteering capacities as a key challenge or having free time without being concerned about generating an income.
• When talking about newcomers, a majority of grantees across regions and grantee types mention the need to bring in underrepresented groups. The word that most appears is “gender diversity” (specifically women). It is interesting to note that whilst there have been a lot of discussions involving youth in the movement, “youth” only appears 8 times when talking about the desired changes grantees what to bring about with their work. Likewise, the words Indigenous (12), Black (7), and race (2) appear a few times, despite the focus on diversity.
• Diversity is also understood as a greater geographical presence, beyond urban centres and main cities. There is a tendency in MEA and LAC for grantees (particularly affiliates) to create satellite groups' in medium-size cities or rural areas. Some Alliance Fund grantees are also experimenting with reaching more rural communities.
• One of the biggest challenges highlighted is maintaining (retaining) the volunteer base, particularly newcomers that are brought in with a lot of effort.
• There is a concern with understanding the effectiveness of newcomer activities  and comparing those outcomes with other parts of the movement. They also recognise the lack of people or mechanisms to support new editors when faced with technical issues, harassment, or deleted contributions.
• Many grantees view bringing in new organisers and retaining these is a more relevant aspect than focusing on editors. A key challenge is how to improve organisers' skills and give them the necessary on and offline tools to multiply their work.
• Bringing in newcomers and diverse contributors, also raises challenges with long-term editors and administrators. Grantees highlight the need to work with them to understand the value of investing in newcomers and volunteers that do not edit. This challenge is seen across regions, particularly with larger and medium-sized grantees.
• Discovering new ways. There are several grantees across regions and grantee sizes that are starting to question the “edit-a-thon” formula as the best way to scale, diversify and grow participation and effectively cover knowledge gaps. They want to further understand the target audiences’ (including partners') needs and goals and connect these to opportunities to contribute to Wikimedia in a consistent manner.
• This is related to the challenges of creating different volunteer paths for different forms of contributing and being able to track these effectively. Associated with this, finding better training methods and resources that adapt to different cultural contexts and learning needs and interests and measuring if these are effective in building skills.

Societal/free-knowledge-related challenges:

• Contributing to addressing the digital gap, particularly when it comes to gender and urban/rural populations. These are challenges that are particularly mentioned in the MEA region.
• Tackling the proliferation of “toxic interaction environments in large social networks”; and the systematic exclusion of access to quality content through payment walls.
• Building content collaboratively is seen as a way of fostering tolerance and understanding between different communities
• Addressing the low participation of marginalised communities or those in situations of cultural and socioeconomic vulnerability in the production of digital content that enables greater political and social agency.

Strategies

“One-off activities do not 'stick: editor training needs to be supported with follow-up activities, one-on-one coaching, or support through social media”. (NWE grantee)

Priorities in terms of newcomers and diversity:

• In responding to this challenge 65% of grantees state that bringing in NEW contributors is one of their main focuses, and just over half say they are mainly focused on underrepresented groups. New contributors isa priority across all regions, the variations are in the strategies and characteristics of newcomers.
• At a global level, the top three contributor diversity gaps that grantees want to close with newcomers are people from different geographies (63%), from different ethnic, cultural, racial, or religious backgrounds (60%), and those representing different languages (53%).
• Whilst gender seems to be a priority when describing challenges, it does not appear in the top 3 priorities globally but does so in LAC, SA, MEA and CEE. MEA is focused on geographic and language diversity (similar to the content gaps they want to address). Language diversity is one of the top priorities in NWE  and ethnic and cultural diversity in USCA.

• In all regions, grantees are less focused on people with disabilities (only 23%) or socioeconomic status (27%).Despite the growing interest in doing outreach through social media and working with students, age diversity (39%) does not appear to be in the top priorities. Some grantees are targeting age diversity in their work with senior citizens.

Strategies that are being explored to bring in and maintain contributors:

Grantees are trying to find ways to expand programs to bring in contributors. Most grantees integrate newcomer support in their set programs - the most common being Community Outreach, Education, Culture  & heritage (including GLAM partnerships), and Communications or Media/Social Media Outreach. However, worried about working in silos in these programs, some grantees are starting to carry out cross-programmatic efforts to bring in newcomers, often through campaigns and structured training, seeing this as a more cost/effective way to work.

