Community Resources/Reports/Funding Report 2022-2023
 Previous report for 2021−2022
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Executive Summary[edit]
During the 2022-2023 fiscal year, the Wikimedia Foundation awarded 638 grants to mission-aligned organizations and people around the world, totaling $17,512,472 USD. Of these funds, 381 totaling $16,032,838 are administered by the Community Resources team (other funds are summarized below). 2022-2023 marked the second fiscal year of Community Resources' Grants Strategy Relaunch, prioritizing the Movement Strategy goal of Knowledge Equity.
In the new strategy's second year, the percentage of CR-managed grant funds distributed outside North America (NA) and Northern & Western Europe (NWE) increased to 57% (from 52% in the 2021-2022 fiscal year).
Grant Programs[edit]
Grants administered by Community Resources in the 2022-2023 fiscal year fall under the following programs:
- Community Funds for Wikimedia communities:
- General Support Fund for flexible operational support (usually between $10,000 and $300,000 USD);
- Rapid Fund for organizing projects (between $500 and $5,000 USD); and
- Conference Fund for local or regional convenings
- Alliances Fund for mission-aligned organizations
- Research Fund for Wikimedia-related research
- Movement Strategy Implementation Grants to move the Movement Strategy recommendations forward
In 2022-2023, 78% of funds went to 96 General Support grants, while a majority of grants funded were smaller Rapid grants (57%), comprising 216 grants and 4% of funds overall.
Of the 96 General Support grants, 22 (23%) were multi-year grants (14 in their second year of funding, 8 in their first). Another 26 (27%) were receiving General Support funds for the first time, up from 21% of General Support grantees in 2021-2022.
Measures of Funding Equity[edit]
In 2022-2023, the Community Resources team managed 381 grants across 94 countries (three more countries than the previous year). 86 (23%) grants were made to first-time grantees, mostly based in SSA (40%), ESEAP (20%), and LAC (10%).
Key to the new grants strategy of distributing funds more equitably around the globe has been the work of Regional Funds Committees to make funding decisions for each of the 8 (formerly 7) regions. In FY 2020-2021, before the new strategy began, 60% of funds were distributed to North America and Northern & Western Europe. While funding has increased for each region, funds distributed in NA and NWE have grown more slowly (an 8% increase in funding in the last year) than in other regions. Funding has increased much more rapidly over the last year, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and in East, Southeast Asia, & Pacific (ESEAP). Together these three regions received 43% of all funding in 2022-2023, up from 28% in 2020-2021. Grantees in NWE and NA were more likely to receive General Support funds than grantees in other regions (58% of all grants and 92% of all funds in those regions). The concentration of General Support grants has also shifted away from those regions in recent years, accounting for less than one-quarter of all General Support grants in 2022-2023. Of the 26 first-time General Support recipients, only 8 were based in NA or NWE.
Independent of region, we can also evaluate our progress in equitable grant-making using the World Bank's classification of countries according to income level. In 2022-2023, a majority of funds still went to grantees in high-income (53%) and upper-middle-income (22%) countries. However, this has fallen continuously since the 2014-2015 funding year, when high and upper-middle income countries received 96% of funding.
Knowledge Gap and Movement Strategy Priorities[edit]
General Support and Alliances Fund grantees were asked to identify knowledge gaps that their programming would address. In 2022-2023, among those 105 grantees, 73% indicated that they would address gendered content gaps, 62% language content gaps, and 53% cultural context gaps.
When identifying Movement Strategy priorities aligned to their project or program goals, grantees were more likely to identify "Invest in Skills and Leadership Development" (45% of all CR-managed grants), "Increase the Sustainability of our Movement" (44%), and "Improve User Experience" (32%) than other priorities.
Other Grant Programs[edit]
Some grants made by the Wikimedia Foundation are not managed by the Community Resources team and are not included in the analyses above. In 2022-2023, those 257 grants were made via the following programs:
- Knowledge Equity Fund
- Wikimania Scholarships
- Thematic Community Programs Partnerships
- Organizer Lab
- Eduwiki for Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom