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Dissemination & Exploitation Activities - Final

05/05/17 | v 2.4

Dissemination & Exploitation

Activities - Final

8.8.5

WikiRate The WikiRate Project e.V. 5/5/2017

Dissemination level Public

Contractual date of delivery Month 42 | 31/03/2017

Actual date of delivery 05/05/2017

Work package WP8 | Dissemination and Exploitation

Deliverable number D8.8.5 | Dissemination and Exploitation Activities - Final

Type Report

Approval status Approved

Version V_1.7

Number of pages 51

File name D8.8.5_20170510_V2.4_WikiRate_Dissemination_Exploitation.docx

Abstract

This document presents the final report on all WikiRate activities carried out under the

Dissemination & Exploitation plan - (WP8). The information in this document reflects only the author’s views and the European Community is not liable for any use that

may be made of the information contained therein. The information in this document is provided as is and no guarantee or

warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The user thereof uses the information at its sole risk

and liability.

Co-funded by the European Union


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History

Version Date Reason Revised by

v 0.1 30/04/2017 First draft HK

v 0.2 01/05/2017 Recovered draft HK

v 0.3 02/05/2017 First collaborative draft TH

v 1.5 04/05/2017 First draft review HK

v 1.7 05/05/2017 Review and finalise HK

v 1.8 05/05/2017 Further content for final draft VK

v 2.4 10/05/2017 Final version, ready for review VK

Author list

Organisation Name Contact information

The WikiRate Project Hala Khalaf [email protected]

The WikiRate Project Theresa Heithaus [email protected]

The WikiRate Project Vishal Kapadia [email protected]

Cambridge University Richard Mills [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





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Executive Summary

WikiRate’s mission is to help spur corporations to be transparent and responsive by making

data about their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance useful and available

to all. Over the course of this final project period WikiRate has seen adoption by numerous

Universities, alongside its partnership with the United Nations Global Compact’s (UNGC)

Principles for Responsible Management Education Initiative (PRME) as well as its further NGO

and academic partnerships. WikiRate’s dissemination strategy evolved over the project term

from one of targeting individuals, to targeting communities through qualified partner referrals

and community engagement. WikiRate’s metric-topic-company approach to framing both

Business and Human Rights research alongside corporate sustainability reporting data has

shown great promise over this last project period with 45 community research projects

running on WikiRate.org to date. These projects have led to the population of over 24000

community generated metric value data points on WikiRate, with more than 7000 additional

data points generated by data partnerships cultivated through wider stakeholder engagement

(T8.4). With stronger partnerships developing and potential to scale emerging projects, most

notably the partnership with UN PRME and their 650+ signatory universities, the Walk Free

Foundation and the Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum, and the UNGC and GRI,

WikiRate is in a position to ensure the sustainability of the project through further grant

funding via governments, foundations and also private donations.


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Table of Contents

HISTORY ............................................................................................................................................... 1

AUTHOR LIST ........................................................................................................................................ 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................... 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 3

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... 4

1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 6

2 DISSEMINATION AND EXPLOITATION TO DATE .................................................................................... 9

2.1 YEAR 3: STRATEGIC CONTEXT..................................................................................................... 9

2.2 ENGAGING EXISTING DATA PROVIDERS .................................................................................... 11

3 OVERVIEW OF PARTNERSHIPS .......................................................................................................... 13

3.1 DATA (PRE)POPULATION ......................................................................................................... 13

3.2 PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................... 14

3.3 ZOOM IN ON ONGOING AND COMPLETED PROJECTS .................................................................. 14

3.3.1 FOCUS ON ACADEMIC PILOTS: .......................................................................................... 14

3.3.2 FOCUS ON NGO PILOTS AND NGO ACADEMIC COLLABORATIONS ..................................... 18

3.3.3 FURTHER USE CASES ............................................................................................................. 21

4 FURTHER DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS: PROJECT & CONSORTIUM .................................................... 23

4.1 PROJECT WEBSITE (WWW.WIKIRATE.EU) ................................................................................. 23

4.2 ONLINE NEWSLETTERS.............................................................................................................. 24

4.3 EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS ........................................................................................................ 24

4.4 PRINTED AND ELECTRONIC RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS................................................................ 25

4.4.1 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS: ..................................................................................................... 25

4.5 EDUCATION & INTERNAL DISSEMINATION ................................................................................ 26

4.6 FORUMS .................................................................................................................................. 26

5 DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES & EFFORTS ........................................................................................... 26

5.1 DESIGN.................................................................................................................................... 27

5.1.1 WIKIRATE LOGO .............................................................................................................. 27

5.1.2 VIDEO .............................................................................................................................. 27

5.1.3 PRESENTATION MATERIAL ................................................................................................ 28

5.1.4 STANDARDISED FONT & COLOUR SCHEMES: ..................................................................... 28

6 COMMUNICATIONS.......................................................................................................................... 29

6.1 COMMUNICATIONS OVERVIEW ................................................................................................ 29


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6.2 BUILDING WIKIRATE’S COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY .............................................................. 29

6.3 COMMUNICATIONS OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................... 30

6.3.1 SOCIAL MEDIA ................................................................................................................. 30

6.3.2 WIKIRATE.ORG WEBSITE & LANDING PAGES .................................................................... 31

5.2.3 OTHER VIDEOS ................................................................................................................. 33

6.3.4 ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ................................................................................................ 33

6.3.5 SEARCH-ENGINE CAMPAIGNS ........................................................................................... 33

6.4 EVALUATION OF REACTION/CHANGE FROM THE TARGET AUDIENCE .......................................... 34

7 OUTREACH: DEEPER ENGAGEMENT ................................................................................................. 38

7.1 OUTWARD REACH .................................................................................................................... 39

7.1.1 DIRECT ENGAGEMENT ...................................................................................................... 39

7.1.2 EDIT-A-THON TYPE EVENTS............................................................................................... 40

7.1.3 INWARD REACH ................................................................................................................ 40

7.1.4 RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT & SCALE ............................................................................ 41

7.2 SCALE & SUSTAINABILITY ......................................................................................................... 41

7.2.1 FUTURE FUNDING MODEL(S)............................................................................................. 42

8 IMPACT ........................................................................................................................................... 43

7.1 CORPORATE ENGAGEMENT: COMPANIES AS A USER GROUP ..................................................... 45

7.2 ENGAGING THE BROADER PUBLIC ............................................................................................. 46

7.3 INTEGRATION WITH OTHER PLATFORMS ................................................................................... 47

8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 48

7 ENDNOTES ...................................................................................................................................... 50

List of Figures

Figure 1 List of MOUs & Vas ........................................................................................................... 8

Figure 2 List of Events: WikiRate Participation ............................................................................. 25

Figure 3 WikiRate Forums ............................................................................................................. 26

Figure 4 WikiRate's Old Logo ........................................................................................................ 27

Figure 5 WikiRate's Current Logo ................................................................................................. 27

Figure 7 Screenshot: Old Video .................................................................................................... 28


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Figure 6 Screenshot: New Video ................................................................................................... 28

Figure 8 Social Media .................................................................................................................... 31

Figure 9 WikiRate.org Homepage ................................................................................................. 32

Figure 10 Social Media Approach ................................................................................................. 35

Figure 11 Original Targets Set out in Year 1, for Year 3 ................................................................ 35

Figure 12 New/Recurrent Visits Segmentation ............................................................................ 36

Figure 13 Communications Reach ................................................................................................ 37

Figure 14 Year 1-3 Growth: Communications .............................................................................. 37

Figure 15 Outreach Funnel ........................................................................................................... 38

Figure 16 Active Projects on WikiRate.org ................................................................................... 39

Figure 17 WikiRate.org Contributor Engagement Plan ................................................................ 46

Figure 18 List of Risks & Corresponding Mitigation ...................................................................... 49

Figure 19 Datasets Increase relative to User Base Growth .......................................................... 49


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1 Introduction

Since the previous review in M24 WikiRate.org has seen major evolution in its partners (figure I

below) and research interface – with particular innovation around capability for research

projects and WikiRate’s positioning as a collaborative research tool for Corporate

Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) data for academics/universities and their students, as

well as NGOs alongside volunteers. WikiRate has gone from strength to strength in terms of

recognition and the partners which have used the platform to set up their metrics to be more

open, researchable and usable. WikiRate counts amongst its emerging partners the United

Nations Global Compact’s (UNGC) Principles for Responsible Management Education Initiative

(PRME) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – responsible for the standards which some of

the world’s largest companies report upon. WikiRate’s connection to PRME also dovetails with

a wider emerging partnership with the UNGC strengthening the positioning of WikiRate to

their 9000 company corporate member base who have signed up to report annually and

monitor their progress towards the UNGC’s 10 principles.1 Through WikiRate’s developing

partnerships with both UNGC and GRI, WikiRate in 2017 was invited to sit on the Multi-

Stakeholder Advisory Committee (MAC) to the Corporate Action Group (CAG) towards

reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals. This group engages a global base of 30 large

corporations alongside governments, national statistic agencies and other relevant advisors to

evolve the model of reporting on sustainability and particularly the SDGs. WikiRate has

commenced discussions at the time of writing this deliverable with the UNGC, GRI and

Colombian government around how governments and national statistics bodies can get insight

into a cross section of companies’ performance towards the SDGs e.g. by looking at the top

100 companies by market cap. This builds from recognition of research on corporation’s

performance on SDG metrics on WikiRate.org by Universities which is being exhibited at the

PRME annual meeting in concert with the UN High Level Political Forum in New York.

WikiRate’s dissemination and exploitation strategy has largely focussed on the attraction of

communities to the platform, rather than individual users, since the 18 month project review.