• Ongoing and multiple activities: There is recognition that a one-off event is not enough and spaces have to be offered for ongoing support in order to increase retention. Grantees mention a number of different formats for this such as online and offline meet-ups, newsletters, email lists, and linking newcomers to opportunities for training or meeting peers in the movement.
• Entry through organised groups or institutions: Grantees are also seeking to bring in newcomers through non-GLAM organised groups (collectives, universities, NGOs, professional collectives, etc) to tap into their dynamics and areas of interest and seek a more “collective” entry into the Movement.
  • Campaigns around topics of interest (such as gender, climate, and human rights) have been the main entry point for these groups.
  • Developing specific campaigns is also a strategy used to reach specific underrepresented groups as content contributors and “expert contributors”, such as scientific or academic communities.  
  • Photographic competitions have also been an entry point for photographers or artistic groups.
  • Bringing in newcomers from specific professions is also common in GLAM-related projects, with the engagement of groups such as librarians and museum workers through organisations and networks well-recognized in the sector.
  • Several grantees are also working with artistic groups to create interesting use cases of Wikidata in the art world.
• Content-specific campaigns are a way that many grantees seek to mobilise content contributors from underrepresented groups. Targeting events, contests, or courses for specific audiences is planned as a tactic to bring in underrepresented groups.
• Educational programmes: 70% of grantees state education as a thematic priority, and 40% explicitly say they are working with formal educational institutions.
  • Those focusing on educational partnerships, prioritise newcomer teachers and students, with less emphasis on editing content but on developing awareness of the value of Wikimedia projects (particularly Wikipedia) as open and free educational resources, particularly for  developing media and literary 21st-century skills.
  • However, it is interesting to note many grantees’ still hope that these efforts will bring in new editors through teacher and student engagement. Greater awareness through educational programs (like Reading Wikipedia) leads potential Wikimedians to local communities who can support them. It would be interesting to further share evidence around this within the active education community of practice that many grantees are part of with the support of the Foundation’s Education Team.
  • The train-the-trainer program led by the Education Team is showing the potential and value in catalysing well-trained active organisers that bring in educational networks and partners, multiplying awareness and MIL skills efforts that are so important for strengthening the free knowledge ecosystem. Their shared tactics and frequent cohort meetings to exchange learning and challenges are enabling them to evolve into an interesting community of practice that may be a useful model for other programmatic driven organisers.
• General training for newcomers: 75% define skills training as key to their work and engaging volunteers. However, there are a variety of different concepts of “training”. This table provides a very general mapping of some formats and examples of training types led by grantees or partners within grant work. This can vary from very structured certified training (less common), event-based shorter training (more common), organic peer learning or mentoring, or training that leads to continuous learning and sharing through communities of practice or frequent workshops and meetups. Despite recognising a variety of contributions beyond editing, a lot of the training is focused on editing skills. A small number of grantees include discussions about the inclusivity of reliable sources that are relevant for newcomer editors, particularly in underrepresented communities.  

Less common tactics:

• Organiser-focused training: There are some grantees that do specify training for organisers, focused on building capacities to organise events, facilitating training others, etc. However, there is an opportunity to further define specific training for these key drivers in the movement. Expanding and decentralising the approach of the upcoming Foundation’s  Organisers Lab beta may be an opportunity to address this.
• There is a growing trend to offer wider, more structured training in areas of interest to professional groups or activist networks, combined with Wikimedia-related skills. This has proved important in regions such as MEA and CEE where professional development for some groups, such as Librarians, is not commonly accessible and where Wikimedia becomes an opportunity for this. In LAC, it is seen as a gateway to engage GLAM professionals, whilst supporting them in their advocacy work, particularly around open and free knowledge and decolonising approaches. Also, efforts to contextualise training materials for newcomers that fit local languages and contexts are outputs that many grantees are focused on.
• Tracking participant's journeys: Grantees such as Wiki in Africa are doing interesting work to document stages in a “participant’s journey” from “observers” to organisers, to identify what participation looks like in each stage and the support services that are needed in each stage. Tailoring training to each type of participant according to their journey and need is key. It is common for  grant proposals to mention very high-level training in numerous topics (such as managing partnerships)  for participants without clearly stating the specific audience and how the training fits into more continuous skills development processes. Associated with this, is the intention to develop ways to continuously recognise newcomer volunteers, as this acts as an important incentive. Some grantees are doing this through content winner recognitions, social media posts, and showing them how the content they contributed is being used.
• Re-designing campaigns with a DEI framework: A few campaigns are focusing on reviewing their criteria and outreach to be more equitable, diverse, and inclusive in their outreach and engagement of underrepresented groups and geographies, as well as the way content is represented and used. This is the case of Wiki Loves Monuments, CEE Spring, and Art+Feminism.
• Researching and testing to gain new insights: Some grantees are taking a step back from a lot of operational programs to research new approaches to work with newcomers, particularly those in underrepresented communities, particularly women.  Others are testing new approaches, like working with university volunteer groups that offer safe spaces and incentives for young women that have proven to be successful and can be scaled or using specific funding for organisers to run activities in more geographically dispersed areas. There is a concern for some grantees that there is not a lot of innovation going on in approaches to bring in gender perspectives or contributors, and that documenting any new approaches will be key.
• Transferring capacities: More experienced grantees or those with regional/global influence, are focusing on creating capacities for other grantees or affiliates to bring in newcomers or by organising spaces, and technical or financial support for newcomers to connect.
• Engaging technical contributors: In areas such as South Asia where there has been specific capacities and a history of more technical (non-linguistic) contributions, meet-ups and outreach sessions are important mechanisms for training and mentoring newcomer tech contributors.

Creating safe and welcoming environments: An issue that is very relevant for Movement Strategy and for the implementation of the Universal Code of Conduct, this does not seem to be an area where grantees are, at least explicitly, focusing their attention. Only 15% mention something related to this area in the strategy description. Those that do mention this hope to develop specific strategies in their “community” programs to promote safe environments for newcomers and to try to find ways to make older contributors or on-Wiki admins more sensitive to newcomers' needs and support. Others are doing specific training in areas related to stress and interpersonal conflicts and conflict resolution.

