Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Australia 2021-2022

Comments from DSaroyan (WMF)

Dear Tenniscourtisland and Wikimedia Australia colleagues, thank you so much for submitting this comprehensive grant application. We are so glad to learn about the planned programs and activities of Wikimedia Australia for 2021-2022. We have completed the initial review of your Annual Plan and have some questions that we would like you to respond to:

• In the application you mentioned that this year you would work on a new multi-year strategy. Will this new Strategic Plan be aligned with the Movement Strategy? How will you make sure to align it to the Movement Strategy Recommendations?
• How did you engage the community members into the development of this proposal?
• The Collaborative campaigns are mentioned in the detailed budget but there is no mention about them in the Annual Plan. Could you please add some information on these campaigns to the Annual Plan?
• It is great to learn that you plan to place a Wikimedian in Residence within an Australian university. What will be the employment status and terms of this WiR? Do you have any experience in working with WiRs in the past?
• You mentioned that you want to support campaigns and projects in partnership with Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, and through participation in SWAN and ESEAP activities. What campaigns do you plan to support and in which activities do you plan to participate?
• Did you include the metrics from the collaborative campaigns into the cumulative metrics? For instance, does the Content pages metrics include the outcomes from the photo contests?
• Additionally, why did you increase the prize budget for contests this year?
• Australian Data Maintenance Tools - will this tool/bot be developed for Wikipedia only? I’d highly recommend adjusting it for Wikidata too, so that all Wikimedia projects will benefit from the up-to-date Australian data.

Thanks again for all your work. Looking forward to your response. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:57, 10 May 2021 (UTC) In the application you mentioned that this year you would work on a new multi-year strategy. Will this new Strategic Plan be aligned with the Movement Strategy? How will you make sure to align it to the Movement Strategy Recommendations?

Response from Wikimedia Australia

Thanks so much for raising these questions DSaroyan and for the opportunity to respond. Please see our clarifications below.

In the application you mentioned that this year you would work on a new multi-year strategy. Will this new Strategic Plan be aligned with the Movement Strategy? How will you make sure to align it to the Movement Strategy Recommendations?

We are in discussions with a facilitator to guide the development of our new Wikimedia Australia multi-year strategic plan. The Movement Strategy Recommendations provide an ideal structure and an excellent resource to guide this activity. If we find we are unable to hold an in-person event we could perhaps invite input from someone from the Movement Strategy team to help with the facilitation against the ten ten recommendations of the Movement Strategy Recommendations.

How did you engage the community members into the development of this proposal?

Wikimedia Australia holds monthly online community meetings. On 30 March 2021, we held a meeting specifically about the development of the annual plan for 2021-2022. This generated a set of ideas, concerns, challenges, wishes and priorities reflected in this Simple APG application. The draft was then circulated at the following Community Meeting on 14 April 2021, attended by about 20 members, for final feedback. The Collaborative campaigns are mentioned in the detailed budget but there is no mention about them in the Annual Plan. Could you please add some information on these campaigns to the Annual Plan?

We have added this to our Annual Plan under Outreach and Engagement. Thanks for highlighting this omission.

What will be the employment status and terms of this WiR? Do you have any experience in working with WiRs in the past?

This year will see the first Wikimedian in Residence in an Australian university. We will be building on our previous experience in supporting Wikipedians in Residence in the GLAM sector:

• Gillian White at the State Library of NSW in 2013
• Kerry Raymond at the State Library of QLD in 2016

We are open to different models of employment for the Wikipedians in Residence (WiR) and anticipate this will need to be negotiated on a case by case basis between the educational host institution and the Wikimedia Australia scholar or resident. Employment will be contracted directly between the university and the Wikimedian on a part-time, contract or casual basis (eg. 1 day/week for 6 months). In some cases the WiR or Scholar may be in unpaid positions as an adjunct researcher.

In the event that a university approaches Wikimedia Australia to help identify an appropriate Wikimedian, this position will be promoted to WMAU community members.

For the pilot stage, Wikimedia Australia will support the Wikimedian in Residence and Scholar program through regular meetings and support for the resident, contribution towards event, and incidentals, applied for as per usual applications for funding, approved by committee.

