Overview
Wikimedia CH is uniquely positioned to advocate for issues important to our Movement. As Switzerland is home to the United Nations and other international organisations and non-profits, as well as the European headquarters for many corporations and start-ups, our potential for impact at a political and social level is significant.
In 2023, our focus was two-fold: continue our advocacy work by fostering our collaboration with like-minded organisations and strengthen our outreach work with an approach more aligned to communication, fundraising and association member management.
In terms of advocacy, we continued to engage with partners like Parldigi and the Alliance Digitale in Switzerland, as well as European partners like the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU) through Wikimedia Europe. At the national level, we provided feedback on two different public consultations on proposed laws.
We also built a strong foundation for communication and outreach, especially as it relates to fundraising and membership engagement. We decided on a new thematic focus for the chapter, “Building a more inclusive future”, and we developed and began implementing a new membership engagement strategy.
Highlight activity
A New Approach to Membership Engagement
In 2023, we continued our work to professionalise and strengthen our outreach efforts, turning our attention to membership engagement.
When it comes to membership, we aim to attract more – and more engaged – association members who actively participate in events, vote at general assemblies and become volunteers. We also want to increase awareness about membership and improve communication with existing members. Our long-term goal for this approach is to grow our association organically with a base of interested, engaged members, whether they are supporting or active.
Starting essentially from zero, we first identified gaps and opportunities for membership engagement. This work started with some core questions: Why does Wikimedia CH need members? What are the benefits of becoming a member? Who is our target group for membership? How can we motivate people to actively support our work? Working with the team, we learned that many overlaps exist between the association membership management and Community programme management. Exploring these overlaps helped us better understand how our organisation operates and what internal processes and communication are necessary for seamless integration between the two groups.
Together we:
- Created an ongoing list of membership benefits and incentives
- Developed a member onboarding process and guidelines for payments and refunds
- Organised three feedback calls for members and interested people
- Looked ahead to 2024 to continue to improve the member experience
Throughout this process, we have learned that while we have made enormous progress around membership management, our approach won’t be perfect right away. It is an iterative process that can be improved by listening to member feedback and adjusting as we go. We should allow ourselves to listen, learn and improve step by step. In doing so, we can better support our community, advancing our mission to advocate for free knowledge by motivating people who can help us.
Key programme activities
- Hosted a successful Friendraising event in Lugano on 12 October, which strengthened our network and supported our growing presence in the region.
- Became increasingly involved in public affairs and provided feedback on two different public consultations on proposed laws: one regarding culture and the other on the remuneration of journalistic works cited online. We collaborated with Opendata to sign the latter.
- Further explored a partnership with the broadcasting company SRF to open their archived content.
- Promoted the 2023 GLAM-on-Tour events with invitations to the press and created a video for the 2022 event in Montreux.
- Ran various media campaigns to support programmatic and outreach activities, including International Museum Day, International Archives Week and a project with the National Library.
- Continued growing our newsletter readership and improving our website, including fixing a bug on our contact form and streamlining our process for responding to inquiries.
- Attended events for various partnerships, including Digital Alliance meetings, a Parldigi dinner and the 1st General Assembly for Wikimedia EU in Prague.
- We froze our X (formerly Twitter) account, as the platform’s values no longer align with our own, choosing to focus on our new account on Mastodon, which is running well.
Programme impact
- Our Friendraising event attracted around 40 attendees and was an important step forward in engaging new partners and strengthening relationships with existing ones.
- We began improving membership engagement with a new strategy and onboarding approach.
- We continued to see impressive open rates for our newsletters. The open rate grew 3.5% from last year and remains well above the industry average.
- Our fundraising campaigns were more effective and aligned thanks to more efficient processes.
Looking ahead
In 2024, we will expand our outreach activities, advocating for issues important to us as a Movement, such as copyright, digital public infrastructure, net neutrality and digital self-determination. In line with this expansion, we will change the programme name to International & National (Public) Relations and Partnerships.
In 2024, we will continue to focus on in-person meetings with Parliament and continue to support and engage with national and international groups, both within the Movement, such as Wikimedia EU and Wikifranca, and with external organisations that share our values. We will also begin implementing our new thematic focus and continue integrating fundraising into project planning. We will take the feedback and initial learnings from our new membership engagement strategy and will continue to refine how we engage members and volunteers.
Alongside our General Assembly on 27 April in Bern, we will organise “Wikipedia Day”, an event featuring high-level speakers and discussions for partners, donors, members and other active people related to our association. This will create more visibility for our chapter and hopefully garner more partnerships and collaborations with like-minded organisations.
Support free knowledge!
Join us in supporting access to free and unbiased knowledge. Besides being an active member in Wikimedia CH, or a contributor to Wikipedia and its sister projects, you can give tax-deductible financial support. Wikimedia CH is an independent non-profit. Your donations directly support some of the most popular collaborative reference projects in the world.
Photo credits
- A bee gathering pollen on a pink flower. Entry in Wiki Loves Switzerland 2020. Photo by Gnu-Bricoleur - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Map of the member countries of Wikimedia Europe. Image by Nadzik - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Pictogram representing Community for the wikimedia.ch website. Image by dellarocreative.ch - own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- SRF logo. Image by ™/®Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen - vectorised by Vulphere, Public Domain.
- ICOM logo. Image by User:c-album - own work, Public Domain.
- Logo of the Association of Swiss Archivists (VSA-AAS). Image by VSA-AAS - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Narcissus field with a view of Lake Geneva and the Swiss Alps at sunset. Entry in Wiki Loves Switzerland 2022. Photo by CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Sunset view from Montreux in Lake Geneva (lac Léman). Entry in Wiki Loves Switzerland 2022. Photo by Vavaloin - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Lauterbrunnen. Entry in Wiki Loves Switzerland 2022. Photo by Dini78 - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.