Grants:Simple/Applications/Black Lunch Table/2020/annualplan

Introduction

Per our strategic, staffing, and budget plans, Black Lunch Table’s annual plan outlines our progress, successes of the last granting cycles and frames a plan to reach our goals for the 2020 cycle.

Highlights from 2018-9 cycle

In the midst of our 5th year with Wikimedia, it is important to look at our successes as a way to track our growth and progress. While attending Wikimania SouthAfrica we connected with WhoseKnowledge, A+F, and AfroCrowd in workshops and in conversation and learned much about our project and its potential. Wikimania provided us a variety of user and affiliation group models and we spent a lot of time reviewing our own personnel team. After a long hiring and search process were able to hire a project manager, regional proxies, and an assistant on a temporary contract basis. Importantly we held a full team retreat where we were able to solidify action steps that support our HR needs as well as steps that solidify our public-facing engagements.

Importantly, we hosted a total of forty-six edit-a-thons, including events in six new regions, bringing our work and the work of Black Artists to new editors/audiences. We formalized GLAM and educational initiatives, including a semester-long classroom engagement at Edna Manley University in Kingston, Jamaica. Our WikiCommons BLT Portrait Initiative is becoming more important than ever as a companion to our edit-a-thon work. By hiring professional photographers for each event, we expanded our impact on the Wikimedia Universe by adding diverse and important portraits of Black Artists, created by artists local to the events’ regions. We’ve uploaded 936 new photographs to Wikipedia Commons during our granting period based on Outreach Dashboard statistics.

Finally, we worked with a pro bono lawyer (David Swendsen) through Lawyers for the Creative Arts to execute and file our application for 501c3 status. During this time we were able to begin drafting the structure of the board and bylaws.

As we mark our first five years of successes we are looking forward to solidifying the structural developments we have made, knowing this is a critical time for our project. Our ultimate goal, while looking at each of these individual successes, is to create an organizational structure for BLT that can best support our efforts on the Wikipedia platform. We want to maximize our time with editors, artists, and partners working on our long task list but must take this moment to focus in part on organizational to be the best organization and user group possible.

Challenges learned and applied

Staff retention

One of the difficulties we experienced was our ability to grow and retain a full staff, establishing our nonprofit status, and grow the editorship and awareness of the project. We plan to establish a fundraising strategy that allows us to plan for longer institutional partnerships and engagements and contract team members for longer than a grant cycle.

Various Publics

An important part of BLT’s work is engaging communities and publics strategically/systematically marginalized and those outside of the United States. The learning curve to adapt the project and methods for those communities has been steep at times, editing on mobile devices or tablets and creating opportunities where no devices may be accessible. As we continue, we are foregrounding these concerns about access and knowledge equity. We are considering sourcing laptops, internet access, space, etc. from institutions for work in ‘historically disadvantaged communities’ and focusing on engaging these publics.
Editor retention, part of the work with these publics is maintaining relationships and providing opportunities for these publics to return to the platform is more difficult. We are working to find ways to provide opportunities for return engagements, encouraging the editors we do reach to return.

Annual Plan

Yearly objectives 2020

Below are specific objectives for each of the three focus areas, nonprofit operations, team, and edit-a-thons. This is an outline to enact our priorities within those categories over the next year. Our entire strategic plan can be viewed here.

Nonprofit Operations

Develop strategy and sustainability for BLT as an organization with NFP strategist.

Jan-Feb

Search/hire NFP strategist and begin assessment
Draft dream board/partners
Grant writing/fundraising calendar drafted
Begin writing a strategic plan for institutional engagement
Begin writing a strategic plan for community engagement
Write linked data relationship potential statement
Identify and target sponsorship (fiscal, corporate, promotional)
Develop long and short term project goals with the lead organizers
Develop a long-running strategic plan, including fundraising and budget advisement in first 2 months

Mar-Apr

Consultation with strategist, plan implementation contd
Invite identified board prospects
Consultation with strategist, plan outlined/written
Grant writing/fundraising as needed
Begin rewrite of bylaws with assistance from strategist and board
Strategize what audience outcomes are desired
Identify appropriate institutions to share linked data with BLT + Wikidata

May-Jun

Consultation with strategist, plan implementation contd
Grant writing/fundraising as needed
Complete rewrite of bylaws with assistance from strategist and board
Select non profit insurance with help from strategist and board
Begin developing 2 new partnerships with cultural institutions
Complete a strategic plan for institutional engagement
Begin developing 2 new partnerships with community institutions
Complete a strategic plan for community engagement
Complete a strategic plan for academic engagement
Set 12 month audience outcome goals
Outreach and pitch to 2 institutions with linked data potential

