Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2023/2023-24 Intl Team Funding Proposal

Hi everyone,

Happy to share with you the general outline for the upcoming Grant Request for WLM 2023-2024. If you have any comments, please let me know via the talkpage (or our mailing list): comments will be open until Tuesday 21st of March, midnight anywhere on earth. We will be open (of course!!) to feedback after Tuesday as well, but I plan to send this request to WMF for the first review by the Grant Committee on Wednesday, so just so you are aware.

On behalf of the international team,
Ciell (talk) 11:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• The full request is now under review of the grants committee and available for you to read here on Meta. Ciell (talk) 07:14, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal

The international Wiki Loves Monuments team’s mission is to freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage, increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects and bolster local Wikimedia communities around the world. We do this by leading and facilitating an annual federated, global, low-barrier photo competition. Based on this mission and experience of the past twelve editions of the competition, the international team has identified that the following will be key areas of focus for the upcoming year:

• Support to national contests: In its current form, the international team needs to support many local teams on a case by case basis (for example on tools, instructions, promotion etc.) thus limiting the scalability and ease of adoption by local communities. While established campaigns, which are generally backed by regional chapters, require minimal to no support from the international team, however, countries participating for the first or initial few times require support from the international team.
• Curation of resources: Both at national and international levels, the competition requires a wide range of resources including but not limited to, documentation (guides on organizing, participating, monuments database etc.), technical tools (mainly Montage), campaign infrastructure (upload wizards and central notices) that needs support for maintenance and to add new developments according to the needs of the campaign.
• Exploring new pathways for engagement to support knowledge equity: During 2021-22, the international team facilitated a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion review of the campaign, which has helped to surface several challenges faced by national organizers and also suggestions on making the campaign more inclusive. From these results, we will explore ways to implement recommendations into the future editions of WLM. The international team has an in-person meeting scheduled for May 2023 to work on this together.

Most of the work is achieved with volunteer efforts. The budget that would be provided through this proposal is primarily used to support international awards, staff support for the volunteer efforts, technical support to the existing tools, and translations. While these may only be part of the work, these are essential puzzle pieces to make the campaign as a whole a success.

Priorities for 2023-2024

WLM is an on-going effort to improve documentation of media (mostly images) related to cultural heritage on Wikimedia Commons, and sister projects. There are certain components of the campaign which take place year over year with more or less the same approach. That is, areas of work such as documentation, maintaining the Central Notice infrastructure and upload campaigns, organizing the international jury etc. are standard, and each year we would like to explore ways in which these processes can be improved and build a strategic direction for the competition.

Apart from the standard components of the campaign, we would like to improve in the following areas:

Proactive support to national organizers and new campaigns
While campaigns backed by established affiliates do not usually require much support from the international team, many require regular follow-up from the team and support to set up the necessary infrastructure. During the last couple of years, owing to several reasons including the pandemic and transitions within the international team, the number of countries participating each is on decline.
For 2023-2024, we would like to reconnect and explicitly invite national teams that have not participated in the last few years. We will reach out to them personally, and solve outstanding problems, explore with the organizers the areas where we as an international team may be able to help and otherwise search for contacts in our network that can. We will offer alternatives for those where the communities and teams might feel ‘Wiki Loves’ fatigue, and feel like having the feeling of having completed the challenge of capturing the monuments in their country. However, there are more ways to make WLM fun, and we will offer new inspiration for those struggling with this.
At the same time, we will also connect with national organizers in countries that have not participated before, but did indicate interest in the past years. We’d like to connect on a personal basis, and hear the complications they are facing to see if there is a way that we can help them out.

Reconnect with partners in- and outside our movement
With the world partially opening up again after two years of Covid, we strive to reconnect with our partners in Wiki Loves Monuments. Our contacts with partners have been at a low ebb in recent years, and it is time to reinvest. We want to strengthen contacts with Europa Nostra, which has already been our partner since 2011, but also explore new partners for collaboration. Last year, for example, we got in touch with Ideas beyond Borders, and we planned our award ceremony at the UNESCO World Heritage Day last year.
Partners like these can be of great value to Wiki Loves Monuments as a contest, and specifically at the national level. Local contacts can support our national organizers in setting up their photo contest by providing a working space and internet access, among other things. Among other things, this goal would elaborate on the suggestion from the DEI report, to build a larger international network to support the photo contest on a local level.
Within the Wikimedia Movement, we would like to make an inventory of other projects that focus on the documentation of built heritage, as for instance Wiki Loves Heritage, and the Czech “Describe a monument” campaign, and reach out to find common ground where we can connect and build together.

