Activity Report for the Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2013–14

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This report describes the activities of Wikimedia District of Columbia from January 1, 2014 through March 31, 2014.

Content programs

During the quarter, Wikimedia DC held four edit-a-thons, all in partnership with local cultural institutions. A total of 47 volunteers participated in the three edit-a-thons where we were able to collect data. This includes:

  • 19 who created Wikipedia accounts this quarter;
  • 3 who created accounts last quarter and attended their second edit-a-thon this quarter; and
  • 12 who have attended at least two edit-a-thons this year, including 6 who attended two or more edit-a-thons this quarter alone.

In total, as of the end of the quarter, a total of 75 volunteers have participated in Wikimedia DC edit-a-thons, which is 150% of the goal set for the fiscal year. Press coverage, including an interview with NPR's Scott Simon that aired on the eve of the Women in the Arts Edit-a-Thon, helped drive attendance at these events, as have active recruitment efforts on the part of the host institutions.

Wikimedia DC also participated in a scan-a-thon at the National Archives which occurred on February 25. This scan-a-thon, as well as two of the edit-a-thons, were held in conjunction with Andrew Lih's class at American University on Wikipedia and public knowledge. Wikimedia DC has been actively working with Professor Lih and his class; in January, Wikimedia DC surveyed his students on their experiences editing Wikipedia and their attitudes toward Wikipedia. At the end of the academic semester, we will administer a follow-up survey to determine the effect of the class and these activities on their editing skills and their attitudes toward Wikipedia. We would like to thank Professor Lih and his class for their contributions to the Wikimedia movement in Washington, DC.

Art and Feminism

American Art

Women Scientists

Women in the Arts

National Archives scan-a-thon

  • February 25 nara scan-a-thon (with Andrew's class)
    • Awaiting information from Dominic

Technology programs

  • Some of us attended the Art Bytes Hack-a-thon at Walters on January 24–26

Community programs

  • January 25 meetup at Capitol City Brewery
  • February 23 WikiSalon and dinner
  • March 12 WikiSalon
  • March 23 meetup

Organizational development

  • January 11 board meeting
  • February 8 board meeting
  • March 8 board meeting
  • March 29 board meeting

Mid-year assessment

Programs

Wikimedia DC made substantial progress in its operational goals for programs during the first half of this fiscal year. We have held edit-a-thons with three institutions (Laurel Historical Society, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Smithsonian Institution), two of which are organizations that had not previously hosted events with us. We also have events with three more institutions scheduled during this fiscal year. This brings us to six institutions, just two short of our goal. We expect to find an additional two institutions to partner with before the end of the year.

The Smithsonian Institution is a vast, multifaceted organization of high strategic interest, so we established a Smithsonian-specific goal of hosting six events with them. As of the end of the quarter, we have hosted events with three units (American Art/Portrait Gallery Library, American Art Museum, and Smithsonian Institution Archives). We have since held an event with the Museum of the American Indian, and we have two additional events planned. We will thus fulfill our goal of six Smithsonian events by the end of the fiscal year. We are also maintaining a strong relationship with the National Archives and Records Administration. We held one scan-a-thon so far, yet we have digitized double the amount of documents we sought to digitize by the end of the year.

We have made exceptional progress in reaching out to individual volunteers for our content programs. Our annual plan set a goal for 50 volunteers contributing at least 700 volunteer-hours by the end of the fiscal year. We hit 75 volunteers at the end of the second quarter, logging 470 hours. A volunteer is a participant at an event, while volunteer-hours are calculated by multiplying the number of attendees by the length of an event. This measure is imperfect but gives an approximate sense of time commitment that cannot be measured by raw edits. Measured in terms of contributions to Wikipedia, these volunteers have, as of the end of the quarter, created or improved 131 articles (out of the goal of 175). We expect to exceed our targets for volunteer involvement by the end of the fiscal year.

Much of our success involves areas where Wikimedia DC has traditionally been strong; we have been nurturing cultural partnerships for years. The work of developing technology programs has been more difficult. Our original goal has been to hold one technical event per quarter, starting with the second quarter. We had to defer hosting our first such event to April, which will be reported in our Q3 report. Despite the delayed start, we expect to be on target by the end of the fiscal year, with the exception of the analytics toolset which may be delayed.

Our progress with content and technology programs has come at the expense of community programs—programs which work to facilitate the development of Wikimedia DC as a thriving volunteer community. We expected in our annual plan to hold two social events per month, while we have only hosted seven social events in six months. It is worth noting, however, that our events work nonetheless to build community, as they enjoy a collegiate quality and a safe space for newcomers to acquaint themselves with the Wikimedia community. We are also making adequate progress with our flagship events, having hosted two flagship events (the Annual Meeting and the Wiki Loves Monuments Exhibition) out of our planned four.

Organizational development

Our annual plan refers to several goals for organizational development for the fiscal year. These goals work to build infrastructure for Wikimedia DC, allowing it to carry out activities in the coming years. We have successfully secured grant funding from the Wikimedia Foundation, including an $8,600 grant for 2014 programs and a $35,000 grant for WikiConference USA. We continue to receive small donations through membership applications, and our fundraising committee is developing a comprehensive fundraising plan for the remainder of this fiscal year.

Earlier this fiscal year we modified our advisory committee structure. These changes reflect the Board of Directors' wish to including more people in running the organization. We established three programs committees, reflecting our three program areas, and a communications committee to improve our press outreach. The already-existing fundraising committee is now expected to prepare an annual fundraising plan. While the Content Programs and Technology Programs Committees have been active in advising the President and the Board of Directors, the Community Programs and Communications Committees do not yet have members. We will seek to rectify this by the end of the fiscal year. We hope to appoint partnership coordinators by the end of the fiscal year as well.

We have made little progress on our technical and volunteer infrastructure. By the end of the fiscal year, we need to design a volunteer workflow, to restructure the website to reflect the new program areas and to make it more useful to the general public, and to research internal communication and teleconferencing technology. While we did not implement a constituent relationship manager by the end of the second quarter, we have since done so.

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