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Grants:Project/MSIG/Changemaker's toolbox - introductory resources to campaigning and advocacy

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statusFunded
WM UK/Changemaker's toolbox - introductory resources to campaigning and advocacy
This is an initiative to create, curate and disseminate a suite of open source introductory materials about changemaking, advocacy, and campaigning, addressing a skills development content gap in the 2030 implementation strategy. These materials, sitting within a portal space on Meta, can then be used by Wikimedia communities globally to facilitate their thinking on how Wikipedia can be used for change, and to build their introductory skills in advocacy.
targetmeta
start date26 June
start year2023
end date31 December
end year2023
budget (local currency)£19,959.3
budget (USD)$25,000
grant typeorganizations
contact(s)• daria.cybulska(_AT_)wikimedia.org.uk• rob.abercrombie(_AT_)smk.org.uk
organization (if applicable)• Wikimedia UK (lead), Sheila McKechnie Foundation (partner)
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Applications are not required to be in English. Please complete the application in your preferred language.



Project Goal

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What will be the outputs of your project and how will those outputs contribute to advancing a specific Movement Strategy Initiative

What specific Movement Strategy Initiative does your project focus on and why? Please select one of the initiatives described here
The project addresses 32. Global Approach for Local Skill Development , and tangentially 22. Local_capacity_development_for_advocacy . Within the 2030 implementation, skills development does not include advocacy (32), while advocacy focuses narrowly on specialised public policy (22). There is a gap that this project aims to address.
Within the Wikimedia movement sits a great potential for making change in the world, across a huge range of societal issues (misinformation, shrinking civic space, decolonisation and knowledge equity). Because of Wikipedia’s brand, and the strength and size of the community, people in positions of power take note of us. A lot of us are, or could become, changemakers. However, our global advocacy skills development efforts have been specialised, and focused on copyright/public policy. This project aims to make any of our community members aware that they could be active in campaigning or changemaking, and give them initial tools to know how to go about it. The materials created will cover:
  • Introduction to Campaigning and Social Change, looking at concepts of power, social change and campaigning, while highlighting the habits that make change successful at an individual and organisational level.
  • Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, looking more concretely at strategic and responsive approach to planning campaigns that achieve concrete change.
  • Communicating for Change, looking at how to develop powerful framing, narratives and stories for campaigns.
This initiative will create, curate and disseminate a suite of open source introductory materials about changemaking, advocacy, and campaigning, addressing a skills development content gap in the 2030 implementation strategy. These materials, sitting within a portal space on Meta, could then be used by Wikimedia communities globally to facilitate their thinking on how Wikipedia can be used for change, and to build their introductory skills in advocacy. Advocacy here is thought about broadly, not just in terms of copyright lobbying, but in all areas of change making that Wikimedia has potential for.
Overall impact sought from this initiative is a more empowered Wikimedia community, aware of its potential to instil change, and with tools to hand to do it.

Project Background

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When do you intend to begin this project and when will it be completed?
The team has flexibility to start as soon as the funding is confirmed. The workflow timelines are:
  • Final planning and project initiation [month 1]
  • Copyright review and common understanding of creative commons [month 1]
  • Service design commissioning and delivery [month 2-3]
  • Content production (text) [month 4-5]
  • Content production for web (design) [month 6]
  • Publication and dissemination on wiki [month 6-7] - assuming funding confirmation in May this means end November/December
Where will your project activities be happening?
Materials will be developed in house at Sheila McKechnie Foundation, and will be shared within a dedicated space on meta.
Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal.
This application is a collaboration between Wikimedia UK and Sheila McKechnie Foundation. A member of WMUK’s team is currently on secondment at Sheila McKechnie Foundation, therefore facilitating the collaboration. Details of tasks are outlined further down.
In the past few years Sheila McKechnie Foundation has been undertaking ‘All about Power’ project – an inquiry into social change, civil society and first-hand experience of poverty and inequalities. The organisation has been incorporating the findings into its materials and practice; therefore considerations around inclusion of diverse perspectives are at the forefront of what is delivered, and how the materials are framed. There is also an element of user testing/service design in the materials delivery, which will bring diverse perspectives to inform the final product.
A number of potential collaborators and collaborations within the Wikimedia communities have been earmarked during the scoping stage of the application. Since the material proposed plugs a gap in available resources, the potential partners are interested in ingesting and promoting the materials once produced. These included Wikimedia Foundation’s community-facing public policy team, Let’s Connect, and the Capacity Exchange (a community-led 2030 skills exchange initiative). Diverse perspectives will be included in a potential consultation around Wikimania, as the attendee group is likely not to be Europe-centric.
What specific challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem?
Wikimedia 2030 strategic direction is a vision of change. Arguing for those changes within our contexts require all of us to have advocacy, campaigning and changemaking skills. Confidence and skills to convince a local cultural institution to work on knowledge equity. To lobby the government to include Wikimedia in digital literacy programmes. To argue for public policies that support open knowledge. Many parts of the world are (increasingly) hostile to us and our mission. We need to equip everyone in our movement to push back.
There is an identified need gap in wiki community skills development. This project aims to address it.
Does this project aim to apply one of the examples shared in the call for grants and if so which one?
The proposal is most closely related to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:MSIG/Examples/Skill_Development_Activity