Things to think about:

Main strategies word cloud analysis: Word Cloud analysis of the most frequent words that appear when talking about main strategies and ways of bringing in new contributors.  It is interesting to note the prevalence of the word students and teachers.

This section highlights some issues that may be of interest to think about. They may reflect gaps between challenges and the need for more thinking about strategies or testing new approaches. They may also call for deeper reflection and collective efforts.

1. What is needed to bring in youth (18-24)? In the past grantees have developed specific tactics to bring in youth such as Wikicamps, through games, partnerships with educational institutions, or in areas of interest to youth. In the GLAM sector, there is an expectation that the union between Wikimedia to these institutions, particularly Libraries, will help open, digitalise and revitalise some of these spaces that will bring in youth. But, Wikimedia faces similar challenges to attract youth, so this may not happen naturally if there aren’t specific tactics to work with youth, and policies and mechanisms in place to guarantee safe spaces for youth participation.
2. Engaging organisers that bring in their networks: Many long-term organisers in the movement have come through grantee work that has engaged certain professions, for instance, Librarians that bring a multiplier effect. These, in turn, bring in people connected to their network. It will be interesting to see how new organisers participating in campaigns and training in other thematic areas such as human rights, climate, and education become established organisers in the Movement and bring in their networks. For example, we are beginning to see trainees from the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program, re-engaging the movement in more diverse ways. Here it is important to recognise the role of the individuals, as much as the groups or institutions they are part of. It is often the efforts of individuals within institutions that can often determine the sustainability of the work.
3. Offering clear skills development paths for newcomers and tracking these: Whilst there are multiple initiatives and formats, it is a grantee, and Movement-wide challenge to create a coherent system of skills development, particularly for newcomers. Whilst valuing multiple, contextualised, and flexible formats, it may be necessary to discuss common training paths, learning prerequisites, and desired outcomes. This requires collective efforts (involving the Foundation) to develop tools to track how newcomers are navigating these. Many grantees (particularly those in group B or C), express not having this tracking system so volunteer management through the funnel becomes very hard. Beyond tools, few grantees have systematic ways of managing time and coordinating efforts with volunteers. Also, important to movement sustainability is considering how organisers in movements might rotate through roles and areas of work and have shorter time commitments to individual projects. Helping grantees and other organisers build into their programs succession planning and skill transfer among different generations of organisers. As in many volunteering movements, if these audiences are not differentiated with support services and paths for each one, maintaining new volunteers' interest, and even information about them is very difficult and hard work for grantees.
4. Easy, exciting, but diverse: Small and easy contributions have proved important for newcomers (for instance 1Lib1Ref or photo contests). However, contributors often want to transition to other forms of contribution and programmes should be constantly looking at working with volunteers to innovate and diversify forms of on and offline contribution.
5. Is more emphasis needed for promoting safe and welcoming environments?  In talking about challenges, most grantees mention the need to work on welcoming environments and how harassment may drive newcomers away, UCOC is also a Movement-wide priority. However, there is not a lot of programmatic work focused on taking policies into practice, with funding being allocated towards developing systems and skills related to implementing the Universal Code of Conduct.
6. Incorporating more newcomer online tools: few grantees mention how they are working with new online tools for newcomer editors. This is perhaps something that can be more formally integrated into grantees’ work to test what off and online support this requires that complements the automated tools.
7. Improving and testing new social media outreach strategies. Grantees recognise the importance of social media, but few have detailed strategies to reach and target new audiences, beyond existing viewers. Only 23% of grantees have clear social media metrics and there is not a standarised way of measuring this outreach, many do not have the capacity to include social media expertise in their teams or are prioritising this. Exploring how partners and local influencers can help promote social media networks could be interesting.
8. Measuring the effectiveness of training: grantees are asking very interesting questions about the effectiveness of their training efforts and how these are related to volunteer retention and engagement, however, most metrics rely on counting participants. Few have included feedback on their perception of the training and even fewer about measuring learning outcomes or tracking if those trained have edited or contributed in any other way (advocacy, awareness, organising, etc) in a period of time after the training activities.

Learning and evaluation about contributors

What do grantees want to learn about their work?

Here is a summary of common strategic learning questions that grantees included in their proposals:

• What programmes are more effective for bringing in newcomers, including those from underrepresented groups?
• How do we best understand these audiences and respond to their needs and interests?
• In what other ways would people like to contribute?
• What training is more effective?
• What are the needs of organisers?
• Do people feel empowered and engaged to “rewrite their stories”

Here is a more detailed list of learning questions related to contributors as stated by grantees in their proposals.

What are grantees measuring

Grantees have the freedom to define the metrics that are most relevant for their programs and what they want to learn. Ideally, the metrics that are defined should determine the data collected that helps answer these questions? Data is not only numbers but also data includes qualitative information such as perceptions, case stories, testimonies, documented processes, and learning.

This is a collective challenge:

Throughout the report, for each area of work there are very interesting questions that are being asked and grantees want to go beyond measuring “the numbers” to tell a fuller picture of their impact. However, many grantees do not have the team, resources, or tools to measure these in more depth, ability to track participants for longer periods of time, create spaces for deeper conversation and feedback, as well as take time to analyse and learn from this data. What we have learnt this year is that we have to meet different grantees “where they are at” and offer this support according to this, without overwhelming them. Furthermore, this is a capacity that should be built into longer-term funding and organisational capacity-building initiatives.

