CEE Hub/Working Groups/CEE Community Grants Management

CEE Community Grants Management working group is a working group within CEE Hub focusing on grants programmes that CEE Hub handles and/or will handle in the future. From 2024, CEE Hub is handling CEE Hub Microgrant programme, and from 2026 as a pilot-project CEE Hub will take over the administration of the Rapid Funds for the Central and Eastern European communities.

Annual plan goals

In the upcoming Annual plan of the CEE Hub for Year 4 (2026), the goals of the programme is following:

• Microgrants
  • Updating microgrants guidelines before the launching of the new call for applications
  • Processing grants requests
  • Awarding minimum 17 microgrants
• Rapid Funds
  • Publishing a new process for Rapid Funds for CEE communities
  • Results/outcomes tracked/measured
  • Report about lessons learnt (during the first year)

Contact

• Steering Committee (SC) contact: Klára Joklová
• Employee contact TRistovski-CEEhub

If you are interested about anything in the work of this group, you need an information and/or you want to add some suggestion, please send an email to Klára Joklová and/or TRistovski-CEEhub.

Members

Current members (as of October 2025) of the CEE Community Grants Management working group:

• Klára Joklová (WMCZ) (SC designated member for the topic)
• Gorana Gomirac (VMRS) (SC member)
• Armenmir (SC member)
• MagdaBarascu (community member)
• Eleni.Christopoulou (community member)

Meetings

• First meeting of the working group was held on November 28, 2025.
• Second meeting of the working group was held on December 12, 2025.
• Third meeting of the working group was held on January 16, 2026.

Timeline

Rapid Funds Distribution

June 2025

Proposal by WMF about the rapid funds distibution
Done

July-September 2025

Staff selection process (internal)
Done

September 2025

CEE Meeting session, final decisions, establishing separate working group
Done

October 2025-January 2026

Shadowing/coordination, creating work processes inside CEE Hub (with WMF coordination)
In progress…

February/March 2026

CEE Hub publishes the Call for new grants
Not done

Updates

November 2025

• On November 28, 2025, we held the first meeting of the working group, where we discussed about the ongoing process of the Rapid Funds and what the process will look like when the CEE Hub will take over. At the meeting, we discussed about these four main points:
  • Application process, which system will be used
  • Range, minimum and maximum amount for the funds
  • Funding timeline, open call, cycles or something else
  • Decision-making
• For some of the topics, we have an internal agreement, but for some we need an input from WMF, so we are continuing in December with the second meeting of this group to settle more open questions.

December 2025

• On December 3, 2025, CEE Hub team (SC member Klára Joklová (WMCZ), CEE Hub Regional Coordinator BKlen-CEEhub and future Grant Specialist TRistovski-CEEhub) had a meeting with the grants team from WMF to discuss logistical and technical part of this process with them. We have some progress and insight of the progress, although for some of the questions we scheduled a separate meeting with the current Program Officer for our region, Chris Schilling, so we can have mutual understanding of the process.
• On December 11, 2025, CEE Hub team had a meeting with the Program Officer for CEECA region, Chris Schilling, along with Jessica Stephenson from the Wikimedia Foundation, where we discussed several points that we raise and decide during the first meeting of the working group. Additionally, we return to discuss to the points raised in the previous meeting with the grants team, as we need a feedback from Chris and Jessica for several questions raised during that meeting. The conclusion of this meeting is that the CEE Hub will combine the notes from the both meetings with the WMF and will explain the reasoning of our planned changes, so WMF can internally discuss and confirm to us if that is possible to be introduced and when. Chris and Toni will meet each other during December once again to continue to discuss on the topics about criteria and evaluation of the applications.
• On December 12, 2025, CEE Hub had a second meeting of the working group, where SC member Klára Joklová (WMCZ) gave the overall updates to the working group members after the meetings with WMF and collect their thoughts and suggestions for the upcoming period. Later, the group agrees that they will continue the work in January 2026 after the holidays when they will evaluate the evaluation criteria for the applications.

January 2026

• On January 16, 2026, the working group resume with the meetings after the holidays, and we discussed the proposed Application form, as CEE Hub would like to use the new application form for our needs after our official start of the Rapid Funds. Therefore, we discussed within the group everything that we can change from the previous application. After the meeting, it was decided that the application form as a proposal will be shared with the Wikimedia Foundation staff members. Additionally, the group started to discuss some other questions, such as Appeal process and Conflict of interest, along with the open discussions about possible restrictions per regions/communities and what to do if we will receive a lot more good applications in one quarter.

February 2026

• On February 5, 2026, the working group had a meeting where Klára and Toni explained the response that CEE Hub received just a couple of days from Wikimedia Foundation for our raised questions and proposed changes in the Rapid Funds programme from April 1, 2026. Besides that, working group members agreed that our scheme can be called CEE Hub Community Funds with two different programmes: CEE Hub Microgrants and CEE Hub Rapid Funds. We spent longer period in an open discussion about the future involvement of the working group members in the proposed committee, which will be an advisory body in case staff members cannot agree about some grant proposal and they need a different opinion. It was decided that staff members will contact the members and they will say who is available, so only one member will be involvement of the process.