Project Activities

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What specific activities will be carried out during this project? Please describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project.
The project plan is as follows:
  1. Team set up for collaboration between WMUK and Sheila McKechnie Foundation
  2. Creative Commons licensing review for Sheila McKechnie Foundation - final checks for the process, led by WMUK
  3. Existing content review by Sheila McKechnie Foundation. This knowledge currently exists as course material for live delivery and will be reviewed to identify best ways of capturing it into text form, with diagrams etc to illustrate
    1. Introduction to Campaigning and Social Change, looking at concepts of power, social change and campaigning, while highlighting the habits that make change successful at an individual and organisational level. Includes Social Change grid, and a Campaigning Q&A.
    2. Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, looking more concretely at strategic and responsive approach to planning campaigns that achieve concrete change.
    3. Communicating for Change, looking at how to develop powerful framing, narratives and stories for campaigns.
    4. Build the materials on a framework that would allow for building up more content in the future.
  4. Editorial and content review and input by Sheila McKechnie Foundation – reviewing the materials so that they are free-standing (understandable without background information), and creating materials where they don’t exist (e.g. the campaigning Q&A, exercises to download, handouts)
  5. Service design for online resources – commissioning an expert to make sure the content is accessible, understandable, and usable for the future users. This may include user testing
  6. Web development – turning the content as written and reviewed into the materials to be published
  7. Project oversight at Sheila McKechnie Foundation - project management, commissioning and connecting delivery internally
  8. Connecting to Wikimedia communities
  9. Wiki portal set up
How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Please add the names or usernames of these individuals responsible for updating the community
User:Daria Cybulska (WMUK)
Identified knowledge amplifiers (Let’s Connect, Capacity Exchange etc – more in additional info below) will be kept informed through personalised updates. These connections will also form the base of amplifying and promoting the materials once produced and published. Wikimedia UK will also tap into its existing networks (eg Volunteer Supporters Network, Wikimedians in Residence community) to let people know about the project.
A Wikimania workshop had been submitted to share this potential material too.
Who will be responsible for delivering on this project and what are their roles and responsibilities?
The delivery team consists of:
  1. Sheila McKechnie Foundation (Lead: Rob Abercrombie, Deputy CEO) - UK charity working on boosting civil society’s confidence, skills and capacity to campaign and change. Delivery lead - experienced facilitation and training organisation in the field of advocacy, with fresh and continually developing take on how to facilitate social and political change
    1. Project managing the initiative
    2. Providing the changemakers materials
    3. Leading on service design and web design commissioning and oversight
  2. Wikimedia UK (Lead: Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes). Delivery partner, bringing Wikimedia expertise around copyright, sharing materials with the Wikimedia community; advising on next steps if the initial pilot is successful.
    1. Creative Commons advice
    2. Interface with the Wikimedia movement

