Grants:Simple/Applications/Art+Feminism/2020-2021

Application or grant stage: draft

Applicant or grantee: Art+Feminism

Amount requested: US$00,000.00

Amount granted: TBD (to be added by WMF)

Funding period: 1 September 2020 - 31 December 2021

Midpoint report due: Half YEAR + 15 days

Final report due: YEAR + 30 days

Application

Background

Annual Plan

• Art+Feminism User Group/Planning/AnnualPlan2020-2021

Budget Plan

• Art+Feminism User Group/Planning/BudgetPlan2020-2021

Staffing Plan

• Art+Feminism User Group/Planning/Staffing2020-2021

Introduction

This is the Art+Feminism application for our Simple APG grant for 16-months starting September 1, 2020 - December 31, 2021. This one-time 16 months request will align our grant cycle with one of the existing WMF Simple APG cycles to hopefully facilitate easier communications, funding, and reporting between WMF and Art+Feminism.

The total amount requested is $401,982. We recognize this will be an atypical year for many reasons. A silver lining of being in the midst of a global pandemic and a civil rights movement, is the ability and opportunity to take the time for reflection. We’re able to ask some big questions, such as what can Art+Feminism core activities be outside of the typical edit-a-thon? How can we continue to advocate for the inclusion of marginalized communities in the Wikimedia community and beyond? How do we advocate for indigenous voices to be at the table? What can we do internally to center intersectional feminism and anti-racist practices?

We’re grateful that we’re currently entering the first phase of facilitated strategic planning in this existing grant cycle to help us navigate Art+Feminism’s potential in a strategic way. We are requesting support in this application to continue to fund this work.

This application also includes many other exciting and important opportunities for the organization, including, but not limited to:

• It expands and evolves the role of part-time Project Administrator to full-time Program Manager, increasing our overall staff by 33%.
• It includes funds to add a new Regional Organizer (what we refer to internally as Regional Ambassadors) specifically to work with Indigenous Communities. This is vital to increase our work with those communities with care and intention.
• Covering the increase in accounting fees as the organization’s overall budget now exceeds the $250,000 annual threshold which requires a much more formal review of finances.
• With the increase in the accounting line, we'll be able to account for the auditing costs associated with a larger budget, which actually opens up numerous smaller funding opportunities, including exploring peer-to-peer fundraising and overall diversifying funding. Accounts for operational line items that weren’t previously accounted for such as payroll taxes.
• This budget also includes a small, but important move for Art+Feminism to rent our own mailbox, so it's no longer going to one of the founder's personal PO boxes.

We will continue the work of building a strong organizational foundation for the organization while nurturing our established global community.

Programs

Annual Campaign

In 2020, we had events in 6 continents, in 27 countries and 20 languages. In light of the global pandemic of COVID-19, some of our scheduled events were able to pivot to virtual space, exhibiting a remarkable adaptability by various Art+Feminism edit-a-thons organizers. Thanks to this, successful virtual events were held in Armenia, Brazil, Poland, across the US and more. Unfortunately not all organizers were able to shift to in-person to virtual events and their planned activities were ultimately canceled. As we prepare for our 2020-2021 campaign, “business as usual” is not effective or appropriate as we continue to be in a global pandemic simultaneously with a civil rights movement. It’s been reported that in a recent study, the majority of people will not feel comfortable returning to museums until a vaccine for COVID-19 is widely available. The pandemic is allowing us to focus internally and be less number driven. We want to work on intentional care and deepen our relationships within our community.

Annual Campaign

Over the past seven years, Art+Feminism has experienced steady growth with our annual campaign. Excluding the impacts of COVID-19 and organizational changes on our most recent campaign, A+F has had increased participation and expanded our global reach on an annual basis. In 2020-2021, we are utilizing some of the qualitative data we’ve collected over the years to better support the A+F community and build stronger, mutually serving relationships. Our goal for this upcoming year is to strengthen internal and external relationships and deepen our impact where we already have a presence. Initiatives like strategic planning, Indigenous community work, small donor cultivation and board development are all key elements in this overall effort of community care.