In this current report, we will be looking at what is being measured through the metrics set by grantees and also highlighting some challenges and opportunities.

An overview of contributors metrics

Some of the main metrics related to engaging contributors:

• Over 80% of grantees have metrics and targets for #of participants, #editors, and  # of organisers.
  • 32% of grantees disaggregate if they are new or existing.
  • 11% hope to measure if they will be from underrepresented groups
  • 22% establish metrics for retention with different measurements  (7 or 30 days, 3 months, 6 months). Those setting targets give an average of 5% of editors, 7% for organisers for different time periods, mostly 3-6 months.
• 21% have a goal of feedback from contributors (this represents 1.3% of global participants)  
• Volunteer hours have often been discussed as an alternative to measuring organisers and volunteering efforts. However, only 14% are measuring this with different definitions.

An important note on aggregating and comparing metrics:

The purpose of aggregating data is not to rank or value grantee’s work based on their level of contribution. It is important to first consider that these metrics should always be contextualised. Grantees with higher funding but a smaller number of participants, editors, or organisers are often making efforts in terms of training or researching and testing new approaches, or bringing in smaller groups from underrepresented communities.

However, aggregate data can perhaps serve as general benchmarks and be useful for grantees to review their targets -  comparing their targets with grantees with similar programs, funding, or contextual dynamics. They can also be helpful for newcomers that often express that they find it hard to set targets when initiating their work.

Comparing grantee metrics to Movement data

Grantee partners hope to bring in almost 103K participants,  of which 50% will be editors and 3% organisers. The Foundation is still working on collecting more precise Movement-wide data for these same contributors metrics. It is interesting to note the important number of contributors grantees hope to involve in their work in comparison to these Movement-wide proxy indicators.

Regional comparisons with Movement-wide data:

It is also interesting to note how grantees' targets compare to Movement-wide data on the % of participants, editors and organisers in each region. The arrow indicates regions where grantees with higher editor targets than global editor share. MEA and CEE are higher, USCA, NWE and ESEAP lower and LAC and SA are very similar.

Comparison between regional share in grant funding distribution and  the targets for editors and movement-wide active editors

Comparison between regional share of investments and targets for participants, editors and organisers.

Regional contribution to overall participants, editor and organiser targets, highlighting (with arrows) where there is a greater participation

This table shows the relation between the percentage of funding and the distribution of targets in each region. MEA and NWE have higher organiser targets in comparison to the percentage of funds distributed in the region. The ESEAP and LAC regions have higher targets in terms of participants and fewer in terms of editors and organisers. CEE and USCA are higher in editors.

A deeper look into each metric

Participants

Definition: The application guidelines provide this definition of participants: “individuals who attend or benefit from the proposal’s activities, either in person or virtually. This does not include social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly”.

It is possible that some of the larger variations are based on different definitions and ways of tracking participants and more collective work has to be done to unify measurements (see challenges section).

Grantee partners hope to bring in 103,000 participants. This number can vary between 10 and 1,800 participants per grant. The top contributors are the United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Argentina, and France, all of which are in the top 10 funded countries (except Ukraine).

Technical note: the number of contributors has been rounded up to facilitate the reader.

• 
  Heat map showing grantees target number of participants
• 
  Main countries contributing based on grantees target for the number of participants

Regional Analysis

• MEA hopes to bring in 12,000 participants, with Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa beginning as the top contributors.
• ESEAP hopes to involve 6,000 participants, with Indonesia contributing more than 50%, followed by Taiwan.
• LAC target is 14,000 participants with Argentina contributing 38% and Brazil 26%.
• NWE target is 32,000 participants with the UK contributing 25% and France 16%
• CEE's target is 16,000 participants with Ukraine contributing almost half, followed by Serbia.
• USCA target is 19,000 participants with the United States contributing 90% and an average cost similar to the global average.
• SA is 4,000 with India contributing 100% and the lowest cost per participant globally.

Program and grantee-type analysis:

• Lower contributors: 18% of grants are contributing less than 100 participants, these are mostly Alliances Funds and newer type A and B grantees in several regions because they are focused on working with fewer groups but hoping to achieve greater diversity or researching new approaches to work with underrepresented groups and contents. In other cases, they are Alliances Funds, more focused on building capacities, investigating new approaches, training, or advocacy work.
• Middle contributors: 32% of grants are aiming to contribute between 100-500 participants. These come from various regions and different grantee types (mostly A and B) and include the rest of the Alliances Fund grantees. The average funding per grant in this group is 60K. Their programmatic work is focusing on a greater diversity of contributors and/or activities that bring in fewer participants, such as advocacy or unique content or audiences.
• Larger contributors: 30% contribute between 500-3000 participants, with an average of 130k of funding. They are mostly the type C grantees in each region, with the exception of some countries.
• Top contributors: 9% are contributing between 3,000-12,000 participants, and their average funding is 350k and they mostly type C grantees.
• Do not yet report: 11% do not report participants' metrics, either because they are international campaign organisers, or they are still working to define their metrics in a learning and evaluation plan or would prefer not to set targets and focus on reporting these metrics in their final year report.