This attraction of communities has largely centred on recruitment of universities and their

students, and NGOs who can be matched with volunteers through the platform. By far the

largest uptake was by universities in this project period – hugely buoyed by the partnership with

PRME and the initial pilots kicking off in 2017 with 9 partner schools so far, engaging over 1000

students on WikiRate.org with metric research around the SDGs – most notably with a cohort

of over 200 students at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. In addition to

1 https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles


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this success with universities through the PRME partnership further research has been

cultivated through buy in from individual universities/professors including University of Oregon

– with research focussed around performance of Apparel companies, wider engagement with

marketing students at ESCP Europe business school, and finally a blossoming project around the

sustainable performance on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using universities’

performance data, through the pilot project with Michigan and Worcester University. NGO

uptake of WikiRate.org has also been deep rather than broad, with numerous NGOs setting up

metrics on WikiRate and 2 main use cases of NGOs using WikiRate to facilitate crowd based

research on Conflict Minerals (Global Witness and Amnesty International) and around the

Modern Slavery Act disclosures of British corporations (Walk Free Foundation). In the latter

case WikiRate worked also with Joanne Bauer’s Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum2

starting with Columbia University and paired with the WalkFree Foundation metrics on

WikiRate.org and following with pilot projects at Johns Hopkins University3. All in all

WikiRate.org has 45 active research projects ongoing with community research partners4 – the

status of which are all viewable online. Projects are a relatively new feature on WikiRate, created

to facilitate the structuring of research for classroom assignments, alongside inviting new

researchers and volunteers to engage in targeted campaigns. D3.3.3 and D7.7.3 go into further

detail around the data cultivated through these various projects and their application.

WikiRate’s increased adoption, recognition and population both by institutions (with metric

design) and by volunteer or student researchers has hinged on success in stakeholder relations,

particularly building on the exhibition of WikiRate in a prominent position at the invitation of

the CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) at their conference in Amsterdam in May,

2016. Since this presentation and the initial seeding of data on the WikiRate.org platform

(through membership of the GRI Technology consortium5 and collaboration with the

Governance and Accountability Institute who have had considerable experience in ESG

research, making them great candidates to start to populate WikiRate.org following industry

best practices) WikiRate has been invited to many high profile international CSR conferences to

take part in panels, discussions and contribute expertise around the future of sustainability

reporting, and how it may evolve. In addition to these CSR conferences, WikiRate has also

benefited from invitation to join the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable – a

member network of NGOs, advocates, academics and policy makers that are interested in

2 https://teachbhr.wikischolars.columbia.edu/ 3 http://wikirate.org/UK_Modern_Slavery_Act_Research 4 http://wikirate.org/Projects 5 https://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/05/gri-launches-technology-initiative-to-advance-

digital-sustainability-reporting/


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ensuring business contribution and progress around the United Nations Guiding Principles on

Business and Human Rights. Through this extended network and collaborations with NGOs,

WikiRate is in the unique position of connecting a triad of Students/Educators around

responsible management with the NGO research community around Business and Human

Rights, and the CSR reporting world.

Below is a table listing all the signed and verbal agreements between WikiRate and external

parties:

Memoranda of Understanding & Letters of

Commitment

Verbal Agreements

Bertelsmann Stiftung Amnesty International

Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitskodex (DNK) Carbon Disclosure project

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) ESCP Europe

Global Sourcing Council Ewha Womans University

Gordon Institute of Business Science Glasgow Caledonian University

MANA Good Electronics Network

Oxfam India Greenpeace

Royal Holloway School of Management HHL Leipzig

Principles of Responsible Management Education Oxford Brookes University Business

School

United Nations Global Compact Ranking Digital Rights

Universidad EAFIT Reporting 3.0`

University of Oregon Royal Holloway School of Management

University of Wollongong Faculty of Business SOMO

Wilfrid Laurier University Union of Concerned Scientists

University of Michigan

University of Western Australia Business

School

University of Worchester

Walk Free Foundation

Higher Education Statistics Agency

The Association for Advancement of

Sustainability in Higher Education

(AASHE)

Figure 1 List of MOUs & Vas


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2 Dissemination and Exploitation to Date

Dissemination and Exploitation in Years 1 and 2 are covered in depth in the previous

Dissemination deliverables (D8.8.1, D8.8.3 resubmission). Here we briefly touch on the

strategic frame for the final project period.

2.1 Year 3: Strategic Context

Year 3 offered clearer definitions and trajectories not only with platform features but also with

types of engagements, roles of users, types of metrics and methods of research. The triad of

Metrics, Companies, Topics became the focus of both engagement and development. In terms of

dissemination, the second half of Year 3 had significant results in terms of NGO and academic

engagements, number of registered users on the platform, and a significant number of signed

MOUs and verbal agreements and commitments from different stakeholders (details in Figure I

below). On the development front, several advanced features were integrated, such as filters,

research pages, and project pages. (D3.3.4 reviews implemented features and systems, and

provides recommendations for future research and development)

Year 3 of the grant has come and gone, and WikiRate continues with its dissemination plans

into the ‘post-grant’ phase but also through the transition into the second EC grant under

ChainReact. At the core of the dissemination and exploitation strategy is the establishment of

an active user base that will grow alongside the platform and its value. Constant development of

features, constant platform testing for stability and building a robust research methodology with

reliable metrics, topics and data quality. The development of research projects on the platform

is validating the original ideas behind the approach to collaborative research, while also

generating exciting new ideas for additional directions that this research can be taken in. A data

tool and a research tool that is offering its user base a multitude of options; from direct

research to relationships to ratings. It will soon offer the ability to connect the researchers with

the companies they are researching in a form of enquiry, where companies can assess research

results and provide verification and feedback. These are models that a consortium with the 4

core partners of this grant are aspiring towards: a collaborative laboratory that offers public and

private domains for research, sharing and verification.

All that said, WikiRate has identified its unique selling point: that it allows anyone to ask

questions in form of metrics of companies on its open platform. Today, WikiRate has more

than 50 metric designers now with 1,000 metrics online: 144 are “designer-assessed metrics”

while the bulk of metrics are “community-assessed metrics”; for some organisations, the


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control of how they translate their indicators to metrics on WikiRate.org, and the permission

levels of the data they produce themselves is at times very important. WikiRate offers the

possibility for metrics designers to apply the level of openness of their choosing (i.e., Open

access = Community-Assessed, controlled access = Designer-Assessed). Other users and

research groups wishing to make use of these metrics and data may do so by cloning these

designer-assessed metrics to “descendant metrics”6 (see D4.4.2). As for community-assessed

metrics, these metrics allow researchers to engage in analysis and assessment, properly

challenge and evaluate and allow free-range to discuss and build on results.

WikiRate’s dissemination strategy onwards centres on three aspects:

1) Expand on WikiRate’s current user base through engaging more NGO, Academic and

other key stakeholders. Some of the exciting future plans WikiRate is preparing for have

developed through consultation with current partners. These partners became key strategic

partners to WikiRate. To that extent, WikiRate continues to strengthen its ties with influential

organisations such as the United Nations Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiative and the

UN sponsored initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) who are

helping to set standards and frameworks for corporate reporting.

“The Principles for Responsible Management Education initiative of the UN Global Compact is excited

to partner with WikiRate to help achieve the SDGs by focusing the creativity and passion of the world's

business students and management education institutions towards identifying company performance

and innovation. The WikiRate platform will allow business students gain critical insight into key data

and activities written in company performance Reports submitted to the UN Global Compact, which will

then be highlighted during the annual meetings of the UN High Level Political Forum for global review."

– Jonas Haertle, Head, Principles for Responsible Management Education - UN Global Compact

2) Build the necessary technology that will connect companies to researchers and research

carried out on WikiRate through inquiries, verification, challenge and endorsements.

3) Leverage on the impact generated by the previous two aspects to engage the wider

public in the research and conversation to make companies better. Outreach mechanisms and

communication plans have been excellent methods to create the foundation WikiRate needs

for growth. Signing a cooperation agreement with two standards setters is considered a major

step in leveraging influence over transparency leaders.

6 Detailed definition and functionality for Descendant Metrics are outlined in Deliverable D4.4.2 under Section 4:

Recommendations – Descendant Metrics.


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2.2 Engaging Existing Data Providers

As WikiRate builds to scale its community, it will aim to do this through the reach of other

organisations. An initial partnership kicked off with the United Nations Principles for

Responsible Management Education Initiative (PRME) in Year 3 of the project, starting with

engagement of 9 Advanced PRME signatory business schools globally around researching

corporate performance and reporting on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).7 This

partnership has been promoted in communications to its +650 University member base and in

external press releases. As data is cultivated through the project and shared around the

member base, the idea is to attract further support and interest in subsequent research

projects.

Further collaboration on the topic of the SDGs is the signed agreement between WikiRate and

the Global Sourcing Council (GSC). With its aim to contribute to SDG17: Partnerships for the

Goal. GSC launched a private sector challenge where corporations can pledge resources within

their own supply chains, to ensure the advancement and ultimately, the realisation of one or

more of the SDGs. The GSC found WikiRate.org to be the suitable platform for corporations

to submit and track their pledge - either by directly answering the GSC designed metrics, or by

submitting their pledge to the Global Sourcing Council, who in turn reports on WikiRate.org

on behalf of the companies. The outcome of this partnership will be a stepping stone for

corporate engagement on the WikiRate platform.

Several projects have generated impact for WikiRate: The Amnesty International model invited

Ranking Digital Rights to run a similar project using their set of indicators to research German

telecom companies. The PRME project on the SDGs invited the Global Sourcing Council to

adopt WikiRate to report its own contribution to the SDGs.

The data on WikiRate has been mainly aggregated by three major partnerships (see D7.7.3),

with some considered to be strategic partnerships:

1) Scraped data (automated)

2) Data partnerships

3) Community partnerships

7 http://www.unprme.org/news/index.php?newsid=428#.WQmpvNqGPIV


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Two target groups were identified as key stakeholders following the third interim review:

NGOs with a focus on corporate behaviour and academics working with students on

researching company attitudes. By doing so, WikiRate got involved in aligning a new outreach

plan that was resulted in NGO and academic projects taking place on the platform during Year

3 (see Figure 16 Active Projects on WikiRate.org). Categorisations or roles have been identified

for these two groups as outlined in the resubmission of D7.7.2 (p.26):

“These roles can be described in terms of “data partnerships” and “community partnerships”.

In a data partnership, the user already has relevant data that they wish to contribute, and can

do so by providing it to the WikiRate team – who then work with them to put this into the

metric framing (if required) and import it on the platform. In a community partnership, the

partner mobilises volunteers to participate in research on WikiRate that generates new data.”

