Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Community Ireland Annual Grant 2023/Final Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2024-07-30T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Final
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General information
[edit]This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.
- Name of Organization: Wikimedia Ireland Company Limited by Guarantee
- Title of Proposal: Wikimedia Community Ireland Annual Grant 2023
- Amount awarded: 81709.72 USD, 80429.26 EUR
- Amount spent: 75982.2 EUR
Part 1 Understanding your work
[edit]1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
Much of our work during this grant period focussed continuing with the programmes and connections that have been fruitful in the past. We also made new connections and began new programmes that we hope will expand our reach throughout Ireland and into Irish Language communities.
In inclusion and diversity we continued several campaigns including Art+Feminism and Wiki Loves Pride edit-a-thons and the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project where we accompanied Irish students and teachers to workshops in the Basque country designed to test the toolkits developed by the project. This project is a driver of our diversity work on both English Wikipedia and Vicipeid.
Queering Wikipedia is a new programme for this grant period. Through this programme we are running an edit-a-thon and photo competition.
In education, we continued our long partnership with University College Dublin (UCD), working with undergraduate and graduate students editing Wikipedia. We also continued our work with the University of Limerick (UL) Masters programme in Public History and Dublin City University (DCU) on their Translation Bureau.
We ran two new events with DCU: a presentation of Natural Language Processing Seminar with an Introduction to Wikipedia and a workshop with secondary school students with the History in Your Hands programme where we presented the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project. We also assisted University College Cork (UCC) to host a 1Lib1Ref workshop.
Our Irish Language outreach has seen the most growth during this grant period. Our new Irish Language Officer (ILO) has attended several conferences, most importantly Oireachtas na Samhna which is the main Irish Language conference in Ireland where she made many new connections in the Irish Language community. She holds monthly edit-a-thons in Irish as well as provides an update for the newsletter in Irish.
She was invited to deliver a guest lecture as part of a Language and Identity in Ireland module (which focuses on indigenous and minority languages on the island of Ireland), delivered by Dr. Maggie Glass, at TU Dortmund to facilitate an in-person lecture as well as inviting her to attend their department’s research colloquium. Most of her focus has been on the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project and the planning of the Celtic Knot Conference which will return to Ireland this year.
We continued to advocate for the wider adoption of more permissive open licences across all aspects of Irish culture, education and information gathering through our competitions and campaigns. This grant period we ran 4 photo competitions (Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Science, Wiki Loves Folklore, and Wiki Loves Earth) and 10 themed edit-a-thons.
This is one section of our work where we have seen a decrease in participation. Most of the photo competitions fell short of participant and upload goals. We think this might be due to fatigue with photo competitions. We continued our outreach regarding open licence images through our programmes in Education and Irish Language outreach.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
Outreach in the Irish Language community has expanded exponentially during this grant period. Our ILO has roots within the Irish language community which makes this outreach more fruitful. She has run several Irish Language edit-a-thons during this grant period as well as several events during Seachtain na Gaelige, a week devoted to encouraging the use of the Irish Language. Many Irish Language groups and activists have been invited to the upcoming Celtic Knot conference, which will also see the launch of the toolkits developed during the Erasmus+ Wiki Women Project. This will give us additional opportunities to expand on the work started.
3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?
One of our biggest innovations has been the Erasmus+ Wiki Women Project. We have been collaborating with groups in the Netherlands and Spain to develop a training programme to create articles on women in minority languages in the Wikiverse. We have recently completed the second round of trialling the materials with teachers and students with a week-long visit to the Basque country. When we first started this project, we used our experience running workshops for third-level students as a template to develop the student toolkits. We found that the basic template ws sound, but that younger students need much more support than older students. Overcoming the fear of putting their work out for public viewing was a recurring theme. We have overcome this with a focus on offline training, especially around research and writing skills.
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
We promote our work through the monthly newsletter (link to archive is posted below) which is sent out to the mailing list, is posted to our social media channels, which include Facebook, X, Instagram, Mastodon, Tik Tok, BlueSky, and to our website. The newsletter highlights group activities during the previous month along with upcoming events. The Irish Language section of the newsletter promotes our Irish Language work.
We conduct monthly virtual meetings, which are open to anyone to attend to learn about our current work, to plan for future activities, and generally input into our work.
The Programme Manager and ILO have recorded several episodes of a Podcast to highlight our work, especially in the Irish Language context.
5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- Newsletters on website: https://wikimedia.ie/category/newsletter/
Wiki Women Website: https://www.wikiwomen.eu/ Wikipedia’s Missing Women Podcast: https://www.wikiwomen.eu/post/wikipedia-s-missing-women-a-podcast-by-the-europeans WCI Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2310642/14417546
6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Strongly agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Neither agree nor disagree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. | Agree |
7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?