Note: this budget line in the 2021-22 budget also covers the rollout of an outreach GLAM program facilitators program.

What campaigns do you plan to support and in which activities do you plan to participate?

The three main campaigns we will focus on are Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Science and 1Lib1Ref. We are in discussions with Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand to finalise the details of these joint collaborations for 2021-22 through shared coordination, dashboards, judging, promotion and site banners.

Did you include the metrics from the collaborative campaigns into the cumulative metrics? For instance, does the Content pages metrics include the outcomes from the photo contests?

We have updated the Content pages section to anticipate outcomes from contests.

Additionally, why did you increase the prize budget for contests this year?

There has been some expansion of these contests internationally. For example, this year Wiki Loves Earth is inviting the contribution of 15 finalists to the international competition instead of ten. This is increasing the prize money needed and judging capabilities required which is reflected in the budget. We are increasingly holding these campaigns in partnership with Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand, to offer capacity and support their development. This also increases the need for prize money.

Australian Data Maintenance Tools - will this tool/bot be developed for Wikipedia only? I’d highly recommend adjusting it for Wikidata too, so that all Wikimedia projects will benefit from the up-to-date Australian data.

That is certainly our intention. Pending advice from the developer/s the Australian Data Maintenance Tool will be built for Wikidata, with integration for use updating Wikipedia.

Do let us know if there are any further questions. Wikimedia Australia

Simple APG Committee recommendation

We recommend that Wikimedia Australia receives grant funding of AUD 86,355.23 / $67,000. We appreciated seeing the identified opportunity to develop a team or role in order to support the work you do, including new partnerships. We hope the increase in capacity allows you to fulfill the set goals in your main programs focusing on Community Support, Outreach and engagement, and Governance and Operations.

We recommend that as part of your growth plan, you put in place documentation structures that will allow you to identify emerging learnings from the increase in capacity. Seeing that you have a focus of working with indegenous communities amongst other underrepresented groups, we recommend that you identify other ways of engaging and collaborating with these communities besides representation which we also appreciate and also see other opportunities of engagement and especially knowing that Australia is a ‘ big ‘ country. The challenge remains on how to bring in more communities to the movement and we look forward to seeing how you can contribute to addressing it. The 2030 strategy also allows for affiliate models that might be more beneficial to affiliates in widespread countries, which, instead of making the board of WMAU more diverse geographically, might allow it to pursue a model that would turn WMAU into a more federally organised affiliate.

We also identified that you have a number of budget lines focused on travel; while we understand that different countries are navigating the pandemic differently we would hope you would leverage some of the ways you have engaged your community this far and maybe create a hybrid model of engagement.

We wish you the very best and look forward to seeing the change that unfolds.

For the committee, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 20:06, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

APG approved in the amount of 86,355.23 AUD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 86,355.23 AUD (67,000 USD) with a grant term starting 1 July 2021 and ending 30 June 2022.

The annual plan of Wikimedia Australia consists of three programmatic areas: Community Support; Outreach and Engagement; Governance and Operations. For each program, Wikimedia Australia has set a clear theory of change which is also reflected in the underlying projects. We think that the proposed activities of Wikimedia Australia are essential for the Australian Wikimedia community members and Wikimedia Movement in general.

We acknowledge the challenges that you had to go through due to the COVID-19 pandemic and we appreciate your efforts to adjust the activities and recover. Additionally, as the Committee mentioned, we hear your need for having a staff member at the team and support the corresponding increase in the requested budget for 2021-2022. We hope that the new staff member will allow you to grow further and increase the chapter's sustainability.

We fully endorse the Committee's recommendations posted above and wish you good luck in fulfilling them. Looking forward to working with you in 2021-2022.

Best regards from the SAPG Committee and Staff--VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Midpoint report accepted

Dear Wikimedia Australia, thank you for sharing your midpoint report.

The report was reviewed (as part of the supporting documents) when you put in a general support fund application under the Wikimedia community fund.

We thank you and the wikimedia community in Australia for your time and efforts in building a thriving community. JChen (WMF) (talk) 07:59, 15 June 2022 (UTC)