The impact of projects such as the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) research shepherded by the

Walk Free Foundation is positive. More academics are interested in having students research

the MSA using WikiRate’s collaborative research methods. The Walk Free Foundation

organised a pilot with Columbia University. WikiRate is just kicking off the second round of

research organised by WFF with the universities of Nottingham and Johns Hopkins. The

foundation is also preparing to launch a project to research Australian companies conducting

business in the UK. Generated data will strengthen the case of implementing Modern Slavery

Acts elsewhere in the world.

“The Walk Free Foundation has been working with WikiRate since September 2016 to draft baseline

metrics to assess the statements released under the UK Modern Slavery Act. By providing the platform

for this analysis, WikiRate is providing an essential tool to track and measure corporation action against

modern slavery, freeing this data from static reports and policy papers. This project brings together

researchers and advocates from the US, Kenya, Australia and the UK to hold these corporations to

account. The Walk Free Foundation looks forward to future collaboration with WikiRate.”

– Katharine Bryant, Research Manager, Walk Free Foundation

WikiRate has come a long way since the first pilot launches with Amnesty International and

Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business South Africa (GIBS). Adopting WikiRate as a

platform for researching existing and new data the way these two entities did, impacted the

progress of WikiRate both on the technological and methodological fronts; the post-project

feedback and follow-up meetings resulted in developing a method that would prepare new

researchers before, during –and post project through the following:


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● Updated FAQ page

● Tutorial videos on relevant topics:

● Videos on general WikiRate concept/features

● Videos on research methodologies, i.e. metrics, companies, topics.

● Writing pre-project guidelines that are distributed to researchers

● Creating project specific Slack channels ensuring that at least one WikiRate support staff

is available (taking time difference into consideration)

● Adding two additional channels for tech support and research enquiries (in addition to

the standardised “Tickets” and “Discussions” cards on WikiRate.org:

● Integrated Google contact form

● Direct email ([email protected]) which can now be accessed by all support staff

● Providing post project feedback forms to participants

The first GIBS pilot helped to identify issues with usability and reliability of the platform, and the

results of the first pilot (despite technical instability) encouraged GIBS to incorporate research

on WikiRate as part of their rigorous curriculum, and inspired WikiRate to reach out to more

academic institutions and CSOs.

3 Overview of Partnerships

The following section dives into the details of the partnerships which WikiRate has secured,

and the research which WikiRate hosts and facilitates through advocacy and academic partners,

alongside volunteers and student researchers.

3.1 Data (Pre)Population

Through extensive work in WP5 WikiRate has benefited from population of over 160000 data

points on the approx. 10,000 companies on WikiRate.org. Initially this was a way to seed

WikiRate.org with data from external sources and help to reach the goal of being the go-to

place for open information on corporate impacts. This has evolved slightly with greater

interaction between the ongoing work in WP3, and WP8 around partnership development and

discovery of new data and data partners with identified sources driving the population of new

metrics on WikiRate.


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3.2 Partnership Development

As described above – WikiRate is building towards attracting a community of communities with

the initial targets being academics (and their students) and NGOs (alongside volunteer or

student researchers). However, it is not sufficient for WikiRate to only develop relationships

with NGOs and Academics, as there needs to be buy in from a wider stakeholder mix – most

notably from Standard setters (such as GRI) and other international organisations that pass

down soft or hard legislation to corporations around their reporting. As such WikiRate has

progressed to verbal or written agreements with a spectrum of partners (as referenced in

Figure I). It is worth noting that on the Wikirate.org homepage, 8 key stakeholder groups are

listed and all play a role in the contextualisation and dissemination of information around

corporate social and environmental impacts. In addition to cultivating buy in from partners to

do research on WikiRate, a lot of work has gone into structuring effective projects with viable

metrics for appropriate companies to maximise both the user experience and the capacity for

volunteers or students to contribute to research, and also to maximise chances to find

pertinent and available data. This preparatory work has usually been a joint effort between

partners using WikiRate to facilitate research projects, and the WikiRate e.V. team. As is

apparent when visiting a Project page on WikiRate, for many projects (and metrics) a lot of

thought has gone into the design and articulation of pages to ensure that students or volunteer

researchers can navigate the metrics, the scope of the project and find the appropriate data to

research. This has involved intensive testing and iterations of design, documentation and also

preparation of materials for professors, and on the website in the form of tutorial videos.

3.3 Zoom in on ongoing and completed Projects

3.3.1 Focus on Academic pilots:

As described above – WikiRate’s projects split largely into Academic driven and NGO driven

pilots for now. Within the Academic pilots a strong cohort of research projects centre around

the work with PRME’s member network (incorporating 10-12 schools in 2017) around

researching corporate performance towards the SDGs. In addition to these PRME pilots there

are additional completed projects with other Universities, most notably, ESCP Europe,

University of Oregon and a pilot with Columbia University linked to work with Walk Free and

the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. The scope of these pilot projects differed

slightly – with the ESCP Europe pilot presenting an interesting case of groups of students

starting to create their own projects based on (primarily) existing WikiRate metrics to explore


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particular industries of note on topics of interest. This engagement lead to the development

and cultivation of 9 different projects8 - covering issues/topics as wide as reduction of Food

waste, Data Security, and Water usage in the Clothing (Apparel) Industry. The creative aspect

of this project was the selection and combination of metrics already on WikiRate into projects

to drive research. The groups also identified gaps in standards like GRI for covering particular

sectors, for example around issues of ethics and sourcing of gems, and where possible, created

new metrics for testing. This is an interesting model for citizen driven inquiry, which WikiRate’s

project architecture makes manageable.

Other University pilots took a more structured format – focussing on research that

complemented University case-based and theory-based learnings around sustainability. Of

particular value for these pilots was the foundational partnership between WikiRate and GRI

that began in 2015. A large amount of work went into setting up GRI’s indicators – which they

pass on to corporations, and based on which corporations can report in a structured manner

on various ESG issues – in such a way that they can not only be reported on, but also

researched by interested stakeholders. Stakeholder inclusiveness (including accessibility of data

produced by corporations by interested stakeholders) is listed as a guiding principle for

corporations’ GRI reports. On the other hand – with data trapped in pdfs, these research

points are not comparable, accessible or usable without paying huge fees to an ESG research

firm or access via e.g. a Bloomberg ESG terminal (this issue is covered in more depth in

D3.3.3). Numerous efforts have been attempted to get the GRI produced data into a machine

readable format – so that the data can be used openly by all stakeholders. GRI worked with

Deloitte over a number of years to pioneer an XBRL tagging system which corporations could

use on their reports, to give easily exportable data to stakeholders.9 Despite this initiative it

was only possible to encourage a handful (<10) of corporations to adopt such a standard with

issues such as ‘reporting fatigue’ quoted as barriers to inputting data into a new system. That

said – there is huge value in this data being released. As more and more assets are becoming

influenced by the sustainability performance of corporations (see e.g. PRI’s growing list of

signatories10) this gives a chance for NGOs to have a say in what is considered material

(relevant to report and be judged upon) in terms of a corporation’s non financial performance.

Indeed the single biggest boon for civil society in this space was the unveiling of the UN

Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. WikiRate was fortunate to have been invited to the

8 http://wikirate.org/ESCP_Europe 9 https://www.globalreporting.org/services/Analysis/XBRL_Reports/Pages/default.aspx 10 https://www.unpri.org/directory/


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UN Global Leaders Summit11 (alongside attendance of the ESG212 investor summit) in New

York in 2016. Here, WikiRate was able to present its interface, and solution alongside an early

version of a page contextualising corporate performance on the SDGs13. Figure II shows a

screenshot of this page, in a more developed form.

Figure II: Sustainable Development Goals research page on WikiRate.org

Where the SDGs differ from the Millennium Development Goals, which they replace – is that

1) they apply to companies and countries and 2) the progress towards these goals are being

measured, with targets outlined towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With

the UNGC heavily invested in the SDGs, and interested in the reports of corporations in

relation to them, both on UNGC’s 10 principles and on performance on SDGs, this offered a

great time for WikiRate to show its relevance as a research tool to cultivate the first open and

crowdsourced repository of data on corporations’ reporting and performance on the SDGs.

The initial document which drove this contextualisation was the UNGC, GRI and World

Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) joint effort to create the SDG

11 https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/events/411-un-global-compact-leaders-summit-

2016 12 https://skytopstrategies.com/2nd-annual-esg-company-performance/ 13 http://wikirate.org/UN_Sustainable_Development_Goals


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Compass14. WikiRate's work on this triggered a partnership with the UNGC’s Principles for

Responsible Management Education Initiative – which has 650+ signatories worldwide signing up

for their 6 principles to integrate responsible management as part of educational outcomes.15

With many of the metrics ready to be used from the collaboration with GRI and with the rest

of the SDG Compass as a guide – it was possible to set up a framework that could be used by

all participating universities to select metrics and companies to be used for research around

particular interest areas. These pilots are currently being monitored with an intention for

presentation of the pilots to take place at the UN PRME forum in July 2017, in New York,

where WikiRate will also be in attendance to present outcomes. This corresponds with the UN

High Level Political Forum and the work will factor into the broader political considerations on

private sector impact towards the SDGs.

PRME project: students researching corporate performance on SDGs

WikiRate developed a relationship with the UN-supported Principles for Responsible

Management Education (PRME), and a project to target 8-10 university participants in a pilot

assignment that would engage students with company sustainability performance as it relates

to specific SDGs, while also beginning to utilise the large database of Communication on

Progress (COP) reports, which UN Global Compact company signatories submit annually.

As an initiative of the UN Global Compact, PRME works to develop learning communities in

management education around teaching business sustainability, and to promote awareness

about the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through 13 courses,

hundreds of students were engaged in the research at 9 different universities. The basic

structure of the assignment was similar across participating universities, but flexibility is also a

requirement for course material, so that the assignment can be fitted to course topics and

discussions, provide value to professors in their own research, and support institutional

objectives.

