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

All Wikimedia Foundation Funds reports

Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact
Partnerships

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

Executive summary

“True contribution and knowledge equity will not be achieved without the involvement of multiple partners, aligned movements and individuals across different, often intersecting, sectors” (Grantee MEA region)

Word cloud of about what grantees mention around around partnerships and their value. Word count top words: Support, collaboration, university, schools, institutions, culture.

Challenges:

• Tapping into partners’ expertise, showing the value of Wikimedia collaborations and embedding work with Wikimedia on a continuous basis as part of institutional plans and staffing. This is not the case for all partnerships, but can be particularly important for multiplying and sustaining partnerships that can act more autonomously.
• Better define priorities to help determine partnerships that add value to grantee’s work and vice versa.

Strategies:

• 90% of grantees are working with external non-Wikimedia partners to develop their work, of which 40% seem to place these partnerships at the centre of their work. These partnerships can be catagorised by type of partners (government, NGOs, companies, individuals) and by their type of contribution.
• There is a growing interest in learning from these partnerships and finding ways to better connect to existing agendas and interests for longer-term collaboration, particularly around content contribution, bringing in new audiences in a more sustained way, and awareness-raising/advocacy efforts.
• There is variation in types of partnerships per grantee type. Type C grantees often have more longer-term “institutional partnerships” whilst A and B grantees, are further defining their priorities and consolidating their programs will be a key for engaging partners strategically. Outreach and follow-up is often difficult given limited staff dedicated to this.

Detailed report

Challenges grantees want to address/changes they see

• Convince potential partners, particularly museum and arts institutions, of the value of digitalising their work and making it openly accessible. Use case studies to show this impact and how this can be done on a continuous basis as part of institutional plans and staffing.
• Tap into partners’ expertise and audiences in ways that fit in with their agendas and develop the basis for more longer-term agreements.
• Document joint learning and share widely
• Prioritise strategic partnerships: those that contribute value to main goals
• Better define priorities to help determine long-term partnerships (particularly for grantees that are growing)

Strategies

Ways in which grantees perceive that partner add value (in parenthesis the % of grantees that say they engage with partners in this way)

90% of grantees are working with external non-Wikimedia partners to develop their work, of which 40% seem to place these partnerships at the centre of their work, meaning that it is mentioned as a key aspect of their goals, strategies, and learning outcomes.

These partnerships can be catagorised by type of partners (government, NGOs, companies, individuals) and by their type of contribution (content contribution, bringing in audiences, transferring or co-creating knowledge, building organisational capacities, financial or in-kind contributions, and raising awareness).

There is a growing interest in learning from these partnerships and finding ways to better connect to existing agendas and interests for longer-term collaboration, particularly around content contribution, bringing in new audiences in a more sustained way, and awareness-raising/advocacy efforts. Whilst a majority of grantees work with partners, few have staff or volunteers solely dedicated to building and maintaining partnerships, this is more common in type C grantees with larger organisational structures. For other grantees, partnerships are a shared responsibility between program coordinators and executive directors.

Grantee-type variations in relation to partnerships

• For many type A and B grantees, further defining their priorities and consolidating their programs will be a key aspect of developing more long-term partnerships. On one hand, as they become more visible as legally registered organisations partners will be more willing to engage with them, but also because they will have clearer strategies and priorities to engage partners strategically and the team needed to support partnership management. For smaller user groups not registered legally in their countries or requiring administrative or legal support, fiscal sponsors become key in supporting partnerships and formal agreements and different forms of in-kind channelling support.
• For grantees working with inter-regional or global scope, international partners are more common, such as UN agencies, global networks, or multilateral institutions.

