Annual report (2016–2017)

This report describes the activities of Wikimedia District of Columbia during Fiscal Year 2016–17, covering the period from October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017.

Programs

During the 2016–17 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC program activity focused in two principal program areas: institutional partnership and grantmaking and sponsorship.

Institutional Partnership

Consistent with past program results, collaborative editing events, such as edit-a-thons and editing workshops, comprised the bulk of our institutional partnership program activity. During the full grant period, Wikimedia DC supported a total of 41 events (82% of our target) in partnership with 24 institutional partners. Of these 41 events, 25 were aimed at improving diversity, representing 61% of the total activity in the program and more than 200% of our target.

Our institutional partners included a broad spectrum of cultural, academic, and government institutions, professional associations, non-governmental organizations, and other groups:

• American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
• American University
• Association for Women in Science
• Association of Centers for the Study of Congress
• Baltimore Under Ground Science Space
• British Broadcasting Corporation
• Delta Sigma Theta
• District of Columbia Public Library
• Heurich House Museum
• Law Library of Congress
• MITRE Corporation
• National Archives and Records Administration
• National Democratic Institute
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Oak Spring Garden Foundation
• President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home
• Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Textile Museum at The George Washington University
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• University of Maryland, College Park
• West Virginia University
• Women's Media Center

The partner institutions included 14 new partners (140% of our target), for whom the collaboration marked their first engagement with Wikimedia DC, and often with the Wikimedia movement in general; these partners are marked with stars in the list above. Our success in engaging new partners was due in large part to the effective work of our Institutional Partnerships Manager, who was able to systematically identify, contact, and develop partnerships with a spectrum of institutions which had not otherwise engaged with the Wikimedia movement.

The edit-a-thons and editing workshops conducted as part of this program were attended by a total of 286 participants (151% of our target); these participants including 141 new users (94% of our target) and 145 experienced users (363% of our target). Collectively, the participants made 1,688 edits to 727 Wikipedia articles (81% of our target), adding 2,448,842 bytes of Wikipedia content (255% of our target).

• 

  Smithsonian staff attend a Wikidata workshop at the Smithsonian Institution Archives

• 

  Attendees at the "Women in Media and Politics" edit-a-thon at the National Democratic Institute

• 

  "Art Students League" edit-a-thon in progress at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

• 

  Edit-a-thon in progress at the Heurich House Museum

• 

  Attendees at the BBC "100 Women of 2016" edit-a-thon study the Wikipedia Space banners

• 

  "Women in the Arts" edit-a-thon in progress at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

• 

  "Women in Science and Engineering" edit-a-thon in progress at MITRE

• 

  American University students attend an editing workshop at the Smithsonian Institution Archives

• 

  "Congressional Committees and Hearings" edit-a-thon in progress at the Law Library of Congress

Grantmaking and Sponsorship

During the 2016–17 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC was responsible for administering 3 fiscal sponsorships (150% of our target) with a total value of $150,270:

• Art+Feminism 2016–2017, a Simple Annual Plan Grant with a total value of $99,820.
• USF SOLIS 2017 WikiEquality Series, a Rapid Grant with a total value of $450.
• WikiConference North America 2016, a Conference Grant with a total value of $50,000.

In aggregate, Wikimedia DC disbursed $124,607.21 of grant funding (125% of our target), distributed across more than 150 discrete transactions, under these fiscal sponsorship arrangements.

Organizational development

Governance

The Wikimedia DC Board of Directors held 6 meetings during the 2016–17 fiscal year, on October 29, 2016; December 10, 2016; February 26, 2017; April 16, 2017; June 18, 2017; and August 6, 2017.

Membership

Wikimedia DC’s membership remained steady over the course of the 2016–17 fiscal year, with 57 members at the beginning of the year and 58 members at the end of the year; this change represents a 1.8% aggregate increase in membership during the fiscal year.

Staffing

During the 2016–17 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC hired its first full-time employee, Ariel Cetrone, in the role of Institutional Partnerships Manager. Ariel's responsibilities span the breadth of Wikimedia DC's institutional partnership program portfolio, including both program sustainment activities, which augment the capacity of existing institutional partnerships by providing support for event planning, execution, and reporting, as well as program growth activities, which support significant expansion of institutional partnerships through systematic, targeted outreach to potential partner institutions.