GIBS, as a PRME signatory, was eager to participate as one of the nine. Morris Mthombeni, a

Lecturer at The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) who led

their second engagement, said that the connection to PRME increases institutional support, so

that "not only from a personal perspective does this make sense to get involved, but also from

an institutional perspective, we get enormous value from doing this kind of work." Just under

240 MBA students were involved in the assignment in ESG research and aggregation. The

assignment was designed to look at how South African companies compare to non-South

14 http://sdgcompass.org/ 15 http://www.unprme.org/about-prme/the-six-principles.php


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African companies, with the expectation that South African companies would rank better due

to the legal requirements for using Integrated Reporting (IR) frameworks in the country.

Students where they could not find data, took initiative and contacted companies directly to

request information. Where new data was provided, they uploaded new sources and data to

WikiRate. Surprisingly, companies were very receptive to the direct contact, and really

interested to hear feedback from the students.

Based on the initial analysis of their metric research, they found that those companies that

followed the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) process of reporting were inclined to give

more detail, and evidence-based levels of accountability, whereas companies that followed IR

were inclined to make largely unsubstantiated claims, and "well-written promises and claims of

progress, but very little support of those claims and very little indication of how those

promises will be achieved” (Morris Mthombeni, 16 March 2017). They found that GRI reports

did not provide forward-looking accounts as well, but were more likely to provide granular

data and concrete actions.

The research opened up new possibilities for comparative research of GRI and IR reporting

frameworks, along with recommendations for the International Integrated Reporting Council

(IIRC) to incorporate more granularity into the principles and guidance. The direct policy

relevance for South Africa is that in this case, the legal framework is missing accountability

measures. Mr. Mthombeni stated, "once we pull [the data] together and can start publishing

some information, this might create a platform for us to engage with our regulator in the form

of the JSE [Johannesburg Stock Exchange]. What is the point of requiring companies to

account, when you don't hold them accountable?". With such a strong case for the need of

further research in the area, two of the students from the course have decided to pick up the

data and continue developing it for analysis in their MBA thesis research.

As a use case, this highlights the solid foundation created through these pilots for engaging the

academic community in future research, and building on current research. While it focuses on learnings linked to the reporting landscape around the world, this particular case does little to

illustrate the SDG linkages. Nevertheless, it showcases that there are many ways to use the

data, and link it to topics of local and global interest. From some of the other pilots, where the

link to SDGs was prominent, there is significant interest already in building on the metric

mapping done through the SDG Compass. At Glasgow Caledonian University, Alec Wersun

who ran their PRME pilot said that the relevance of the SGDs to small and medium

enterprises is of particular interest in the UK, with 98% of companies being SMEs. We are

scoping out these bespoke projects, still linked to the partnership with PRME, as continuations

of the initial set of pilots.

3.3.2 Focus on NGO pilots and NGO Academic Collaborations


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In addition to the University and student driven research described above, WikiRate has

engaged with a number of NGOs over the course of the period with the two main projects

focussing 1) on Amnesty International’s interest in Corporate reporting and performance

around conflict minerals reporting and 2) the results of Modern Slavery act legislation in UK,

leading to publishing of Modern Slavery Act (MSA) statements. These are two examples of

emerging legislation lobbied for by the international Business and Human Rights community,

leading to production of new reports, which could potentially influence how legislation is

continued in the future and how due diligence may progress into supply chains by corporations

as a sustainable competitive advantage. In addition to these two primary pilots, further

organisations have been contacted and have contributed their metrics to WikiRate.org. This

includes Global Sourcing Council, UNGC Poverty Footprint, Ranking Digital Rights,

Greenpeace, Union of Concerned Scientists, among others. In total WikiRate hosts 250 metrics

from data partnerships, including those of standard setters.

Figure III: Walk Free Foundation’s Modern Slavery Act project on WikiRate.org

The two primary pilots have differed slightly in nature, mainly due to their timing and the

relative difficulty of researching human rights issues relative to CSR issues. Some issues around

data quality and more granular information around the approach is featured in D3.3.3, however

here we will describe more the nature of the interactions and project.

The most promising of the two pilots has been the Modern Slavery Act research with great

support coming from Katherine Bryant of the Walk Free Foundation to set up metrics

alongside the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre for student research. The real


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power of this pilot has been the connectivity between the Walk Free Foundation and the

Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum lead by Joanne Bauer of Columbia University, New

York. This has opened up a connection between a major international NGO and their extended

network, alongside an international teaching network (similar to PRME, but more at the

professor level, rather than the Institutional level). This Modern Slavery act research project

has seen students first at Columbia University, then at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,

Maryland researching metrics on WikiRate looking at corporations’ level of disclosure,

transparency around their compliance with important aspects of the legislation as well as how

well they perform on material considerations such as ‘whether whistleblowing mechanisms

exist in the supply chain for workers’. Within the scope of the Modern Slavery Act over 10,000

companies will be required to produce statements and the Walk Free Foundation are

committed to making more transparent what corporations are doing beyond the basic

compliance with producing a statement. The project was designed in such a way to see not only

if corporations produce a statement, but to ask further questions of pertinence to get

information which can help reward businesses doing well, and give information to corporations

who want to take more action. Already there is interest from other governments in the initial

research which the Walk Free Foundation are cultivating through this project and other

research, which could affect a change in legislation in up to 10 countries beyond just the UK.

We see this as just the beginning of the picture and this project particularly segues well to the

work which will continue as part of the Horizon 2020 ChainReact grant, for which modern

slavery is an important consideration.

Amnesty International’s project looks at investigating mineral sourcing practices, relating to

conflict minerals reports required (currently) due to the Dodd Frank Act for all corporations

filing with the SEC. There have been three crowdsourcing events arranged by Amnesty

International at Cambridge University in 2016 and again in 2017, with a view to scale this

project. Whilst we look to pursue a sprint around 2-3 events at once, a professor at the

University of Western Australia wanted her students to conduct research on these Amnesty

metrics.16 With WikiRate’s ability for others to reuse metrics in various contexts, it’s exciting

to see that population can happen without the designing organisation driving the uptake.

WikiRate convened a panel on crowdsourcing human rights data at this year’s RightsCon in

Brussels, where WikiRate, and Richard Mills from Cambridge University were joined on stage

by representatives from Global Witness, Amnesty International, the Walk Free Foundation and

Joanne Bauer to discuss collaborations to date and future possibilities to scale efforts in terms

of collaborative research in the Business and Human Rights sphere.

16 http://wikirate.org/UWA_Research_Mineral_Sourcing_Practices


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3.3.3 Further Use cases

As a result of our university outreach and engagement we spoke with not just academics, but

estates and sustainability professionals too. It quickly emerged that universities report a huge

amount of ESG data about their own operations and were excited about the opportunity to

share that data beyond their current infrastructure by adding it to WikiRate.org. Thus treating

universities, to a certain extent, as corporations ripe for analysis on WikiRate.

In January 2017, WikiRate, the University of Worcester and the University of Michigan

embarked on an exploratory pilot to bring their sustainability data into the public domain in a

structured and dynamic way. Inspired by the SDG Compass (which provides guidance to

companies on how to align strategies as well as measure and manage their contribution to the

realisation of the SDGs) we set out to simultaneously import university metrics and data onto

the platform and map those metrics, drawn from both United Kingdom and United States of

America reporting standards, across the 17 SDGs. Aligning with WikiRate’s broader aim to

engage volunteers and students we collaboratively designed a student Capstone Course to

enable students to carry out this mapping exercise. Five students from the University of

Michigan selected the project and over a period of 3-months reviewed their institution's

sustainability performance and mapped over 80 metrics across the SDGs. This research and

data is now available on WikiRate.org, promoting transparency on sustainability performance

and offering data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone. Figure X shows

how this research is being displayed on WikiRate.org.


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Figure III. University metrics associated with SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production

We presented the project and the initial findings at the EAUC Conference in March 2017 at

Lancaster University, UK. Alex Henderson, Partnership and Research Associate at the

WikiRate e.V Project presented alongside Katy Boom, Director of Sustainability at the

University of Worcester and John Callewaert, Director, Emerging Opportunities Program at

University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute (via video link) to an engaged and

interested audience of estate managers, sustainability professionals and academics and following

the session 7 universities indicated they would be willing to add their data to WikiRate.org and

share information about the platform to staff and students. The initial outcomes of the pilot

have been very positive and include;

Quality data from two universities

272 new metrics that enable any university in the UK and USA (and beyond) to add

their data to WikiRate

A SDG metric framework

The ability to compare multiple institutions on specific metrics

Scope to develop Calculated Metrics, e.g. University WikiRating and complex formulae

The students proactively engaged with the process and as a result now have a greater

understanding of the SDGs, as well as an understanding of the role their institution plays

towards achieving them. The five students also presented their research to senior staff


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members at the University of Michigan, offering them a framework to aligning their reporting

and strategies to the SDGs.

The WikiRate e.V Team have plans to extend this work and engage more universities through

similar projects with the hope to stimulate discussion around the metrics, reporting and data

itself, ultimately providing an overview of what universities, on both sides of the Atlantic (and

beyond) are doing to contribute positively to the SDGs. WikiRate.org now hosts 272 new

metrics specifically for university ESG reporting and this number is likely to exceed 300 in the

coming months. 2014/2015 data has been added by both universities and soon data reported

from 2009 onwards will be imported, including the newly released 2015/2016 data.

In parallel, WikiRate is developing strategic partnerships with the two major university

reporting standards: The Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education

(AASHE) who have developed The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System

(STARS), a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their

sustainability performance, and; the Higher Education Statistics Agency who collect, process and

publish data about higher education in the UK. We are in dialogue with both organisations to

identify opportunities for further collaboration and possibly co-funding. In addition, we have

spoken with the National Union of Students (NUS), the Environmental Association for

Universities and Colleges (EAUC) and People and Planet. These major players in the UK

sustainability sector all have significant communities (e.g. the NUS-UK represent the interests of

over 7 million students through 600 students' union members) and thus developing strategic

partnerships with these organisations would offer great potential for scaling.