Improving documentation and language availability for WLM
Another important point taken from the WLM 2022 DEI research is the availability of our documentation in different languages from English. We have started setting up the translation interface for our Commons pages and will do this more working towards WLM 2023. We want to prioritize the other 5 UN languages (ar/ch/fr/ru/sp) for these translations. If needed, we will reach out to the translators that have done the translations for us in these languages on the DEI research report.
We will also update and enable translations for the WLM newcomers guide and will communicate new information this widely. Because the guide was completed last year, half way through the 2022 competition, we have not done so previously.

Activities and approaches

Proactive support to national organizers and reconnecting

Reconnecting: Inform local organizers, affiliates and (possible) partners about the contest, initiatives, and projects the international team is working on; Collect feedback and suggestions from local organizers; Hold regular internal team meetings to review work done and plan for the work that is ahead; pro-actively communicate with the WLM community; hold regular office hours; online or in-person presentations about WLM; exploring the local approach with the national teams.

Improving documentation and language availability for WLM

Having a part-time staff for project coordination: Prepare (or coordinate for others to prepare) communication material in multiple languages that can be used and/or built upon by national organizations; Facilitate communication channels; Update social media channels; Update wikilovesmonuments.org with the necessary/useful information; Update and communicate the international rules; Update and share documentation;

• Having part-time staff support allows more time for the team to:

In coordination with partners, provide support for the technical work in specific parts of the pipeline for the migration of data from Monuments Database to Wikidata. Support national teams with the setup and maintenance of the technical infrastructure for uploading; Support national teams with the setup and maintenance of the CentralNotice; Collect measures and data to be reported at the end of the program. Disseminate the results of the international jury; Maintain communication with international partners. Give specific suggestions and support to national organizers (mostly online, though additionally we offer onboarding sessions over Hangout to the countries participating for the first time); Collect & answer questions of the national teams; Crisis management for national contests; onboard and support new volunteers for the international team.

Budget outline and explanation

The budget for 2023 to 2024 will cover 1 ½ years to change the grant cycle of Wiki Loves Monuments. Until now it starts in the middle of the year on 1 July and ends on 30 June of the following year. As proposed earlier we want to align the rhythm with that of Wikimedia Austria (fiscal sponsor of WLM) to include it in their budget so the administrative load on the team of volunteers is lowered while keeping WLM completely independent regarding its contents, aims and strategies. So the budget has to cover the costs from 1 July 2023 to 31 December 2024. A more extensive explanation about this process was previously shared with our Midpoint Report for the 2022-2023 grant on Meta.

The proposed budget for 2023-2024 will cover for 2 editions, except the prize money for the 2024 winners and other expenses expected from January 2025 onward, and encompasses:

• Personnel related expenses - € 27,504.00 - for an employee of Wikimedia Austria to dedicate 15 h/w to WLM (project work, fiscal administration)
• Personnel related expenses - € 11,250.00 - to commission support for and development of the technical tools used by WLM (Montage, Monumental)
• Services/International Prizes - € 9,500.00 - for the prizes of the winners of the contest
• Communications/Campaign Outreach and Support - € 6,750.00 - creating material, social media promotions, supporting national campaigns for example with guides
• Services/Translation Support - € 9,000.00 - for translations of supporting materials
• Grants and contributions/Micro-grants - € 3,000.00 - in support of communities with small budgets to enable participation
• Travel & Events - € 5,000.00 - attendance of Wikimedia events or meetings with external partners
• Other/Contingency - € 3,500.00 - reserved for unforeseen costs
• Administrative/Fiscal sponsorship fee - € 750.00 - for additional costs of the fiscal sponsor apart from above salary

Personnel related expenses/admin	€ 27,504.00	for an employee of Wikimedia Austria to dedicate 15 h/w to WLM (project work, fiscal administration)
Personnel related expenses/tech	€ 11,250.00	to commission support for and development of the technical tools used by WLM (Montage, Monumental)
International Prizes	€ 9,500.00	for the prizes of the winners of the contest
Communications/Campaign Outreach and Support	€ 6,750.00	creating material, social media promotions, supporting national campaigns for example with guides
Services/Translation Support	€ 9,000.00	for translations of supporting materials
Grants and contributions/Micro-grants	€ 3,000.00	in support of communities with small budgets to enable their participation
Travel & Events	€ 5,000.00	attendance of Wikimedia events or meetings with external partners
Contingency	€ 3,500.00	reserved for unforeseen costs
Fiscal sponsorship fee	€ 750.00	for additional costs of the fiscal sponsor apart from above salary