Editors

Definition: The application guidelines provide this definition of the editor: “people who edit Wikimedia projects, creating or improving content as a result of grantee activities”.

However, a minority of grantees count only newly registered editors, whilst others consider existing and new editors, and most do not mention if they are new or existing. This may account for some of the larger variations. There is a need to further unify definitions and, based on this, disaggregate this data in reporting, providing there are the capacity and tools in place to do so (see challenges and opportunities section).

Grantee partners hope to involve 57,000 editors in grantee activities this year, between existing and new editors. This is about 55% of all participants. This number of editors per grant has a  wide range, from 10 to 12,500 per grant.

• 
  Heat map showing grantees target number of editors
• 
  Main countries contributing based on grantees target for the number of editors

Regional analysis

• MEA hopes to bring in 7,000 editors (accounting for 60% of the target of participants). The largest contributor is South Africa, followed by Nigeria and Ghana. They account for 57% of all editor goals in the region.
• ESEAP hopes to involve 3,000 (50% of participants)  with Indonesia contributing 40% of the target in the region. Australia and New Zealand show low numbers of editors targets due to the nature of their grants being more focused on awareness and community building.
• LAC target is 3,000 (21% of the target for participants), Argentina, Brazil, and Wikimedia México contribute 88% of editor targets in the region. Uruguay and Colombia have lower editor numbers, largely due to smaller funds but also the characteristics of their projects: focusing on organisational capacity and discovering new approaches to work with underrepresented groups.
• NWE target is 12,000 (38% of participants) with Austria and France contributing 42%.  Italy and Norway are two countries with lower editor contributions.
• CEE target is 13,000 (81% of participants) with Serbia being the largest contributor (15%).
• USCA target is 16,000(84% of participants) ; the main contributor is the Wiki Education Foundation, contributing 78% of the editors in this region and 21% globally.  
• SA is 3,000 (75% of participants) the main contributor in India. From both The Centre for Internet and Society and West Bengal Wikimedia User Group. It is interesting to note that CIS only counts editors with more than 5 edits.

It is interesting to note the differences in % of editors over the total number of participants, the average is 55% of participants. MEA and ESEAP are close to this average. In USCA and SA this is higher, in part because of two larger grants with programing focused on bringing in editors. The percentage of the number of participants is lower in NWE and LAC regions. This is perhaps due to several grants in the LAC region that are focused on raising awareness, advocacy, and training, and less on transforming all participants into content contributors (editors).

Organisers

“Classical editor retention on the online projects is mostly dependent on factors that are beyond the influence of individual affiliates, hence most of us stopped using this as a classical goal and/or metric. Organisers on the other hand are in the realm of affiliate work and influencing and retaining these volunteers is a major goal for us, that we also want to measure. ” (NWE grantee)

Definition: The application guidelines provide this definition of organiser: “people that make sure that activities can be implemented by providing the necessary time, support, and knowledge - such as coordinators, trainers, facilitators, etc.”.

This data is only a very broad overview and must be viewed with a number of considerations. For this reason, the analysis is also more general.  “Organisers” is one of the definitions with most interpretations. A few larger grantees may include staff members as well as volunteer organisers, others also include organisers within partner institutions. A few grantees leading international campaigns, count participating organisations’ (often grantee’s themselves) in their targets. Few grantees distinguish between new and already engaged organisers. Only 21% of grantees establish a metric for organiser retention.

Being such an important piece of grantee work it is an exciting challenge to further define and characterise these organisers, using grantees’ input as well as insights from the Movement Organisers and the subsequent Campaign Product team work.  

Grantee partners hope to involve 3,000 organisers in grantee activities this year. This number of organisers per grant has a narrow range varying from 2-300 and averaging 33 organisers per grant.

• 
  Heat map showing grantees target number of organisers
• 
  Main countries contributing based on grantees target for the number of organisers

Main countries contributing based on grantees target for the number of organisers