4 Further Dissemination of Results: Project &

Consortium

Public disclosure of project results is a core requirement for this grant. D8.8.1 identified and

detailed 5 dissemination channels that the project would use to disseminate its results:

4.1 Project Website (www.wikirate.eu)

As indicated in D8.8.1, the project website remains one of several channels for dissemination of

results, including reports, reviews, publications, and other exploitable material. The EC ICT


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technical review report (month 24) recommended that the WikiRate consortium should

exercise due diligence in disclosing all results on the website. In addition to reports, reviews

and publications, WikiRate will upload and disseminate a list of all partnerships made to-date,

whether signed MOUs or verbally agreed.

4.2 Online newsletters

(see 6.3.4 Electronic Newsletter)

4.3 Events and Exhibitions

WikiRate participated in two DSI4EU events; one during Year 1 of the project, and one

interactive session during the February 2017 event in Rome on “Collaborative Consumption

and the Sharing Economy”, where WikiRate delivered a presentation on its role as part of the

EC-Funded ChainReact Project on: Empowering academia and civil society in corporate

sustainability and accountability.

As reported in the previous Dissemination and Exploitation reports, WikiRate project

representatives participated in several events and conferences. Below is a table detailing

participation between m36 to m42:

Date Event Location Participation

8-9/9/16 International Corporate

Accountability Roundtable

(ICAR)

Washington

DC

Roundtable

Discussions

31/10-4/11/16 Reporting 3.0 Feedback on the

1st Exposure Drafts of the

Reporting Blueprint and Data

Blueprint

Virtual Virtual Discussions

1-3/11/16 Business for Social Responsibility

Conference (BSR)

New York Panel Member

10/11/16 Germany and the Open

Government Partnership

(Stiftung Neue Verantwortung)

Berlin Panel Discussions

10-11/11/16 Sustainable Business Roundtable -

European School of Management

and Technology (ESMT)

Berlin Session Attendance


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Date Event Location Participation

14-16/11/16 Business and Human Rights

Conference (OHCHR)

Geneva Conference/Session

Attendance

30/11/16 Traceability, Trust and

Transparency Event (Accenture)

Berlin Presentation

1-2/12/16 OEB Shaping the future of

learning (ICWE GmbH)

Berlin Session Attendance

1-2/2/17 DSI4EU Rome Interactive Session

2/3/17 Meeting with MANA to discuss

strategic partnership

Berlin Meeting

27/3/17 Corporate Action Group

Meeting

The Hague Meeting

28-30/3/17 Global Goals: Local Action - 21st

EAUC Annual Conference

Lancaster Conference

29-31/3/17 RightsCon Brussels Conference

Figure 2 List of Events: WikiRate Participation

4.4 Printed and Electronic Research Publications

4.4.1 List of publications:

Kaleidoscope Futures. 2015. Transforming Corporate Accountability: The Revolutions of

Transparency, Ratings & Social Media. e-Report, Cambridge: Kaleidoscope Futures.

Mills R., De Paoli S. (submitted). “When situativity meets objectivity in peer-production

of knowledge: the case of the WikiRate platform.” Process

Mills R., De Paoli S., Diplaris S., Gatziaki V., Papadopoulos S., Prasad. V. McCutchen E.,

Hirche P. 2016. WikiRate.org: Leveraging Collective Awareness to understand companies'

Environmental, Social and Governance performance. Thessaloniki: Internet Science Conference

INSCI.

S., De Paoli. 2015. “The role of sociologists in a designed world: some reflections from

the WikiRate project.” Accessed 2017.

http://programme.esa12thconference.eu/presentation/1479.


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4.5 Education & Internal Dissemination

Internal dissemination mechanisms have so far been very effective among all consortium

partners, including the academic partners.

4.6 Forums

The following are forums organised by partner Kaleidoscope Futures. Other forums that

WikiRate partners have participated in are listed under “Figure 2 WikiRate Events”:

Forum Location Date Description

WikiRate Forum:

Crowdsourcing

Stakeholder Engagement

London 26/03/2014 On the Future of Transparency and

Ratings, 30 attendees, hosted by

Kaleidoscope Futures, hosted by The

Hub

Virtual Dialogue:

Achieving Radical

Transparency

Virtual 2-

5/05/2016

39 participants, 143 dialogue posts,

facilitated by Kaleidoscope Futures,

hosted by Convetit

WikiRate Forum:

Achieving Radical

Transparency

Amsterdam 17/05/2016 On digitally interlinking data, context &

stakeholders, 24 attendees, facilitated

by Kaleidoscope Futures, hosted by

Deloitte

Online Forum (Interactive

Webinar): Create Impact

with WikiRate

Virtual 16/03/2017 26 attendees, facilitated by

Kaleidoscope Futures, hosted by

Zoom.us

http://wikirate.org/Create_Impact_with

_WikiRate_Online_Forum_2017

Figure 3 WikiRate Forums

5 Dissemination Activities & Efforts

The dissemination activities during the project’s lifespan were influenced by:

● Evaluation of the project objectives resulting in a new set of revised objectives

● Identification of user groups (target audiences) – both current and potential

● The types of partnerships, projects and engagements over the past three years

● Market demands proposed to WikiRate by strategic partners (i.e. RDR/GSC)


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With that in mind, WikiRate carried out dissemination activities using direct and indirect tools

and methods, including devising and implementing a communications plan:

5.1 Design

For the homepage/website design, please see ‎6.3.2 WikiRate.org Website & Landing Pages.

5.1.1 WikiRate Logo

The WikiRate Logo has been redesigned to ensure striking visibility for online and offline

dissemination material. WikiRate now has a formal letterhead and a new logo on WikiRate.org:

5.1.2 Video

A new introductory video is being finalised, with the aim of replacing the current WikiRate

introductory video. This new video captures the project’s mission and aim that resulted out of

WikiRate’s revised objectives.

Figure 5 WikiRate's Old Logo

Figure 5 WikiRate's Current Logo


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The new video17 explains and promotes

WikiRate’s metric – company – topic focus.

It no longer mentions claims, notes and

other qualitative aspects, but rather focuses

on the quantitative. The entire narrative has

been updated to reflect current mission and

objectives. The narrative also sends an

invitation to companies to engage in the

ongoing discourse on environmental, social

and governance topics and data. It is a long

video (2.57 min total) and still being edited.

The older version of the video is no longer

relevant to WikiRate’s new goals and

objectives. The narrative included features that

resonate with Wikipedia’s articles, in WikiRate

terms: citations, claims, notes. Duration of

1.14 min total, it promoted WikiRate’s old

logo without the slogan.

5.1.3 Presentation Material

The WikiRate team developed a number of standardised presentation slides that are regularly

updated and adjusted for bespoke use. The WikiRate “User Case” slides present a summary of

the different projects that are available on the platform.

5.1.4 Standardised Font & Colour Schemes:

WikiRate has also standardised its fonts that are now unified both online and offline. Web fonts

should correspond to offline communications fonts, and all should attempt to align to the

17 This report will not cover design and editing features of the video

Figure 6 Screenshot: Old Video

Figure 7 Screenshot: New Video


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colour scheme that reflects the scale used for the WikiRate logo. These standards have been

stored and shared with the partners through frontify.18

6 Communications

6.1 Communications Overview

WikiRate’s project scope focuses on building data on the platform, and the user and consumer

base necessary to cultivate quality, engagement, and interest around the data. A key component

to creating the community around WikiRate is thus reliant on communicating and disseminating

value to both community and data partners.

With changes to objectives from Year 1 to Year 3, the approach to outreach shifted from

targeting acquisitions of a ‘community of individual users’, to a ‘community of communities’, where

WikiRate can engage a subset of the community of individual volunteers, for example, that

Amnesty International has cultivated over years and decades. Moving from targeting individuals,

to organisations and groups in the sustainability space meant that relationship development

took precedence over, say, a large push in social media campaigns.

The following section on strategy will give detail around the approach and tools used to

cultivate the WikiRate community:

6.2 Building WikiRate’s Communications Strategy

Communication activities of Wikirate.org have developed in stages over the 3-year period via

online and offline channels, depending on the target group. Primary online channels and tools

employed include development and dissemination of marketing materials, social media network

platforms, electronic newsletters, videos, online forums and events, and personal messaging.

WikiRate.org has additionally utilised offline channels, such as organising and attending relevant

events and conferences, and running workshops and sessions for data collection and project

18 The final tranche of WikiRate Grant reporting have maintained the fonts used in previous submissions for

consistency.


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dissemination. Working collaboratively, Wikirate.org has teamed up with partners to create

wider reach and connect networks.

The strategy for communications has relied on capturing ongoing project snapshots, and

materials developed for internal and offline outreach, such as partnership developments,

conference presentations and outcomes, publications, and WikiRate.org feature developments,

and sharing them appropriately. Communications activities have focused on identifying the tools

available and fit-for-purpose, segmenting strategic target and partner audiences, and iteratively

testing approaches to develop networks.

6.3 Communications Objectives

WikiRate requires a strong community to build a centralised repository for data, encourage

greater transparency in research processes, and serve the interests of company stakeholders –

from consumers to investors to companies themselves.

For WikiRate to succeed in this, the revised objectives in D7.7.2 appropriately steered us

towards a model of engagement and facilitation, beyond the focus of awareness-raising. In light

of this shift, it was particularly crucial for the communications approach to support the

relationship development with new targets (NGOs and academics in particular), and create

visibility for these partners. The approach – communicating opportunities for engagement in

research projects and campaigns, and disseminating project results – has attracted new users to

the site, provided value to partners by integrating volunteer researchers, and driven awareness

and greater engagement with the data.

The following activities showcase the tools used over the 3-year period:

6.3.1 Social Media

Online communities are effective channels of communication for much of WikiRate’s tech-savvy

community. WikiRate has developed and grown presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn,

to acquire new followers and maintain existing relationships.

Social media tool Primary Objective

LinkedIn Engage academic network groups, share publications and upcoming

conferences.

Facebook Longer-form storytelling, sharing content and cross-posting.

Twitter Share original content, events, connect to key players in the field,


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Figure 8 Social Media

6.3.2 WikiRate.org Website & Landing Pages

We communicate not only about the WikiRate.org platform, but also using the platform. A

number of spaces on the site were developed to encourage discussion and debate between

users on the site, and also as ways to communicate directly with the WikiRate team.