We will be expanding our training offerings for our Regional Organizers and event organizers during our 2020-2021 campaign, as part of that work of community building. For Regional Organizers, these sessions will offer technical training (e.g., how to use technological tools like Streak to efficiently participate in the A+F workflow, etc.) and community-building (via skill-sharing). For our event organizers, these training sessions will include A+F staples like Intro to Editing Wikipedia along with skill-building opportunities relevant to event organizing and adapted to the virtual landscape.

Additionally, we are further preparing our community for COVID-19’s impact on our ability to gather and edit in person. At the end of our 2019-2020 campaign, we produced the Art+Feminism Collaborative Resources for Virtual Events document. Given the ongoing pandemic, our 2020-2021 campaign will include virtual edit-a-thons directly organized by the A+F leadership team and support to experienced and new edit-a-thon organizers in hosting virtual events.

Event Organizer Testimony

We invited organizers on our post-event survey to include external comments specifically for funders and here are a few highlights from that survey.

I am involved in organizing Art+Feminism workshops in Ghana because of the positive impact it has on Wikipedia and it's sister projects. This year's campaign was well promoted. Communication with organizers was superb. Micro grant got disbursed quickly to support my events in Ghana. I had all the support I needed to organize successful events this year. Looking forward to next year already. - Sadik Shahadu, Navrongo, Ghana

I love that we can host the Art + Feminism Wikipedia-Edit-a-Thon each year. For us, it's a relatively small scale program with a huge impact, both in terms of adding underrepresented artists to Wikipedia, and also in empowering our visitors to take the reins to contribute to public knowledge. We also see folks that we don't necessarily reach through more "established" public program formats like talks and tours. -Greg Stuart, Philadelphia, PA

Our first Art + Feminism Edit-a-Thon was a big success. We were inspired to host an event to improve and create articles for the artists in our current exhibition "The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain." During the event we made 160 edits on 31 articles, added a total of 133 references, and added 9,630 words! We also worked on translating articles and created 4 new ones in English for these important artists: Angela Hampel, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Zorka Ságlová, and Doris Ziegler. We're excited to host an edit-a-thon next year and expand the scope of what we edit. - Anna Rose Canzano, Culver City, CA

Hosting an Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was a great way to bring our community together and bring attention to a very important yet often overlooked issue - the gender gap on Wikipedia. This event also offered volunteers an opportunity to more deeply interact with and encounter some of the phenomenal women artists in our own collection here at the Ulrich. I hope that this Edit-a-thon helps spread awareness about the gender gap on Wikipedia and all of the work that has yet to be done, while providing volunteers with the tools necessary to create real change. -Nellie Elliott, Wichita, Kansas, United States

More than 50 researchers, art workers, professors, and students participated in our marathon, accessing the Zoom app and working really hard in the articles and in understanding how to use the Wiki tools. They were people living in different states and even countries, who understood the consequences this project is capable of articulating on people's educational lives and how it could reverberate in other campaigns within the art world. Helping women to achieve the central role we deserve in books, research processes, exhibition making, the historiography of arts, through the internet became our duty. - NaPupila Team, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Testimonies/comments from some of our participants, in Portuguese - Wiki Editoras Lx, Lisboa, Portugal

“Gostei da sensação de ter dado visibilidade a uma mulher que não constava na Wikipedia e de ter conhecido mulheres muito interessantes e com histórias e objetivos que me inspiraram muito.” “Gostei muito da maneira como o encontro foi orquestrado, da organização, do conteúdo trazido pelas mentoras e da comida (delícia, obrigada!).” “Obrigada por tudo, adorei a experiência, adorei aprender a editar a Wikipédia e adorei poder contribuir.” “Foi uma experiência intensa e poderosa!” “Obrigada (...), pela generosidade em como este evento foi organizado e pelo tempo que passamos em conjunto!” The Women's Art Register is proud to be part of the Art+Feminism movement, helping us to amplify the voices of Australian women artists around the globe. - Caroline Phillips, Melbourne, Australia