Regional analysis

• MEA hopes to bring in 630 organisers. The average number per grant (30) is close to the global average. Most organisers are from Nigeria and Ghana, followed by South Africa (Wiki in Africa). In Ghana, the Alliance Fund with AfLIA includes organisers in affiliate countries. Countries with low organiser numbers are newer user groups (type A) such as Uganda, Benin, Cameroon, and Rwanda.
• ESEAP hopes to involve 140 organisers. The average number per grant (10) is below the global average. Most grantees include staff members in their counts. The highest contributors are Indonesia and Taiwan. Like other regions, the lower number of organisers come from type A/B grantees such as Thailand and Malaysia. The exception is Australia which generally has a lower participant, editor, and organiser count.
• The LAC target is 250 organisers. The average number per grant (20) below the global average. Most organisers are from Argentina (40%), followed by Brazil and Uruguay (the latter two include paid staff in their count). Type A grantees such as Haiti and Peru have a lower number of organisers given the size of their communities.
• NWE target is 1300 organisers. The average number of organisers per grant (75) is double the global average (75). In NWE most grantees (type C) are clearer in defining organisers as mostly volunteers (non-paid staff). Those contributing the most are Sweden, Austria, and Finland. Projects with low organiser numbers are those types A and B, such as Italy, Norway, and Ireland.
• CEE's target is 640 organisers. The average number per grant (50) is above the global average, the average cost per organisers is lower than the global average.  Ukraine accounts for 35% of organisers, which also includes staff, many of these are focused on supporting international campaigns such as Wiki Loves Earth. Serbia accounts for 23% but there is no description of these organisers. Grants with lower organiser counts, such as Poland defines organisers “as community leaders, self-organising volunteers” and for this reason reports a lower number. Others such as Armenia and Turkey are focused more on training participants, with fewer organisers or paid staff involved.
• USCA target is 250 organisers. The average number per grant (30) is close to the global average. It is interesting to see a lower organiser number, given the higher target for editors and participants. This is partially due to the fact that several grantees in this region have international efforts and are not counting work with organisers in other organisations, despite offering financial and technical support to them. This may be an issue of better defining how to show this impact with grantees in this region in terms of the value of this support, beyond the numbers.  
• SA is 70 The average number per grant (20) is below the global average. The highest contributor is the Center for Internet and Socieity including trainers and people working with partner organisations (such as professors and museum curators), and does not include CIS staff.

Program and grantee-type analysis:

Many grantees (mostly type C) involve 50+ organisers. There is only 1 Alliance Fund with over 50 organisers, which is a regional program working with Librarians. The average number of organisers for Alliances Funds is 15, whilst for the General Support is 44. This is largely due to the different programmatic work, with larger grants managing multiple programs that over time involve a larger volunteer base. The Alliances Funds are mostly project-based, experimenting new approaches, transferring knowledge or skills or working on a much smaller scale.

Other contributor-related metrics

The new editor and retention challenge

• Given the interest in newcomers it is interesting to note that only 32% of grantee partners actually disaggregate if these editors will be new or existing, for a total of 8,000 new editors reported (only 14% of the total number of editors). There may be more, but grantees have not reported this.
• There is a suggested metric that asks about goals for editor retention. Only 22% of grantee partners used this metric, with only 3K editors (5% of total editors and 3% of participants) as the target. Grantees also establish different retention time frames, from 7 days, 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. Furthermore, a few grantees measure this retention as completing training or returning to an event, but not necessarily editing.
• The difficulties of measuring editor retention with existing tools have widely been discussed. Today, grantees do not have a tool across all Wikimedia projects to measure retention after certain periods. However, if we look at the learning questions this is one of the key aspects to measure.
• Whilst feedback from participants will enable grantees to learn more in-depth about why editors remain active or not, it is essential to have accurate quantitative data around editor retention and it is an urgent for the Foundation to help develop these tools for grantees and provide consistent definitions for participant retention.

Volunteering hours

This is a metric that several grantee partners said would be interesting to measure.

• 14% of grantees included this metric.
• There is a wide variety of data from 100 to 25,000 hours for a total of almost 80,000 hours. There is a need for more explanation of how this is calculated.
• There also doesn’t seem to be a tendency in terms of grantee type, project focus, or a particular region reporting this metric.

For this metric to be useful in the future, both for internal organisational measurements as well as analysing cross-regional volunteering dynamics, it would be necessary to further discuss the parameters and what the metric could indicate in terms of volunteer dedication/engagement, effectiveness/efficiency, and healthy workload. As with other contributions metrics, having better tools, such as a movement-wide contributor CRM to track off and online contributions would be important to accurately measure volunteer hours.

Contributor diversity

• Grantees want to know if they are managing to diversify their contributor base and effectively engaging them. 17% define a metric around a diversity of participants and 11% define an actual target of underrepresented groups (either in number or % of total participants). Those that do hope to measure this hope to do so in event registrations or follow-up surveys.
• Some grantees can only do this for certain programs where this data is collected Others do this through proxy indicators, such as how many underrepresented cities or regions participated or institutions based in these (ie. small-town libraries) or how many activities are around issues that are of interest to minorities such as human rights or local history of the underrepresented group.

Contributor engagement and feedback about strategies

• 21% of grantee partners state that they are collecting feedback from participants as a metric. Their goal is to gather feedback from 1335 participants, which is 1.3% of all target participants this year. Organisers are a key aspect of grantee work, but there do not seem to be specific tools to measure things like their engagement, rotation, skills development needs, etc.
• Methods to do so:
  • Surveys are the most popular method for feedback. Many are applying a single post training or editing event surveys, whilst others are doing multiple surveys at different stages of the process. Few organisations have a set target in terms of % of satisfaction from participants.
  • Focus groups with specific audiences is a less common technique, with few grantees explicitly stating this in their tools
  • Tracking certain participants to see the impact of participation through individual stories.
  • Organiser-specific feedback: a few NWE grantees are tracking organisers through surveys to check on community health.
  • Other innovations: For the first year France is including a “Volunteer Happiness Index”, inspired by the UN measurement model. This seeks to capture feelings of being heard and respected by the affiliate and able to contribute in a safe environment, initiate projects, and be recognised. They hope to collect this data once a year to track changes and ongoing challenges.

