Annual plan (2018–2019)

This plan covers Wikimedia DC's planned program activities and operations for the 2018–19 fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2018 and ends on September 30, 2019.

Programs

The Wikimedia DC program portfolio for the 2018–19 fiscal year consists of three key program areas:

• Institutional Partnership
• Leadership Development and Support
• Public Policy

Institutional Partnership

The institutional partnership program area includes programs whose principal objective is to leverage the resources, holdings, and expertise of institutions in the cultural, academic, and government sectors to improve the Wikimedia projects and other free knowledge repositories. This is achieved both through the direct contribution of institutional records, collections, and other holdings to such repositories under suitable free licenses, and through the participation of institutional staff and other affiliated individuals in such projects.

During the 2018–19 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC will continue to grow our portfolio of institutional partners through a range of programs, including several forms of training and editing workshops. We will engage at least 15 new institutional partners, growing our overall community of partners by approximately 15%, while continuing to collaborate with our existing partners. While we will continue to engage heavily with the numerous prominent cultural, academic, and government institutions that have formed the bulk of our historical partnership work, we will focus on engaging new types of partners, including local and regional museums, community organizations, and institutions outside of the DC metropolitan area.

We will continue to build on our existing partnership with the Smithsonian Institution by collaborating on the Wiki Art Depiction Explorer project, which will create an interface for museum visitors and other art enthusiasts to crowdsource metadata about visual depictions in museum artworks. Making this data more accurate and robust will allow further and deeper discovery of these works by anyone in the world, and we anticipate that the tools that will developed through this project will become a key portfolio offering for our other museum and gallery partners.

Leadership Development and Support

The leadership development and support program area includes programs whose principal objectives consist of providing professional development opportunities, financial and administrative support, and non-financial resources to established and emerging program leaders across the Wikimedia movement.

Wikimedia DC has supported volunteer training and development for high-performing Wikimedia project contributors through the leadership boot camp model. We will continue this program, with the aim of holding one boot camp during the 2018–19 fiscal year. The target audience of the boot camp will include current and potential Wikimedia project organizers and event facilitators from across the United States, and the event will aim to increase the participation of under-represented communities in these activities.

We will continue to provide both financial and non-financial support for a range of sponsored projects which are independently led by a community of Wikimedia program leaders. The support will include a major fiscal sponsorship for WikiConference North America, as well as support for a number of smaller projects funded through the Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grants program.

Public Policy

The public policy program area includes programs whose principal objective is to encourage regulatory and legislative changes that will benefit Wikimedia projects and the broader free knowledge and culture movement. During the 2018–19 fiscal year, our public policy efforts will continue to learn about the area and explore new directions. To the extent possible, we will coordinate with and support the Wikimedia Foundation's public policy department, other chapters, user groups, and other like-minded organizations.

Wikimedia DC has engaged in advocacy and submitted regulatory comment on copyright matters. We aim to continue this during the 2018–19 fiscal year, and will submit comments to regulatory agencies as suitable opportunities arise. We will monitor other areas of public policy activity, including issues related to mass digitization, intellectual property reforms, the public domain, and online safety and privacy. In principle, Wikimedia DC supports the use of wikis by government institutions and their participation in supplying and improving data on Wikidata and historic documents on Wikisource.

Operations

Finance

During the 2018–19 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC intends to continue streamlining its financial processes. In particular, we aim to reduce the time required to issue payments and reimbursements, with a goal of bringing the dollar-weighted average days payable down to 15 days, representing a 60% improvement over the current average of 37 days.

Governance

During the 2018–19 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC intends to conduct an internal governance review, which will evaluate best practices from across the Wikimedia movement and the general nonprofit community to identify gaps and areas of potential improvement in our governance strategy and practices. The review will include input from a range of sources, including past assessments conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation grantmaking team and published guidelines and best practices from government and non-government sources.

Measurement, Evaluation, and Reporting

During the 2018–19 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC will continue to improve its practices for program measurement, evaluation, and reporting. We will introduce a robust quarterly reporting format that will include program metrics and results, program stories and media coverage, and quarterly and year-to-date evaluation of program objectives, financial performance, and budgetary trends.