Additional information

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If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions.
Potential consultation is planned for Wikimania; the session would abide by UCoC as per the conference policy.
If your activities include the use of paid online tools, please describe what tools these are and how you intend to use them.
No - the materials will be free to use.
Do your activities include the translation of materials, and if so, in what languages will the translation be done? Please include details of those responsible for making the translations.
Not in the pilot stage, although subsequently translation could be beneficial.
Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information, that will give more context on your proposed project.
In preparing this project, scoping research was done to establish the existing needs gap for the proposed materials. Focusing on 2030 strategy implementation, a review of existing and emerging skills development initiatives was undertaken. The findings point to a strong need for general changemaking materials.
  • 2018-20 strategy Advocacy Working group didn’t highlight advocacy capacity building (although the Capacity Building working group did), instead focusing on existing Wiki advocates (link), with the proposed knowledge hub geared towards experts (link) as the priority need
  • Similarly, the WMF’s 2018 Community skills mapping initiative didn’t look at those fundamental change-maker skills (link)
  • WMF’s Global Advocacy team resources are focused on expert-level public policy information only (link); their 2030 implementation proposals maintain that focus (as listed here). The team has been consulted and is supportive of this project
  • WMF’s Let’s Connect initiative mentions advocacy skills (Leading Advocacy campaigns and strategies (influencing policymakers or holding target groups accountable, skills to participate in policy debates, how to connect to networks and other coalitions that push agendas) - but, being a peer-exchange platform, doesn’t currently address it (link). There is interest though in developing something in the future, possibly with this project if it continues beyond the initial pilot stage. The team has been consulted and is supportive of this project
  • A 2030 implementation initiative, Capacity Exchange (link), highlights advocacy as one of the main categories on the peer matching platform. The learning content would need to come from the movement, so creating the materials and training Wikimedians will help increase the number of people in the movement who can offer this as a shareable skill on the platform. A consultation with the Volunteer Supporters Network (link) pointed to lack of capacity to develop such materials within the Wikimedia communities
All the stakeholders engaged could immediately see the usefulness of introductory campaigning materials, and their potential application within their contexts
Initial scope and further ambitions
SMK has ambitions to openly share as much of its campaigning knowledge as possible. This application could be a pilot for broader and further work to follow, adding more extensively to the campaigning portal on Meta. These would include materials such as Strategy for social change, Learning framework for campaigning and approach to impact, Case studies around power and solidarity.
There’s also a possibility to explore ways of socialising this shared knowledge, via community building activities.


Outcomes

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After your activities are complete, we would like to understand the draft implementation plan for your community. You will be required to prepare a document detailing this plan around a movement strategy initiative. This report can be prepared through Meta-wiki using the Share your results button on this page. The report can be prepared in your language, and is not required to be written in English.

In this report, you will be asked to:

  • Provide a link to the draft implementation plan document or Wikimedia page
  • Describe what activities supported the development of the plan
  • Describe how and where you have communicated your plan to relevant communities.
  • Report on how your funding was spent

Your draft implementation plan document should address the following questions clearly:

  • What movement strategy initiative or goal are you addressing?
  • What activities will you be doing to address that initiative?
  • What do you expect will happen as a result of your activities? How do those outcomes address the movement strategy initiative?
  • How will you measure or evaluate your activities? What tools or methods will you use to evaluate your activities?

To create a draft implementation plan, we recommend the use of a logic model, which will help you and your team think about goals, activities, outcomes, and other factors in an organized way. Please refer the following resources to develop a logic model:

Please confirm below that you will be able to prepare a draft implementation plan document by the end of your grant:

Optionally, you are welcome to include other information you'd like to share around participation and representation in your activities. Please include any additional outcomes you would like to report on below:

Budget

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How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

To note:
  • SMK – Sheila McKechnie Foundation
  • Commissioning key services such as service design allows for a high quality of end product.
  • WMUK is the lead applicant and recipient of funds, which would then be distributed
  • SMK content editorial, developing materials and writing copy - $11,250 (c. £9,000) - broken down into staff time and graphics:
    • Staff costs - £8,050
      • Deputy Chief Executive - 8 days
      • Head of Programmes - 18 days
      • Programme Manager - 8 days
    • Images and graphics - £950
  • SMK service design input (commissioned) - $5,625 (c. £4,500)
  • SMK web development and design (commissioned) - $5,625 (c. £4,500)
  • SMK project management, overheads - In kind
  • WMUK copyright guidance - $2,500 (c. £2,000)
  • WMUK meta publication and dissemination - In kind

TOTAL AMOUNT REQUESTED USD: 25,000

Completing your application

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Once you have completed the application, please do the following:

  • Change the application status from status=draft to status=proposed in the {{Probox}} template.
  • Contact strategy2030(_AT_)wikimedia.org to confirm your submission, as well as to request any support around your application.

Endorsements

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An endorsement from community members (especially from outside your community) will be part of the considerations when reviewing your application. Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

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