Jul-Aug

Consultation with strategist, plan implementation contd
End of year appeal campaign, fundraising planning
Grant writing/fundraising as needed
Begin writing strategy for future expansion including employee benefits and full-time employment with strategist and board
Develop an academic integration lesson plan

Sep

Funding restricted - no work

Oct

Consultation with strategist, plan implementation contd
End of year appeal campaign, fundraising planning
Grant writing/fundraising as needed

Nov-Dec

End of year appeal campaign
Plan implementation contd, preparation for next yearly cycle
Grant writing/fundraising as needed
Complete strategy for future expansion including employee benefits and full-time employment with strategist and board
Have developed 2 new partnerships with cultural institutions
Have developed 2 new partnerships with community institutions
Have developed 2 new partnerships with academic institutions
Develop and beta test 2 new database relationship partners

Team

Develop a more efficient and effective team and a more thoughtful engagement strategy. Establish, hire, and train a team to which the day to day operations can be moved away from the lead organizers so that they may focus on the longer-term fundraising and strategic plans for the project.

Jan-Feb

Rehire budget dependent staff
Search/hire new staff members
Co-lead expectations outlined
Project manager expectations outlined

Develop communication habits between co-leads and project manager re NFP strategist, lawyers, accountant, etc.
Best practices and hiring document mgmt, what is needed/updated/incomplete
Preparing for regional proxy engagements, GLAM engagements and classroom/students esp with photos

Connecting with accountant, bookkeeper, lawyer at beginning of new grant cycle/year

Punch list for yearly event outline, what is scheduled? who do we want to partner with? where can we be of service?

Mar-Apr

Co-leads identifying partners/institutions for collaborations/events, communicating with project manager, incorporating goals of GLAM, oral histories, translation
Project manager, onboarding regional proxies
Project manager, adjusting documents and strategies as needed based on new team configurations and members
Regional proxies begin engagement

May-Jun

Co-leads identifying partners/institutions for collaborations/events, communicating with project manager, incorporating goals of GLAM, oral histories, translation
Project manager, continue work with partners/institutions as directed by co-leads
Wikimania 2020 and team retreat planning, evaluation of team effectiveness overall, informing the retreat content
Project manager, continue work with partners/institutions as directed by co-leads
Regional proxies engagements, contd

Jul-Aug

Wikimania 2020
Team retreat
Regional proxies engagements, contd
Anticipation/implementation of needs while on funding restricted hiatus

Sep

Funding restricted-no work

Oct

Team retreat review follow-up, lead into end of year review
Regional proxies engagements, contd

Nov-Dec

Annual review, goals met/missed, accommodations for upcoming year
Regional proxies engagements completed
Grant reporting

Edit-a-thon, editors, photobooth

Maintain and grow our edit-a-thons, collaborations, and initiatives.

Jan-Feb

Prospective list of edit-a-thon sites/collaborations/partners for the year, consider outreach internationally and away from home regions
Compile list of available photographers for booths
Strengthen online meetup/social media strategies

Devise methods for post event engagement, i.e. automated surveys, information collection

Planning for yearly contest/collaboration outline, including for Black History Month, Juneteenth, and women's history month
CAA edit-a-thon, Chicago, IL
Regional proxy edit-a-thons begin

Mar-Apr

Planning for women's history month contest, collaboration with Whose Knowledge?
Planning for women's history month, collaboration with Art + Feminism
Master task list contest planning, in celebration of Juneteenth
Assessing scheduled calendar of events to meet goals(edit-a-thons, editors, articles, photobooths)
SAIC edit-a-thon, Chicago, IL
Regional proxy edit-a-thons, contd

May-June

Planning and execution for Juneteenth contest
Regional proxy edit-a-thons, contd

July-Aug

Expectation that 2/3 (26 total) of yearly edit-a-thons are complete by the end of August
Regional proxy edit-a-thons, contd

Sept

Funding restricted-no work

Oct

Expectation that 5/6 (10 total) of yearly photobooths are complete by the end of October
Regional proxy edit-a-thons, contd

Nov-Dec

Complete edit-a-thons to reach goals
Complete photobooths to reach goals
Final metrics and assessments of goals met, grant reporting