Content contribution:

• As mentioned in campaign strategies, there is a growing tendency to partner with NGOs and thematic networks around content contribution campaigns. These can range from very local grassroots organisations to larger NGO networks.
• Grantees are also partners that can contribute in areas where there is an identified knowledge gap or can improve the quality of content.
• 70% of grantees state they are working “in education” but a closer qualitative analysis shows that around 40% are actually partnering with formal educational institutions and working within them, and less so are doing this in a sustained fashion - through ongoing programs and not one-off workshops. For long term partnerships to prosper in educational institutions, it is necessary for the institution (particularly the teachers directly involved) to feel it is useful for their work and share common values in terms of open educational resources. For individual organisers working in education, such as many of those trained in the Train the Trainers program, it is often hard to establish institutional partnerships if they are not closely related to a registered affiliate group. It is an interesting challenge to see how the Movement (Foundation, affiliates, etc) can better support these individual organisers.
• A few grantees are focused on university students and professors to integrate content contribution or analysis as part of academic research. The challenge is to find ways to “institutionalise” these practices within academic programs.
• In search for greater scope and sustainability, some grantees are trying to reach more national policy level by working with the Ministries of Education or national educational networks that can lead to more institutionalised programs integrated (like integrating Wikimedia into the curriculum or teacher training programmes) and open doors to large groups of teachers, media groups, experts, volunteers working in education, etc.
• Given its nature, GLAM is one of the most important programs to mobilise partnerships, 69% of grantees are working in this area with partners to digitalise and upload collections onto Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Long-term partnerships seem to evolve when there is more ongoing collaboration through Wikimedia-in-Residence roles, and when digitising and uploading are part of their institutional strategies.
• A few grantees, such as the Czech Chapter, have started to distinguish between “GLAM collaborations” and “strategic GLAM partnerships''. Collaboration can be working with an institution, and if that institution does not directly upload data or media files just connecting with it can be important for awareness or knowledge transfer. Strategic GLAM partnerships are perceived as those that lead to joint content contribution and uploading efforts.
• Many type C grantees with years of GLAM experience are already a reference in the context for digitising and opening up collections, this has also been facilitated in countries where open knowledge in GLAM has become a more common practice (for instance in NWE or USCA). In  contexts where digitising or opening collections to free access  is less known or institutionally prioritised, grantees have to make huge efforts to create the groundwork for partnerships and these may take time to foster, so a lot of the work results in raising awareness and visibility, rather than large amounts of content.
• Libraries, both local and national networks, are growing partners across regions as well as associations of libraries and librarians.
• Wikimedian-in-Residence programs have been a key model for working with GLAM partnerships. An ongoing challenge is to find ways to scale this and make sure it is somewhat “institutionalised” so the work is incorporated into institutional strategies and teams. It is common to see grantees sharing these costs with the partner GLAM institution.
• Some partners do not necessarily help build content but provide quality information sources for editing processes. This is the case with many academic or thematic-based institutions. Partners can also be professional groups, such as translators or language experts.
• Alliances Fund grantee partners, already mission-aligned organisations, will also be working in partnerships to carry out their work, particularly to work with underrepresented content and groups. Also, partnering with a national statistical government organisation to obtain data on issues of public interest, such as health, census, public services, and electoral results.  

Contributors:

• Partners for working with underrepresented groups such as climate change activist groups or feminist groups and youth audiences. Partners may help bring in audiences or also reduce barriers to access, such as providing logistical and technical support.
• Several grantees are starting to partner with journalists associations or media institutions to train journalists and create content, this can be seen both in the General Support Fund with affiliates such as the Nigeria Foundation, as well as some interesting new alliances funds focused on working with journalists.

Training/skills development/capacity building

• With the growing concern for Media, Information, and Literacy skills grantees are seeking to partner with organisations working in this field, from local NGOS, national networks, or government agencies to  multilateral organisations (such as the Inter American Development Bank).
• Another form of partnership in this area is for partners to deliver training courses and provide them to existing contributors or to new audiences as a means to engage them.
• Grantees also recognise the importance of some partners in building their organisational capacities, for instance by sharing tasks and collaborating on program delivery, and transferring knowledge to the organisation about program management. However it is worth noting the lack of partnerships to develop skills related to community health, like widespread training in DEI, conflict management, non-violent communications practices, etc.

