Grants:Project/Rapid/UG LV/Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/UG LV/Wiki Loves Earth 2019.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

We manged to successfully run Wiki Loves Earth 2019 photo competition. However we did not meet some of our quantitative goals set in grant proposal.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1000 photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons	986	That was a close estimation
30 participants uploading a photo	31
15 newly registered participants	14	Some of these uploaded quality pictures
15% distinct photos used in Wikipedia articles	10%	We got too many pictures from most popular objects.
mentions in 5 different noteworthy web sites	0	We do not have contacts in mass media, so we had to rely on press release, which did not work.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
- Awards ceremony was well attended by winners.
- We had 8 different photographers in top 10; previously we had an issue with some people dominating. We implemented a rule limiting participants to 3 images in top 10 (used already before in WLM 2018).
- We had two photo expeditions to distant areas which helped to involve members from our community and get images from not covered areas.
- Our Facebook posts with images from contest got much more attention (views, likes, new followers) than before. We did post on a regular schedule, but there could be outside factors (like internal workings of Facebook) helping us here.
- The amount of money spent on prizes was about right. We have experimented a bit in the past and have seen that there is no need to spend more (as serious amateurs find the prize interesting enough).
- One of winning pictures took 9th place photo in global contest (our first time among finalists)
What did not work so well?
- Our press releases were not published by serious media. We wrote these using several tips from community, things learned at Wikimedia conferences, but it was not enough.
- We had an issue with the bank that we used to receive the funds. It was closed by authorities and our money was frozen during the time it was needed. We used personal funds to not affect the public facing activities.
- Communication with WMF about banking issue was not as swift as we would have wanted. Response to our concerns in e-mail was received only a full week later.
- We were considering posters and promotional materials, but in the end did not produce them because there was no one from the team willing to do it. Some other responsibilities were also lacking volunteer interest.
- We has an initial time plan, but we did not manage to stick to it. Jury work was interrupted by summer holidays.
What would you do differently next time?
- Find out ways how to grow our capacities in getting our press release published.
- Create a communications plan for social and mass media.
- We would agree on roles on responsibilities in the team, as this time some of tasks lacked volunteers.
- Consider reducing prizes by small amount to see if there is noticeable change.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Funds were spent mostly for prizes of competition, organizing awards ceremony and photo expeditions.

Budget

All costs are displayed in EUR. Sums in USD were calculated using exchange rate the 1st September 2019.

Item	Planned	Actual	Comments

Awards for participants	600	600	Gift cards
Gifts for jury members	80	80	Gift cards
Venue for awards ceremony & snacks	60	45.01	Venue & snacks
WLE photo expedition	50	53.96	Fuel for photo expeditions
Traveling or shipping expenses for people who are not living in the capital	50	0	Not needed
Posters, stickers and other promotional material	50	0	Decided to not do it
Miscellaneous	50	12.52	Bank fees and transfers
Total EUR	940	791.49
Total USD	1,033.54	870.25

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

YES, we have 148.51 EUR remaining.

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 148.51 EUR.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?