Training and skills development

• Despite the interest in training and capacity building and understanding what are effective strategies, few grantees have made training-related metrics explicit in their proposals, beyond the number of people trained. This is an area that could be further developed with organisational capacity-building in this area and funding to cover this.
• 20% of grantees are collecting data on participants’ perceptions and a few of them go a bit more in-depth to see if their awareness of Wikimedia changed or if their skills learned will be useful for them in practice (either for contributing to Wikimedia or in other areas of their lives). This is particularly the case with some education-focused projects.
• A small number of grantees are measuring the results of training by seeing how many people that participate in specific training are retained after 6 months - in the sense that they continue to practise editing skills or somehow are engaged with the movement. However, this is not measured for other types of skills acquired.
• Given that learning and practising new skills is mentioned as a desired outcome of training carried out by grantees, be it in MIL skills or on-wiki skills,  it is interesting to note that few gratenes include explicit metrics related to these learning outcomes or tracking if these skills were put into practise despite the Educational team providing specific training and templates for this: Final Evaluation Report, Post Program Interview report template, Post program interview and survey guide,  Post program survey example from Morocco, M&E System Template.

Challenges and opportunities for measuring impact in engaging contributors

Creating better measurements is not just a responsibility that lies on grantees. It is a collective effort that requires Foundation and Movement-wide support in the form of tools, resources and technical support.

Grantees have repeatedly mentioned difficulties in tracking contributors. For instance tracking participants in some events, particularly with more manual registrations (off event registration tools) or in non-editing activities when participants do not register new user names or editing activities. This becomes more complex when trying to capture more disaggregated data such as if the participants are new, their geography, language, gender, etc, as well as data privacy concerns.

Whilst these tools are built, it is worth discussing with grantees how some of the data can be better tracked with existing tools and also focus on more qualitative data that can show some of the factors related to diversity, retention, and engagement. Particularly for organisers, given their centrality in grantees’ work. In the footnotes, this report has tagged some grantees implementing different methods that could perhaps be shared in peer learning spaces as part of Let’s Connect.

In the next proposal writing rounds, grantees have also been encouraged to include a budget for learning and evaluation and to include this expertise through training, consultancy or partnerships.

Annex

Annex 1: Learning questions related to contributors as stated by grantees

Engagement/retention	Specifically about underrepresented groups	Programmatic-specific	Contributors skills development
Do our programmes promote the incorporation of new volunteers into the community? What Wikimedia projects interest participants the most? What is the best strategy to retain volunteers? What keeps them returning? What type of events recruit long-term volunteers? How do we best chart participants’ journeys? How to prevent volunteer burnout? How to make them more resilient? What are the needs of experienced organisers? What are the challenges faced by organisers?	What are the differences in the quality of engagement across different target groups? How can we attract underrepresented communities, particularly given insufficient internet access and digital literacy? Will work motivate people from socially oppressed groups  to change the narratives around them? What are barriers and enablers for women’s and gender diverse groups’ participation and retention, particularly on Wikipedia, and what type of interventions could increase their participation and perspectives on Wikimedia projects? What are the strategies that help generate the skills needed to promote youth volunteers as organisers of future activities? How does the incorporation of a decolonisation approach help to increase the content and participation of underrepresented communities?	Understand strategies that effectively engage the academic community (university and graduate) How to run an education-focused project pilot working with schools libraries and scaling it. How to streamline GLAM contributions and make them more autonomous? How do Heritage professionals interact with Wikimedia Projects and what skills are needed to collaborate with local Wikimedia communities?	How do communications/training vary across cultures? What support systems are efficient to build skills? What training strategy yielded the best results? How to promote training that is relevant to what people want to learn? Can we assemble a template-like curriculum for teaching Wikipedia rules and processes to professionals who work with other technologies?

Issues related to creating safe and welcoming environments were only 6 times in all the learning questions, which highlights a need to promote more thinking around this topic that is so important for bringing in newcomers and creating a resilient and welcoming community.

Safe and welcoming environments/community health

In implementing the UCoC in all activities and platforms, we want to learn about transparency and fairness in maintaining a safe environment for all. What tools and methods can be applied to promote respectful discourse, a safe environment, and a supportive approach toward new editors, in order to improve their experience and facilitate their integration into the community, while strengthening the community and its reputation. How do we support marginalised communities to feel safe, secure, and supported in bringing their knowledge? What strategies help our communities feel safe on Wikipedia and at Art+Feminism? What can we do to continuously create safer and braver spaces that are caring, equitable, pro-Black, queer, and trans-affirming? How do we work to build greater allyship and understanding within the current Wikimedia communities for the challenges that marginalised communities face in becoming contributors? Understand the touch points between new editors and established community members (first edits, sandbox, early conflicts around process).