The support that I was able to access to organise an edit-a-thon was invaluable; it meant that I had the confidence (as a relatively inexperienced editor) to lead a session, approach a host, and ensure that the event was accessible.- Clare Qualmann, London, UK

This virtual edit-a-thon was a great way to get folks together and working on something empowering during the quarantine! Folks learned the basics of wiki editing and brought their own skills and interests to the group. We are so excited to be connected to more people interested in changing the narrative and representation in the fields of Craft! - Teresa Audet, Minneapolis, USA

Community Hours

To support our growing global community, this year we introduced online "Community Hours" on a variety of topics that might be useful for our community of organizers like promoting your event or offering case studies from our global community. In 2019-2020 we offered 15 different Community Hours, with most of the recordings of the sessions uploaded to WikiCommons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ArtAndFeminism) for continued learning opportunities. These sessions are led by a mix of Regional Organizers, the leadership team, staff, and special guests from the Wikiverse from around the world. We wish to continue these efforts in 2020-2021. In the spirit of community care, we hope to have a few sessions dedicated to topics under that umbrella.

Indigenous Community Work

In collaboration with Wikimedia Norge, the Inuit Art Foundation and Inuit Futures Initiative, we are developing a project to add more circumpolar content from both Sami and Inuit populations. Art+Feminism will provide technical support for the events and training materials. We will work with a young Inuit scholar chosen by Inuit Futures to add and contribute to pages on Inuit people or history.

Following on this limited-term and grant-specific opportunity, we are committed to hiring a Regional Organizer for Indigenous Communities. In the past work with Indigenous communities has been facilitated by the Regional Organizer for Canada, and we believe that the creation of this new position is vital in order to increase our work within Indigenous communities globally, both with care and intention. This position will only be offered to someone who self-identifies as Indigenous. We envision the creation of this new role as a start, and are working on ways to continue partnerships with Indigenous knowledge keepers and producers, while respecting traditional knowledge protocols and equity processes.

Administrative Growth

Strategic Planning

The summer of 2020 we are in Phase 1/Discovery Phase of formal strategic planning facilitated by Wayfinding Partners. Wayfinding Partners work with non-profits with a racial justice lens, a value we share as Art+Feminism continues on the path to be an anti-racist organization. A silver lining to COVID-19 is this opportunity to stop racing forward under the premise of “business as usual” and to take this time for reflection and to ask big questions about our organization. And not just for our organization, but to hopefully model for others to join our work in a meaningful way as we continue to nurture our community with intention. We hope that with funding requested in this application we will be able to continue this journey. Board Development

We continue to experience steady progress with our board development. With the help of our founding board, guided by our ad-hoc Advisory Committee, we’ve determined the following for continued development of our board: This will be a working board, with an expectation of financial and non-financial support. Art+Feminism is at an exciting point where there are many possibilities and a lot to be imagined and quite honestly, figured out. This requires a particular type of engagement. We seek out board members with a wide range of expertise and experience, with the expectation that they will use their skill and knowledge to advocate and support the organization's mission. We also expect a financial contribution from everyone, which will be scaled to a diverse group of awesome people at the table (more below).

This will be a 100% giving board, at a level in which each board member is comfortable. The level in which a board member gives at is for internal purposes only; all board members have the same ability as all other board members regardless of tier level. These tiers will be revisited each year by the current board to reassess and adjust accordingly. Monthly giving is an option to achieve the overall annual commitment.

We expect that board members can agree to give at a certain tier, but are always encouraged to give as much as possible. We expect all board members to participate in small donor fundraising efforts by the organization (currently, we anticipate one campaign annually).