Knowledge transfer:

• Partners offer expertise in specific content, audiences, approaches, or technological expertise. Likewise, Wikimedians can offer knowledge transfer services through training in areas related to the free knowledge ecosystem like intellectual property rights, open source, etc, pedagogical/educational resources and approaches (particularly for developing MIL skills), as well as specific on-wiki skills such as editing and content uploads that are of interest to institutions with certain professions -particularly teachers, GLAM professionals, and journalists.

Raising awareness/communications and outreach:

• Partners can be seen as important allies in making Wimedia work more visible. For instance, through the partner’s existing media outreach, sharing programmatic information in their social media networks, email lists, and publications tapping into their existing networks. Many grantees recognise that partners complement the capacities that grantees may not have in this area and bring in larger numbers of participants to programmatic activities. This support is particularly highlighted when working with thematic networks or governmental organisations.
• Partners also help open up spaces, such as access to thematic events, where there is an opportunity to promote general awareness of Wikimedia.
• It is interesting to note that partnerships with Radio do not seem to be common, and perhaps this is an opportunity to partner with these networks to reach communities where radio is still an important source of information, particularly in more remote and rural areas.

Financial support and in-kind support:

• These types of partners can vary from GLAM institutions and companies to private sector foundations. They support grantees by providing venues for their events or workshops (particularly museums and libraries), as well as logistics to hold these events, such as transport, catering, connectivity, and business zoom accounts, amongst others. Another in-kind support that is common is providing contest prizes and incentives.
• Only 20% of grantees state that they receive financial support from partners, mostly for developing a specific aspect of their grant project or for human or technological resources. In some cases, they provide a special service to the partners, for instance, training or developing educational resources. More grantees may be receiving financial support, but do not explicitly state this.
• It is interesting to note that few grantees also mention partnerships as a way of generating alternative sources of financial support in the future as part of their plans to diversify their sources of funding and reduce dependence on funding from grants.

What do grantees want to learn?

• How we can better support partners in achieving their goals and needs through Wikimedia tools
• How to best apply satisfaction surveys to our main partners in order to learn how we can better support them to contribute to Wikimedia projects
• How to retain and maintain strategic partnerships that contribute to longer-term growth, diversity and Free Knowledge
• How do our partners perceive our social and cultural relevance?
• What is the best strategy to build partnerships in countries without affiliates?

What grantees are measuring

45% of grantees set a metric related to the number of “strategic partnerships”, with a total of almost 880 partner organisations being involved in grantees' work.

However, given that there is no shared working definition of what differentiates different types of partnerships, these numbers can vary from under 10 (29 grantees), between 10-40 (13 grantees), over 40 (4 grantees) and there is no grantee type or regional tendency. A few grantees have tried to define this broadly in the following terms: strategic partners as those that “contribute to main goals, “demonstrate continued collaboration” and “help multiply capacities”.

Many grantee partners also consider “partnerships” as collaboration with other Wikimedia communities. Learning more about best practices and the value of Wikimedia community partnerships is very much related to grantees’ interest in building the future of Regional and Thematic Hubs.

Although many grantees talk about “strategic partnerships” there is no shared definition for measuring if this partnership is strategic. Some mention criteria such as those partnerships that are sustained for a period of time, or those that engage in more than 2 joint activities. Partnerships could also be considered strategic if they bring about the value they were intended to create (such as that illustrated in the diagram in the diagram related to the 5 main areas of work: Content creation, Bringing in contributors and new audiences, Transferring or co-creating knowledge, financial or in-kind contributions, Building organisational capacities and supporting awareness building through visibility and use of partner networks and communications.

However, to do this, it would be necessary to define metrics that show the outcomes of this value more clearly.

Less than 10% of grantees explicitly mention metrics  related to gathering feedback from partners through surveys or conversations to document changes in perception and learning around what makes partnerships work (or not). Given it is such an important aspect of many grantees’ work, particularly when their efforts are focused on working with partners to raise awareness and bring in new audiences and contents.

Very few counting specific contents are generated through partnerships, however, this could be calculated in many cases.