Particularly as we look to increase the organic reach of WikiRate, we are looking to refine and

scale the following on-site tools:

● “Discussions and Conversations are threads on the platform that can be connected

to different Projects or Research groups, where select user groups converse with one

another around a task or topic. They are also places for direct connection, where the

WikiRate team can help spur discussions further and provide connections to other

working user groups.

● Tickets serve as direct communication with users, often beyond their intended,

technically oriented framing. The more we work with students, the more we see a

natural migration to Tickets as a space to ask broad questions about the assignment, and

provide user feedback.

● The Contact Form was created using Google forms and linked to NGO and

Academic user pages in 2016.It invites users and visitors to start a direct line of dialogue

with us. As we increase the user base, there is still a need for hand-holding and support

for bridging the gap from, for example, data an advocacy organisation wants to make

public, and making that data structured or researchable on WikiRate.org.

In addition to that, the WikiRate homepage had a new design introduced in February 2017 (see

Figure 9). New features on the homepage shows more use of WikiRate’s colour scheme, less

noise, more coherence, and an important identifier: 8 user groups currently and potentially

developing positive feedback loops that reach beyond the expert

community. Utilise the community to amplify online engagements and data

sprints.

Vimeo Display video tutorials, share recorded forum, webinar content.

Slack (Testing) Create a community around curriculum development, non-

financial reporting, and other research topics.

Newsletter Share updates, news, storytelling, community development

Website Funnel users through tools, actions and information they can use and

consume on the site. Showcase interesting and active projects, research and

data.


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using WikiRate (further technical description in D6.6.3). In parallel with the homepage redesign

WikiRate undertook a review of all the key landing pages on the website and identified areas

for improvement. New guidance has been added to the Using WikiRate page, including video

tutorials demonstrating how to use certain features and the FAQs are updated to reflect real

questions we are receiving from our community. (See Section Engaging Academics & Civil

Society Organisations in Research).

Figure 9 WikiRate.org Homepage


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5.2.3 Other Videos

Beyond the development of the introduction video to WikiRate.org, we have focused attention

on the production of videos that serve to document, market, disseminate, update, and teach.

Utilising the online platform Vimeo, which allows us to easily embed produced videos onto the

WikiRate platform, we now have twenty-two publicly shared videos, the majority of which are

available on the website.

A number of tutorial videos have been developed, some to demonstrate new features and

technical processes of using WikiRate, others to present project applications by partners to

using tools like research, calculated metrics and ratings. Whether initiated for a bespoke

project or not, we have been able to produce videos appropriately for different audiences to

provide quick and engaging content.

Online Forums and Webinars have also been captured in recordings, and cut into marketable,

topic-or project-specific videos for dissemination.

6.3.4 Electronic Newsletter

Periodic bulletins have been created and disseminated as the project developed, where main

news and updates are distributed among subscribers. Upon creating an account on

WikiRate.org, users have the option to subscribe to the newsletter. To facilitate additional

subscriptions, a button to “Receive Updates” was added to the homepage of WikiRate.org in

January 2017. The management of the newsletter and subscribers’ database has been, and will

continue to be handled via e-mail marketing software, Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com).

Subscribers may unsubscribe at any time.

The newsletter updates readers about the latest website developments, new partners and

projects, promotional activities and upcoming events. The most recent subscriber base taken

from March 2017 is 838 subscribers, up from 43 in March 2014.

6.3.5 Search-Engine Campaigns

Specific campaigns have been created to promote WikiRate.org through Pay per click

advertising, utilising a Google Grant for non-profits of USD10,000, which WikiRate received.

This grant will continue to be used to support increasing traffic.


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6.4 Evaluation of Reaction/Change from the Target Audience

Original targets set out in Year 1 were revised throughout the project to reflect new

awareness and understanding of community needs, target groups, and objectives of the

WikiRate platform. In phase 1, engaging community groups, NGOs and advocacy organisations,

as well academics, in research was priority. Quantitative growth in terms of numbers of

academics, NGOs, and students or volunteers engaged in research has scaled dramatically over

the last year, due to more capacity allocated to partnership development and outreach to those

organisations (as outlined in section 2.3) and proof-of-concept with small pilots allowing the

brand to attract well-established network organisations. In the last 6-months, WikiRate has

seen over 1,000 students engage in assignments incorporating data research on WikiRate.org.

Qualitatively, we have seen positive growth in the reception of WikiRate, and eagerness of new

partners to onboard. Creating this foundation of positive offline relationships, is supporting

efforts to shift more capacity towards media growth and dissemination.

To showcase evolution of communications, the following table includes targets, objectives and

activities developed in Year 1, and additions and changes (bold, strike) presented here show

shifts in target groups, key objectives and general activities of each platform:

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

facebook.com/wikirate @WikiRate linkedin.com/company/wikir

ate

Target

group(s)

University students,

researchers,

bloggers/journalists, data consumers

Bloggers/journalists, social

economy actors, NGO and

advocacy orgs, policy makers, thought leaders

Social economy actors,

academics

Key objectives

Maintaining Increasing new

followers and engaging

existing followers

Acquiring and building

relationships with new

tweeters, developing

presence in sustainability

space

Sharing project updates,

engaging academic audiences

General

activities

Announce new product

and feature launches on

Wikirate.org

Broadcasting news related

to companies’ ethical

behaviour

Disseminate project

results and

opportunities for

Approach potential users

via direct messages

Follow relevant tweeters

Announce new product and

feature launches on

Wikirate.org

Broadcasting news related

to companies’ ethical

behaviour. Broadcast

Announce new product

and feature launches on

Wikirate.org

Share job postings

Share upcoming events

Share presentation

slides

Share journal


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Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

engagement in

research, reporting,

and metric

development

Launch promotional

activities (e.g.

competitions,

sweepstakes, etc.)

Cross-post updates like

newsletter, blog, events notifications

developments in non-

financial reporting

requirements, innovations

in standards for

sustainability reporting, and

good practices in hyper-

transparency

Launch promotional

activities (e.g. competitions,

sweepstakes, etc.)

Engage in relevant

community & network

discussions

publications and blogposts

Figure 10 Social Media Approach

The shift acknowledged in bold above highlights the changes in outreach targets, where NGO,

advocacy organisations, and academics took priority in community building and communications

engagement.

Much of the focus on these target groups revolved around partnership development, conducted

through developing existing networks, and attending and presenting to conferences and events.

Building the partner and user base of WikiRate became the most important objective for

grounding the community around research and data, while increasing awareness through media

had taken a backseat. Below, the Year 1 targets for Year 3 showcase this.

Target Progress Comments

1,500 registered users Achieved and exceeded

15,000 monthly visits More than halfway there

3,000 claims (on WikiRate) Revised; n/a

Social media targets: 150 monthly third

party tweets with #wikirate hashtag

Revised; n/a

Figure 11 Original Targets Set out in Year 1, for Year 3


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The Google Analytics overview shows the weekly visits (sessions) to WikiRate, which

represent a fairly typical week over the last quarter. If we take this as an average across the

month, it corresponds to about 11,500 visits/month - more than two thirds of way to the goal

set in Year 1 of 15,000 monthly visits.

Figure 12 New/Recurrent Visits Segmentation

Online communities have grown as well, particularly within the core community of newsletter

subscribers and WikiRate.org users. Where quantitative assessment is possible, progress was

assessed using measures of growth in usership, engagement, and reach. The growth of

Newsletter subscribers and WikiRate.org users reveal the emphasis in outreach on growing

academic and NGO communities as users of and contributors to WikiRate.org. With this solid


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community foundation, we will target this kind of exponential growth, where readership,

usership and engagement are tripled and quadrupled annually, in our social media presence,

through engagement, reach and followers.

Below, table 13 show the substantial increase in online communities from mid-to end- of Year 1

to end of Year 3, where WikiRate has also gained a strong foundation in the sustainability space

on popular media sites.

Year 1 Year 3 Average new subscribers/year % Increase

Facebook Likes 155 525 123 239%

Twitter Followers 112 557 148 397%

WikiRate.org Users 117 1830 571 1464%

Newsletter Subscribers 43 838 265 1849%

Figure 13 Communications Reach

The following graph shows direct growth in communications reach, from Year 1 to Year 3.

Figure 14 Year 1-3 Growth: Communications

The following section on outreach will elaborate the segmentation that has occurred in target

groups of partners and engagement communities.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

Facebook Likes Twitter Followers WikiRate.org Users Newsletter Subscribers

Year 1 Year 3


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7 Outreach: Deeper Engagement

During 2016, WikiRate continued engagement and outreach to the identified targeted groups,

however, outreach received a significant push, mainly due to the new hires within WikiRate e.V.

who focused on reaching out not only to NGOs and academics, but also to several companies

and standards organisations. One other reason is the exposure WikiRate partners have been

pushing for whether through attending seminars and conferences, or moderating sessions and

presentations. WikiRate also developed tracking tools necessary for identifying targets and

monitoring progress post-reach out. The graph below indicates outreach efforts along the

tracking funnel for both CSOs and Academics.

Figure 15 Outreach Funnel

0

50

100

150

200

250

Awaiting Response Reconnect at later date Postive interested in Concept Proactive Engagement Contact Closed

Outreach: CSOs & Acadmics - 2016

CSO Academic Total Expon. (Total)


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The aggregate total for “Proactive Engagement” for 2016 was 33 (8 for CSOs and 25 for

Universities). Engagement takes shape in several forms: Active research projects on

WikiRate.org, cooperation, and future collaboration. In total, The WikiRate team reached out

to 264 different NGOs and Universities. Early 2016, WikiRate.org had 2 pilots online: one

academic (GIBS) and one on the advocacy level (Amnesty Int'l). By closing of 2016,

WikiRate.org had a total of 44 projects online: 26 active projects run by universities, 7 active

projects run by CSOs and 11 active projects run by individual users (including projects

developed in-house).

