Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2021–22

Status: Draft
Let's fill in this draft annual report and compare to our past reports and to reports to WMF by other affiliates. There are too many comparison cases to read them all, but let's pick a few and just consider. We want our report to serve well as a report to the public and our members and also as an official report to WMF to sustain our status as an affiliate.

• Reports by other affiliates
• Our past Annual activity reports and Annual financial reports -- always paired, one each, each year

Could we add add pictures? or something else lively? name our officers explicitly? use Movement Strategy terminology more?

• Let's look at what other chapters do. The big ones file huge reports. We can’t do that ; but maybe we could learn from what they are doing? What should we change?
• We can ask questions about what WMF wants at wadportal@wikimedia.org
• We are supposed to email about them to a list serve, it seems, and submit them to a “data portal,” here

-- Econterms (talk) 19:12, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Status: Draft

This report describes the activities of Wikimedia District of Columbia during Fiscal Year 2021–22, covering the period from October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022.

Programs

Institutional partnerships and public editathons

Wikimedia DC continues to hold collaborative editing events, which is our main institutional partnership program activity. Most of these are public events organized by our own staff, and they usually offer our Wikipedia training. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of these events were held online, not in person.

During the 2021–22 fiscal year, Wikimedia DC run or supported 22 events in partnership with 18 institutional partners, which included a broad spectrum of cultural, academic, and government institutions, and non-governmental organizations:

• American Statistical Association
• ART library deco
• Charles Sumner School Museum and Archive
• City of Fairfax Regional Library
• Delaware Art Museum
• Embassy of Sweden to the United States
• National Gallery of Art
• National Trust for Historic Preservation
• The Peale museum
• Protect Democracy
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
• Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
• Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Archives
• Smithsonian National American History Museum
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
• USDA's National Agricultural Library

Research projects

Wikimedia DC has been invited to participate in research and development efforts, and research-related grants now form a sizable part of our activity. We are working with Hacks/Hackers and WikiCred to develop software that will help evaluate the reliability and quality of English Wikipedia articles related to vaccines, and then to use information on reliable sources generally to support good information on social media. We have had past success in software development, having co-sponsored the effort to create the Wiki Art Depiction Explorer. We expect this line of activity to continue in the future and to represent a sizable portion of our funding.

Conferences and workshops

As in the past Wikimedia DC partnered with other WMF affiliates to run WikiConference North America 2021 in October, 2021. Over 200 people attended online, and many sessions were broadcast in both English and Spanish. Wikimedia DC was the fiscal sponsor of the event and wrote most of the final report. We are planning a similar conference in late 2022. The event was funded mainly by a grant from the WMF.

We organized judges and sponsored prizes for the photos in the Wiki Science Competition. (Should we show photos here?) We helped arrange Wikimedia Hackathon days (around May 21) and a Pittsburgh Wikimania meetup in person (circa Aug 11).

Organizational development

Wikimedia DC changed of officers in January, after last fall's Board elections. Longtime president Kirill Lokshin, who understood all our systems, has moved on. Peter Meyer is now the president, John Sadowski vice president, Diane Shaw secretary, and Sara Snyder treasurer. The new officers have been learning their roles and systems. Our Institutional Partnership Manger, Ariel Cetrone, continues in her position. The Wikimedia DC Board of Directors held 6 meetings during the 2021–22 fiscal year, on November 15, 2021; January 23, 2022; February 7, 2022; May 16, 2022; July 18, 2022; and September 26, 2022.

The chapter had fallen behind on tax filings, and has now caught back up, with annual tax forms on its web site. The chapter re-filed for tax-deductible status, which it had lost in May, 2021. The expected outcome is that memberships and donations in the intermediate period are U.S. federal tax-deductible. That should be confirmed by the end of November, 2022. If the chapter is denied this outcome, we have the obligation to alert our members and donors.