Annex 2: Mapping of training types and some examples

Type of training	Desired outcomes (generally for this format, not for specific examples)	Common formats	Some examples to illustrate
Structured training	Learning specific (mostly) on-Wiki skills, combining theory and sometimes practise	Self-guided online courses Face-to-face or hybrid courses Online courses Integrating training into University structures Learning through edit-a-thon or hack-a-thon formats Scholarships for training	France (MOOC), Media in Cooperation and Transition (NAMA platform) Romania, Argentina (Periodicas), Ivory Coast, Open Foundation Africa (certification) Czech Seniors program with periodic cohorts Wikimedian-in-Residence in universities with compulsory training in Wikimedia projects in research centres / Brazil “Theory of History” Wikimedia México, Netherlands, Avon Glam Ukraine
Curated and shared learning resources	Self-guided learning through contextualised learning material Mostly on-Wiki skills	Using more audiovisual material for training, such as frequent youtube videos and live webinars. Training guides or manuals translated into various languages Resources centres	Belgium's How-to Videos, Wiki in Africa Africa Hour. Art+Feminism campaign material Recursos Comunitarios - Argentina, Art+Feminism
On-line tools	Learning through online tools	Automated tools to allow newcomers to contribute	Wikimedia Portugal
Grantee led peer learning spaces	Human connection + introduction to topics (some focus on deeper learning but are not necessarily continuous)	Live webinars around topics of interest Peer sharing in conferences Communities of practice 1:1 or cluster group connections / live learning clinics Mentoring programs Frequent meet-ups to maintain volunteers Telegram channels Other social media channels	Volunteer Supporters Network (for sharing amongst affiliates, many of them grantees) Spaces for sharing in different regional or global conferences Train-the-train cohorts monthly meetings, GLAM School project(to be designed with grant funding) Let’s Connect (Foundation +Community led) Wiki in Africa Wikimedia Nigeria: WikiNaija monthly meetings to reflect on learning with guest speakers.
Group or 1:1 training or mentoring	Conversation hours Specific skills or just a way of connecting and sharing doubts and suggestions	Periodic conversation hours with specific audiences or open (provides room for mentoring)	Wiki in Africa Women hour, Art+Feminism, Wiki  Education Foundation. WikiClubs in the Czech Republic. This group of volunteers offers support to newcomers in smaller communities outside Prague. The Czech Chapter is hoping to further scale this type of support through small grants to community organisers.
Event/conference based learning	Human connection + introduction to topics	Learning through event workshops and talks Sponsorships and support for volunteers to participate	Wiki of Brazil, Wikimedia Ukraine Wikimedia Austria
Partner-led training	Variety of formats and learning objectives		UNESCO and Bophana centre

Annex 3: List of popular campaigns

• 1Lib1Ref: Twice per year, #1Lib1Ref — abbreviated for one librarian, one reference — calls on librarians around the world, and anyone who has a passion for free knowledge, to add missing references to articles on Wikipedia. Click here to find out more.
• Art+Feminism: is a non-profit organization that leads an international campaign to improve coverage of cis, and trans women, gender, and the arts on Wikipedia through organizing in-person training and editing events. The majority of Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thons take place in March of each year but groups also organize independently under the banner of Art+Feminism throughout the year. For more information click here and visit the Art+Feminism website.
• CEE Spring: an annual event organised by Wikimedians and Wikipedians who joined the Central and Eastern Europe collaboration to support article creation about every country in the region on Wikipedia. For more information click here.
• Wikipedia Asian Month: an online Edit-a-thon every November, which promotes the creation or improvement of Wikipedia content about Asia except their own country. The participating community is not limited to Asia.  For more information click here.
• Wiki Loves Africa: is an annual contest where anyone across Africa can contribute media that is relevant to their experience to Wikimedia Commons (photographs, video, and audio) for use on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wiki Loves Africa encourages participants to contribute media that illustrate the specific theme for that year. Each year the theme changes and is chosen by the community. For more information click here and check out the 2021 contest.
• Wiki Loves Earth: Wiki Loves Earth is an annual international photographic competition. Participants take pictures of local natural heritage in their countries and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. The contest runs throughout May – June and other dates suitable for local teams close to this timeline, with different dates for each country. For more information click here.
• Wiki Loves Monuments: (WLM) is a public photo competition around cultural heritage monuments, organised by Wikimedia chapters, groups, and local Wikipedia volunteers. The public takes photos of monuments, and uploads those to Wikimedia Commons to be used in Wikipedia and elsewhere. The goal is to make the world's heritage monuments visible to the worldwide public. For more information click here and also visit the specific website.
• Wiki Loves Women: focuses on bridging two significant gaps in Wikimedia projects – women and Africa – both in terms of content about these subjects and in terms of participation by people from these groups. It encourages the contribution of existing researched and verified information by civil society organisations to Wikipedia with the intent of redressing the systemic bias online about women. For more information click here and also visit the specific website.
• WikiForHumanRights: advocates to document on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms the story of rights which enable a safe and stable climate, healthy ecosystems, and a non-toxic environment. For more information click here.
• WikiGap: is organised by Swedish embassies and local Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers around the world to carry out edit-a-thons focused on closing the Wikipedia gender gap in multiple languages. For more information click here. Wikimedia affiliates are welcome to join WikiGap and partner with the Swedish Embassy in their country and support edit-a-thons focused on closing the Wikipedia gender gap in multiple languages.
• Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos: This is an annual campaign where Wikipedians across Wikipedia language projects and communities add photos to Wikipedia articles lacking images. This is to promote the use of digital media files. For more information click here.
• Wikipedia Birthday or Anniversary: events and meetups to celebrate Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary or future anniversaries. For more information click here.