7.1 Outward reach

7.1.1 Direct Engagement

Networks established during events and conferences are being followed up by scheduling calls

or direct meetings. A combination of factors will ensure that WikiRate is on the right track in

terms of user base growth: Partner-role categorisation, project types and platform capabilities

to accommodate, and notably building on already existing strategic partnerships. The United

Nations supported initiative PRME has been contributing to WikiRate’s growing community.

The initial goal of the collaboration was to engage 8-10 PRME advanced signatories on the

platform to research and aggregate corporate data around the SDGs. The initial partnership

developed into a strategic partnership between WikiRate, the United Nations Global Compact

(UNGC) and its supported initiative PRME and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. WikiRate has been

promoted through PRME’s newsletter[‎i]that reached a wide member network of more than

59%16%

25%

Projects on W ikiRate.org

Universities

CSOs

Individual (incl. WR staff)

Figure 16 Active Projects on WikiRate.org


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650 universities. To-date, 9 PRME advanced signatory universities are engaged on WikiRate

with 13 research projects. We are expecting the number of university engagements to grow.

In a similar vein comes the partnership with Ranking Digital Rights (RDR); being one of the first

supporters of the platform, RDR has been collaborating with WikiRate to publish their rankings

on the platform.‎[ii] The exercise RDR carried on the platform resulted in two extremely

significant outcomes; the edit-a-thon event to be held end of May (explained in 7.1.2 Edit-a-thon

type Events below). RDR has also expressed its desire to develop a Decko-Type-Tool that

would replace their current approach to data collection. What they are looking for is creating

advanced structures out of simple wiki-inspired building blocks and has proven to be a solid

solution for creating collaborative commons. This is a key exploitable result that WikiRate as a

consortium has been happy to expand on for further benefit and exposure.

7.1.2 Edit-a-thon type Events

The first Amnesty International edit-a-thons have appealed to other NGOs that WikiRate has

been in touch with. Early in January, WikiRate met with both RDR and the Humboldt Institute

for Internet and Society and set out to run a workshop researching German Telecom

Companies using the RDR Corporate Accountability Index methodology.19 The announcement

of this engaging project has sparked the interest for other organization as well. Corporate

representatives from Mozilla have signed up to participate in the hands-on research event to

assess whether this research method could be adjusted to serve their company’s needs for

research and data engagement as well. The event is scheduled for the 23rd of May, 2017.

7.1.3 Inward reach

The engagements resulting from partners getting in touch with WikiRate started to formulate.

In December 2016, WikiRate was approached by ASSET, an EU CAPS project during the

Brussels DSI4EU event held in July 2016. ASSET, and Austrian CAPS grantee approached

WikiRate with the possibility of making use of WikiRate’s data (both automated and

researched). This collaboration has been a decisive factor for ASSET’s proof of concept and

continuation. WikiRate shared a .csv file20 containing corporate data ASSET required to run a

product-rating test. ASSET aims to connect products directly with information about their

sustainability at the point of sale – it is specifically targeting consumers as drivers of change.

19 https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2017/ 20 A release of API integration is scheduled to happen mid 2017.


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Through API integration, ASSET can incorporate data from WikiRate in the view of products

that it offers to consumers. This collaboration will significantly extend the reach of WikiRate’s

data and its power to influence consumers’ decision-making.

Similarly comes the partnership with MANA who approached WikiRate for the same reason.

Quantitative data on corporate ESG behaviours can complement the qualitative scraping

MANA data model reflects: MANA is a French-based non-profit with a mission to connect civil

society with financial institutions via a portal dedicated to investigating companies’

environmental impacts. MANA aggregates information collected from the web, social media and

other portals through an algorithm that influences investment decisions. In the same vein,

WikiRate is examining whether data scraped through MANA’s algorithm can fit the current

structure of WikiRate’s free text metrics.

7.1.4 Relationship Management & Scale

Scaling community engagement for WikiRate means maintaining its current user base too.

Direct relationships are creating indirect engagement; i.e. collaborating with one organisation is

pulling in interest from others, including corporate interest. Attending EC meetings creates

opportunities to meet other CAPS funded-projects (ASSET introduction during the Brussels

DSI4EU event held in July 2016). These engagements also offer an opportunity to raise the

profile of the platform and project. NGOs that already work in partnership with WikiRate have

expressed a desire to showcase the results of their projects more directly (e.g. the Global

Sourcing Council); presenting these results through their own website through iFrames; but

soon, features will be embedded so that WikiRate could offer the capacity to easily export

code that can be embedded on another site, which pulls content directly from WikiRate in the

WikiRate format.

7.2 Scale & Sustainability

As it stands WikiRate has a list of potential candidates for its Advisory Board and will

proactively pursue the formation over the next few months. Having an effective board in place

will mean further growth, stability, and sustainability for WikiRate. The advisory board will be

made up of a diverse group of people with expert knowledge of the reporting industry and

practices. The aim is to have representation of each WikiRate community category, such as

NGOs, standards bodies, independent researchers, academics, corporations, investors,

investigative journalists and grassroots initiatives. Members will be selected based on their

commitment to communicate, network and fundraise on behalf of WikiRate.


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Furthermore, in terms of financial scaling and sustainability, WikiRate is working on a

fundraising strategy that targets both core and project based funding. Whilst core funding

would support the maintenance and refinement of WikiRate’s platform and community, project

based funding would be more targeted and would likely build on co-funding partnerships.

Depending on the size of the project based funds these could be implemented to either run a

research and data engagement project with the existing WikiRate platform functionalities, or be

directed at developing additional platform features before running a research and data

engagement project using the new functionality. Over the last few months, WikiRate has

dedicated significant time and resources to connecting with existing funding networks,

foundations, and setting up strategic partnerships. From this the first leads have been activated

and the relationship management is well underway.

7.2.1 Future funding model(s)

WikiRate will remain a non-profit entity and its primary targets for further fundraising will be

grants from governments and foundations. Whilst initial letters of inquiry were sent out –

feedback from advisors and funders was that WikiRate will be most successful in fundraising for

the project alongside qualified actors that have pre-existing relationships with foundations and

governments, particularly those that together with WikiRate can strengthen routes towards

advocacy, research and policy driven objectives. Building on the work with actors such as the

Walk Free Foundation, PRME, GRI, UNGC, and the Teaching Business and Human Rights

Forum, WikiRate has many partnerships which would benefit from project based funding on the

basis of working groups with shared data generation, awareness generating, advocacy and policy

influencing objectives.

The WikiRate project has progressed a lot since the 24 month review. WikiRate e.V. and

partners are committed to work together to continue the quality work and community

development that has occurred until now, particularly over the last project period. With many

active projects and partnerships strengthening, WikiRate will actively seek further funding

alongside partners to refine and enhance the projects that are already showing some success.

The partnerships with GRI, UNGC and PRME alongside WikiRate’s membership of the

multistakeholder advisory committee (MAC) to the corporate action group (CAG) around

reporting on the SDGs, lends itself well to development of opportunities, and indeed WikiRate

e.V. is in discussions with actors within that group around giving governments more insight into

performance of the private sector on SDGs. Pitching to governments and foundations with

working groups around clear objectives will strengthen WikiRate’s proposition as a platform to

facilitate research towards objectives, opening up impact driven funding. WikiRate will not be

reliant on ChainReact, however the segue to this Horizon 2020 grant leaves the project in good


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stead to continue its work alongside capacity building in terms of development of relationship

metrics, ongoing maintenance of the WikiRate community as it develops and further

development of the ecosystem of data which WikiRate can handle as well as development of

the organisations and people who can use WikiRate for research and analysis of corporations.

Ongoing funding discussions are going on alongside:

MANA around integrating environmental data coming from their algorithm into

WikiRate as sources

PRME around scaling the University engagement around research into corporate

performance on SDGs

UNGC, GRI and their Action platform on Reporting

The Michigan, Worcester University Pilot, where a funding bid has been

submitted to Erasmus+

Frank Bold, who are putting together a project to analyse and benchmark

companies’ responses to the EU non-financial reporting directive, with WikiRate

to be used as the platform for presenting the results and some budget for

developing WikiRate to suit this use-case

At this stage the consortium and WikiRate e.V. is not pursuing a revenue driven model either

offering non-profit software as a service (to NGOs, or Academics) or data as a service, where

investors or other stakeholders may wish for data in a particular area to be presented to them,

without using WikiRate’s tools. That said the WikiRate e.V. team are committed to drive value

around data generation such that data can be used and impact can be achieved.

8 Impact

The project partners were able to design and implement their concept of an open, wiki-based

data aggregator and research platform that allows people to work collaboratively on designing

and managing content and analytics through the EC Collective Awareness Platforms for

Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) concept. As a CAPS project, WikiRate needs to

provide the tools not only for research to be conducted on the platform, but also makes data

and research accessible, usable and impactful. The involvement of different user groups through

collaboration and projects has been growing. Partners and partnership roles are increasingly

moulding the platform to serve different domains of interest.


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As described in depth in section 3.3, there is already impact being served from advocacy groups

and universities reflecting on and changing the way they do research and how students and

volunteers can engage with not only campaigns but the data being produced and analysed in the

Business and Human Rights world and the Corporate Sustainability/ Reporting world. Beyond

this awareness raising, students are also reaching out directly to corporations to get

information about why a corporation does or does not disclose on a certain data point. Within

the PRME project there are hundreds of companies researched across various geographies

alongside the global sustainable development goals. Certain governments do not even know or

believe it is possible for them to start to assess disclosure and performance on the sustainable

development goals of the private sector in their country, however with WikiRate it becomes

possible to take the top 50 or 100 companies by market capitalization and analyse their

disclosure and performance on a number of metrics. The WikiRate research interface is

improving all the time, and is now at a level where by a reasonable amount of data can be

generated within a modest cohort of students or volunteers. This means that such analysis is

possible and we are already seeing results in the PRME pilots, most notably as covered in the

GIBS study in section 3.3. above. Further impact is also being pursued or inspired due to

reflection around data which is mandated to be published, but doesn’t generate a great deal of

analysis or awareness within the wider public or even across research groups due to siloed

research. The conflict minerals project with Amnesty International, and the Walk Free

Foundation Modern Slavery Act research gain great value from discussion, reflection and

consideration – what are companies actually reporting? Are they complying? Is the baseline for

compliance enough? These sorts of questions are raised by the Walk Free Foundation (visible in

their WikiRate project video) in their quest to encourage corporations to compete on good

practice, or inform themselves about how to improve. In the case of the Walk Free Foundation

– the data can be very useful as they pursue change in legislation in 10 other jurisdictions,

where at the moment they are pursuing such change in Australia, alongside the success of the

Modern Slavery Act in the UK.