Wiki Women Erasmus+ Project has been our main contribution to underrepresented groups. Not only are we encouraging editors to write in minority languages, but we are encouraging them to write about women, who are vastly underrepresented in the Wikiverse. Once the toolkits are completed at the end of 2024, we will be able to make them available to interested groups throughout Ireland. Wiki Loves Pride and Queering Wikipedia is another way for us to encourage content for underrepresented sectors of the populace. We have run photography and writing contests focussing on Pride celebrations and notable LGBGQTI+ people and organisations. We envision adapting the Toolkits from the Wiki Women Project to this and other subjects
Part 2: Your main learning
[edit]8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?
Our continued work with Irish Language groups is helping us to develop policies and guidelines for interactions with these communities. With feedback from editors we have been able to develop and implement missing tools on Vicipeid to create a better user experience. While initially sceptical of the Wiki Women project, regular editors on Vicipeid have given us constructive feedback to make the articles that students create better. The Irish Language teachers who are part of the project have used the feedback to inform how they are guiding the students.
The Wiki Women Project has also given us the opportunity to work with GLAMs as we develop the toolkits. We have been promoting the use of licence free images and how GLAMs can support students doing research on Wikipedia articles.
Outside of the Wiki Women Project, we have continued to expand into other subject areas in third level education including Natural Language Processing and STEM subjects.
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
During the last grant period we noticed that GLAMs and Educators, still adjusting after the disruption of the pandemic, had reduced capacity. During this grant period, we have seen collaboration opportunities increase. This is mostly due to outreach done by our Programme Manager and ILO into new communities.
We also noticed that some of our long term partners, especially in third level education, have become a bit too dependent on our volunteer/staff time in running their programmes. While we do not want to end these partnerships, the time dedicated to it is close to becoming unsustainable.
10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?
We are prioritising these new relationships, especially within the Irish Language and Secondary Level Education spheres. Building on the work we have done with the Wiki Women Project we will promote the developed toolkits within these new groups.
We plan on attending/presenting at several conferences this year to promote these new resources. We are targeting Irish Language groups and Libraries as these are the areas where we have seen the most growth during this grant period.
We plan on having discussions with our long term partners to reset the terms of the partnership to allow for a more equal sharing of the workload.
11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?
We are so proud of the growth of our Irish Language outreach. This is something that has been a priority since the founding of our group, but lack of staff who were fluent in Irish has always been a blocker. Since bringing on our ILO, who has a vast background in Irish Language Advocacy, we have expanded our reach. This isn’t easily evident by looking at our programmes and metrics, but we have been approached by many Irish Language groups that want to work with us. Our ILO is now a full time employee, which will give us much more capacity to grow this outreach. The Celtic Knot Conference will enable us to showcase our work with the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project and provide us with tools that we can make available to this community.
12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- N/A
Part 3: Metrics
[edit]13a. Open and additional metrics data
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLAM Allied events | 5 events or meeting with allied organisations within GLAM in Ireland. This is to increase awareness of open licencing and Wikidata for GLAMs by showcasing case studies, both national and international. | 5 | 3 | We have seen decreased capacity within GLAMs over the past few years. But we have made new connections during this grant period | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Novel activities | 3 new novel activities. Working with, or being led by the needs of our partners in our various outreach programmes, this gives us space to experiment and evolve new workshop, event or campaign formats that have mutually beneficial outcomes for the partner and Wikimedia communities and projects. | 3 | 1 | As we had a lot of change in staff this year, we focussed on our go to projects which led to less novel activities than expected | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| ' | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | 3 organisers retained, who remain engaged with activities within WCI or on Wikimedia projects. | 3 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | 3 new partnerships with groups, organisations or institutions which we are strategically aligned. | 3 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
13b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 30 participants in inclusivity and diversity workshops and events, 220 participants in educational outreach workshops and events, 70 participants in Wiki Loves Monuments, 50 participants in Wiki Loves Earth, 20 participants in Wiki Loves Folklore | 390 | 269 | We had low turnout from some photo competitions. We had poor registration of students from several educational outreach events. We think we met our editor targets in education, but we can't back it up with reported metrics. | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Number of editors | 30 newly registered editors in inclusivity and diversity workshops and events, 220 newly registered editors in educational outreach workshops and events, 70 newly registered participants in Wiki Loves Monuments, 50 newly registered participants in Wiki Loves Earth, 15 newly registered participants in Wiki Loves Folklore, 15 newly registered participants in Wiki Science | 400 | 227 | We had low turnout from some photo competitions. We had poor registration of students from several educational outreach events. We think we met our editor targets in education, but we can't back it up with reported metrics. | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Number of organizers | 5 organisers in inclusivity and diversity workshops and events, 5 organisers in educational outreach workshops and events | 10 | 9 | We had less diversity events that we anticipated | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 50 content pages in inclusivity and diversity workshops and events, 120 content pages in educational outreach workshops and events, 30 content pages on Vicipéid from Irish language workshops and events | 150 | 140 | We had poor registration of students from several educational outreach events. We think we met our editor targets in education, but we can't back it up with reported metrics. | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Wikimedia Commons | 1200 images uploaded to Wiki Loves Monuments, 700 images uploaded to Wiki Loves Earth, 250 images uploaded to Wiki Loves Folklore, 150 images uploaded to Wiki Science | 2300 | 1791 | We had poor turnout for the WLE and WLF contests | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| Wikidata | 30 content pages in inclusivity and diversity workshops and events, 50 content pages in educational outreach workshops and events, 20 content pages relating to GLAM outreach, 30 content pages relating to Irish language outreach | 130 | 4 | Staff member who was focussed on this project left and we had no one else trained in Wikidata | Outreach Dashboards and self recording |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
Yes
15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.