Small Donor Cultivation

This grant application includes support for the increase in accounting fees as the organization’s overall budget now exceeds $250,000 annually which requires a more formal review of finances and thus opens up numerous smaller funding opportunities, including exploring peer-to-peer fundraising and overall diversifying funding. We’re currently researching various donor platforms to find the right fit for us to do small (and large!) individual donor cultivation. We are in a unique position with a lot of potential by inviting our existing global community to be able to make financial contributions, of any size to help sustain the work of Art+Feminism. Art+Feminism’s current Executive Director has a track record of success with grassroots, peer-to-peer fundraising, most recently spearheading a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $40,000 in 2019 before coming to Art+Feminism.

Outside Expertise/Working with Consultants

Distinct areas where we wish to engage with outside expertise by way of consultants are with translation, restorative justice practices and facilitation, grant writing, and web maintenance.

Art+Feminism Impact Research Project (WikiData)

One of Art+Feminism’s co-founders and acting board President, Michael Mandiberg, is currently leading internal research that looks at the impact of Art+Feminism on addressing Wikipedia’s ongoing gender gap problem. In 2014 approximately 10-15% of the editor community were women, trans and non-binary people and only 15% of all biographies were about women, trans and non-binary people. Six years of many community initiatives to bridge this gap increased the overall percentage of biographies to 18%. The project seeks to better understand the contours of this change, by focusing on the articles in Wikiproject Visual Arts, the area of focus of two of the key initiatives: Art+Feminism and Black Lunch Table, and an area of interest to Women in Red. The result of this research will help provide a clearer picture of the work of Art+Feminism with some of the overall goals of the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole.

WikiCred Grant Initiative

We are delighted to share that we’ve received funding for a new initiative titled “Reading together: Reliability and Multilingual Global Communities”. This initiative, completely funded by WikiCred is a research project that will work to expand the definition and scope of what is considered a reliable source (WP:RS) on Wikipedia for marginalized communities. The project has three parts, with the possibility of a publication at the end:

Part 1:

A research project to expand the definition, scope and interpretation of reliable sources for marginalized communities in multiple language versions of Wikipedia, including Spanish, English, and French.

Part 2:

Art+Feminism to organize town halls for the community in multiple languages including Spanish, English, and French (Amber Berson is fluent in French and resides in Montréal, Canada, and Melissa Tamani is fluent in Spanish and resides in Lima, Peru).

Part 3:

Art+Feminism to collect feedback and adjust expansion as a result of the town halls. The main deliverable of the project consists of a report with the results of the three phases, as well as a series of recommendations for different stakeholders in the Wikipedia community.

Grant Metrics Reporting

By midpoint of 2020, some organizers have moved their events online upon the Wikimedia Foundation directive to cancel all offline events following the COVID-19 outbreak. We do not expect all planned offline events to actually move online as this may be uncharted territory for some organizers, in which case we know that those events will not happen. Additionally, we anticipate that attendance at online events will overall be lower than attendance at public events. For example, when the MoMA event moved online, a week before the event there were already approximately 50 editors signed up and then only approximately 15 more editors signed up the day of the virtual event. We go into detail about how we anticipate numbers being affected this year due to the global pandemic in the Risk/Challenges section, but over, we anticipate our numbers to be lower this year. Final metrics will be tracked in the shared google doc.

Midterm report

Program story

Please tell or link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period. This can be another meta page, a blog post or any other source that tells your program story.

Program Progress

PROGRAM TITLE

Spending update Midterm

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the first half of your grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

• XXXXXX.XX USD/Local currency

Grant Metrics Reporting Midterm

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Final report

Program story

Please tell or link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period. This can be another meta page, a blog post or any other source that tells your program story.

Learning story

Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

Programs Impact

PROGRAM TITLE

Spending update Final

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

• XXXXXX.XX USD/Local currency

Grant Metrics Reporting Final

Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.