With the PRME pilot and the blossoming partnerships with the GRI, UNGC and the overall

participation in the action platform on reporting on the SDGs, there is real leverage to make

corporations aware of the data they produce and how it compares across regions, and their

industry. National Statistical offices and governments are paying increased attention to these

areas, and with WikiRate they have a tool which can give them insight, whilst opening up the

data for others to see as well. Such open data is commonplace for other domains, such as data

on cities, or country performance e.g. WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index21. There is also a

21 http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-index/


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new precedent emerging whereby a corporation’s sustainability report is being reflected on and

read by a whole new group of stakeholders – younger adults in business education – those who

can become future leaders and ask the questions they are curious about whilst they are in

higher education.

As further legislation is pursued around business and human rights, e.g. European Commission’s

Non-Financial Reporting Directive which is being rolled out and affecting thousands of

corporations in the near future; WikiRate can play a key role in showing how corporations are

responding to the new directives and allow researchers and other stakeholders to help

understand, compliance, disclosure, diligence and performance around emerging legislation.

WikiRate has commenced a partnership with Frank Bold Society, a non-profit legal firm who is

examining this particular directive, which is of foundational importance for NGOs around

Europe and further afar.

7.1 Corporate Engagement: Companies as a User Group

Planning broader scale includes engagement of companies in the ongoing conversation. Further

impact can be recorded through the ability to get company representatives engaged in data

production, verification, and ultimately data quality. By engaging diverse participants not only in

consuming data but in helping to expand data coverage, improve data quality, and increase

collective awareness of robust findings is key. WikiRate has engaged in several fruitful

discussions with the private sector around data transparency and access. The question arises:

How can researchers invite companies to respond to their research-specific inquiries through

the platform? Another question pops up: How can companies engage with researchers on

corporate behaviour topics through conversations (as opposed to accusations)? These are risks

that WikiRate can mitigate: Figure 11 below showcases the development of the tool and

engagement approaches to ensure companies’ involvement and collaboration with researchers.

This multi-year implementation plan covers the smooth integration of companies’ inquiries and

verification, and ultimately produces a joint effort of a user-base, including companies, that

works towards achieving the goal of having companies act more responsively.


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7.2 Engaging the Broader Public

The direct value for engaging different stakeholders on WikiRate.org is the ability to offer a

platform where the different user groups

can collect, analyse, and share corporate

social responsibility data. Another is for the

platform to offer the tools necessary for

these groups to publish their metrics and

methodologies. There is also great value

that stems from engaging these user groups

(as well as future groups); i.e. a successful

collaboration with one actor in a particular

space stems passive engagement and

ultimately active participation in another

domain. This indirect value is essential in

establishing the credibility of the approach

and cultivating relationships with other

actors. For WikiRate, where all outputs are

presented openly and transparently, the

platform itself becomes functionally more

useful with each successful engagement -

subsequent engagements can leverage and

build upon the work of prior engagements,

even when these were led by different

actors.

For WikiRate, it is the development of the

open structured knowledge resource

from which value is ultimately derived: The more knowledge this repository contains the more

newer projects can work with and build it out in new directions. This approach has a ripple

effect; engaging the broader public means inviting media actors’ interested in further corporate

sustainability investigation. This would also mean the ability for journalists to ask questions

directly on the platform. The integration of more sophisticated metrics (calculated metrics) is

growing a diverse crowd of collaborators. With the growing interest for *new* permissions and

functionalities (see D4.4.2), WikiRate looks at servicing other user groups, i.e. designers who

wish to control "permissions" of their product and data (known to the consortium as CoLabs -

see D7.7.3 and D7.7.6). The advanced and agile environment with each CoLab will create

Figure 17 WikiRate.org Contributor Engagement Plan


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better response rates from companies, whose role is clearly defined within the CoLab as

verifiers and commentators. With each verification step, the public is more aware, and ever

more engaged, a step needed to the re-emergence of qualitative input of WikiRate’s Reviews

and Overviews.

Sightings and Insights are seen as central to engaging a broader public audience with WikiRate’s

data and analyses. These will allow community members to package what they’ve

learned/discovered on WikiRate and disseminate this through their own sites or social media

accounts. Where community members have their own significant networks, this offers great

potential to not only present the outputs of WikiRate research to wider audiences, but to

attract some members of that audience to follow links through to WikiRate where they can

inspect and interact with the materials that caught their interest. This is a two-pronged

approach, where we aim to influence the perceptions and behaviour of more casually interested

people by their encountering WikiRate outputs in other places – while we aim to drive those

who are more engaged or have more time to WikiRate where they can engage more deeply

with the material that caught their interest and start contributing in their own right, either to

that particular research or beyond.

7.3 Integration with Other Platforms

WikiRate has several plans for external platform integration. On the development side,

introducing functions that would communicate with other platforms renders a high degree of

exploitation. From a dissemination perspective, the more WikiRate’s platform grows in terms

of data and user base, it becomes more attractive for external organisations to develop API

integrations with WikiRate that integrate aspects of data to fit their needs. As mentioned

earlier, API integration with ASSET can help expand their options for delivery. Equally

important, it will significantly extend the reach of WikiRate’s data and its power to influence

consumers’ decision-making. In a similar vein, the integration of iFrames on other organisations’

websites (e.g. the Global Sourcing Council), mirroring WikiRate’s own design, website activities

while also having space for their own. While iframes are the current approach to this kind of

integration, specific features that allow users to embed visualizations (Sightings) and

accompanying write-ups (Insights) are planned, and these will make it much easier and more

attractive for an external party to embed insights from WikiRate data on their own sites – with

these linking seamlessly back to the full depth of underlying data and supporting evidence on

WikiRate.org. D7.7.3 D7.7.6 have further details about planned data engagement functionality.


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Additionally, investment funds and tools catering to investors have expressed an interest in API

integration with WikiRate. API integrations with externally developed apps offer a way to

extend the impact of WikiRate’s data and analyses significantly – these apps are much narrower

in focus than WikiRate, and so have the potential to be tailored to particular target audiences

so that they meet their specific needs.

8 Conclusion

WikiRate’s dissemination and exploitation efforts have been rewarded. With its revised

objectives (D7.7.2) and its continuous development efforts (WP2, WP7), dissemination has

been more focused, more impactful and yielded ever-more exploitable results. Investing in the

growth of CSO and Academic communities has already sparked interest from corporations, and

is broadening WikiRate’s contributors’ engagement plan. Per the current/future engagements,

projects and community uptake, WikiRate is able to resonate commercial and social impact.

The month-24 technical review recommendation remains coherent: That [t]he real impact would

be if companies would act (more) responsively. This is a long-term effect. In the short(er) run, a valuable

intermediate impact would be if some well-known advocacy groups (and Universities/research

institutions) will start using WikiRate as a platform for the collection and sharing of CSR data, and/or

for the publication of their metrics.

Direct exploitable results have been reported: Signed and verbal agreements with prominent

actors in the field of corporate sustainability, Standard Setters such as the Global Reporting

Initiative and the Sustainability Code / the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE),

and Civil Society actors such as Oxfam India and the United Nations Global Compact. Results

have also been reflected in the invitations received by event organisers to moderate or present

in sessions (Figure 2 WikiRate Events). WikiRate has been on track in discussing new ideas and

methodologies with CSOs (e.g. Ranking Digital Rights, ASSET, and Global Sourcing Council).

The positive results from all activities and engagements give reason for the project to continue

and flourish post-grant period. Upcoming plans require realistic and concise risk analysis and

corresponding mitigation, with a great deal of focus on sustainability and continuity. The list

below indicates –but is not limited to, some barriers and limitation facing WikiRate but also the

opportunities that can be extracted:


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Barriers & Limitations Mitigation

Financial sustainability for WikiRate: The ever-

fluctuating market and economic implications

constitute a financial risk for the sustainability

of WikiRate.

Fundraising Strategy: To ensure sustainability

of WikiRate, the partners are discussing best

approaches to create a business model that

remains non-profitable, and ensure continuity

of the project beyond the current grants

Community uptake The WikiRate community is showing health

indicators in terms of growth, recurrence and

influence. Continued outreach efforts including

dissemination and exploitation will achieve yet

better growth

Multilingual research: WikiRate understands

the importance of offering its platform to users

from all over the globe. To-date, the platform

is only available in English.

A needs-based study has resulted in a well-

structured development proposal for WikiRate

to expand on its language functionality.

WikiRate collected user feedback and use

cases to draft a fundraising proposal.

Figure 18 List of Risks & Corresponding Mitigation

The significant increase in partner engagements (both on the CSO and academic levels)

contributed exponentially to the data available on WikiRate.org. Today the metric count is at

1,000 (it was 498 one year ago), number of companies exceeded the 9,500 mark (around 4,000

one year ago 2016).

Figure 19 Datasets Increase relative to User Base Growth

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

2015 2016 Q12017 Q22017

DataIncreaserelativetoUserbaseGrowth

Users: Companies: Metrics: MetricValues:


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These first three years for WikiRate have been exciting. Improvements to processes and

mechanisms, growth of platform community and in-house resources have added significant

value to the progress of the project as a whole and added value for its dissemination and

exploitation.

7 Endnotes

i PRME newsletter: http://bulletin.unglobalcompact.org/t/r-EF26710B3F53DC4C2540EF23F30FEDED

ii RDR blogpost: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/2016/11/23/rdr-wikirate/

http://bulletin.unglobalcompact.org/t/r-EF26710B3F53DC4C2540EF23F30FEDED

https://rankingdigitalrights.org/2016/11/23/rdr-wikirate/

dissemination & exploitation activities - final · colombian government around how governments...

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