There are some educational programmes in which getting students to sign up to the Outreach Dashboard can be challenging. We are working with the relevant educators to remedy this.
16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- N/A
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships
[edit]17. Organizational Capacity
| A. Financial capacity and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| B. Conflict management or transformation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| D. Partnership building | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| E. Strategic planning | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| F. Program design, implementation, and management | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
| I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| J. Governance | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| K. Communications, marketing, and social media | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| M. On-wiki technical skills | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| N. Accessing and using data | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| O. Evaluating and learning from our work | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
| P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
| N/A | |
| N/A |
17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces), Peer to peer learning with other community members (but that is not continuous or structured), Using capacity building/training resources onlinee from sources OUTSIDE the Wikimedia Movement
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Lack of knowledge of available capacity building opportunities, Lack of volunteer time to participate in capacity building/training
18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?
Having another .5 FTE staff person has greatly increased our outreach capacity. Due to this increased capacity, we are able to interact with many organisations that have been on our outreach list for many years, especially within Irish Language groups. Having the toolkits developed through the Wiki Women Project has enhanced those interactions
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
| A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | Agree |
| B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups | Agree |
| C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups | Agree |
19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Permanent staff outreach, Board members’ outreach, Staff hired through the fund
19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Lack of interest from partners, Limited funding period
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
In the Irish context, groups and partners feel more comfortable working with us in-person. While they are happy to run online workshops, the initial meetings seem to be more fruitful if they feel an in-person connection with us. We are expanding on this by participating in and presenting at several conferences during the next grant period. The Celtic Knot Conference will also give us an opportunity to meet potential partners in person to create that connection. Having staff members living outside of Dublin has enabled us to reach into communities we had minimal contact with before.
Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration
[edit]21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?
We continue to feel an increased sense of belonging within the Wikimedia movement. Much of this has come from interaction with the grant committees. Their understanding of WCI in the context of our much larger European neighbours has allowed us the freedom to grow as a community that we may not have gotten before. Not having to strive to become a chapter, which would be a huge administrative burden for us, but still be able to promote the ideals of the Wikimedia movement within Ireland has provided us with a sense of security and belonging within the movement.
Learning about the experiences of other smaller affiliates, especially those within Africa, South America, and parts of the CEE, have shown us that we are not alone in the struggles that are always present in small affiliates. We can learn and support each other. Interactions with established chapters, especially WMUK, has also increased our sense of belonging.
22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Increased significantly
23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
We finally feel like the granting committee has a good understanding of the Irish context and no longer compare us to some of our bigger neighbours. Our success with the Wiki Women Erasmus+ project has increased our profile within the Wikimedia movement.
24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Increased significantly
25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
The Wiki Women Erasmus+ Project has renewed our sense of personal investment in open knowledge. Being able to bring new young editors into the Wikiverse and have them edit and create pages about women in small languages has been a long term goal for WCI which we thought we might never reach. The toolkits being developed will be adapted to work with other communities and contexts which will help to broaden our reach.
26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.
Gender gap (Wiki Women & Art+ Feminism) LBGTQIA+ groups (Wiki Loves Pride & Queering Wikipedia)
Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration
[edit]We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.
27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
Yes
27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?
Through our website, newsletters, and Social Media channels
28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?
We do this regularly (at least once a month)
29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?
We share our work in our monthly newsletter and via our Social Media channels. It would be helpful to have a space where all affiliate work could be easily shared.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance
[edit]30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
75982.2
31. Local currency type
EUR
32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.
There were several areas where we did not spend the proposed amount. The Subsistence underspend was due to availability of these funds not being correctly shared with staff. The Accessibility underspend was due to lack of in person events during this period. The Pension Contribution underspend was due to the Irish Government not implementing the mandatory contributions programme as was expected. There was a slight over spend in the Employer Tax section due to mid grant changes in Employer rates.
34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
4,447.06 EUR This underspend was due to the following: Subsistence underspend: availability of these funds not being correctly shared with staff. Accessibility underspend: lack of in person events during this period. Pension Contribution underspend: the Irish Government not implementing the mandatory contributions programme as was expected. GLAM underspend: lack of in person events due t limited GLAM capacity Event Travel underspend: lack of in person events Photo Contest Prizes underspend: low turnout for some contests
34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
C. I am planning to send them back to the WMF
34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.