Global Resource Distribution Committee/Grantmaking Strategy 2026/Introduction

1. Introduction

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and supports the people, technology, and policies that enable reliable information to be shared with the world. The Wikimedia Foundation raises funds for its own purposes (paying for staff, maintaining servers etc) but also distributes around 13% of its budget in the form of grants, with around 9% earmarked for the Wikimedia Community Fund. As a significant investment of movement funds, it’s vital that grantmaking is underpinned by a robust, co-created strategy that supports funding decisions and priorities and enables groups and individuals across the world to contribute to Wikipedia’s mission.

The Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) was established by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in August 2025 as a two-year pilot body tasked with shaping the current structures and future policies for how resources are distributed across the Wikimedia Movement, primarily through the Wikimedia Community Fund. In collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, the GRDC has the authority to review and recommend changes to grantmaking structures, funding pathways, and resource distribution approaches in order to better respond to the evolving needs of the Movement.

This is the first version of a renewed grantmaking strategy for the Wikimedia Movement, and feedback is welcome and encouraged in order to iterate and improve. This draft is informed by extensive consultation and engagement with movement stakeholders between August 2025 and March 2026. During this period, the GRDC participated in regional and thematic movement events, convened virtual conversations with communities and Regional Funds Committees and engaged with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation staff, and other movement stakeholders. This was followed by an intense period of strategic development and writing between April and June. In particular, the Committee sought to understand how the current grantmaking system is working from different perspectives across the movement and identify barriers, opportunities, and priorities for future development.

From these movement-wide consultations, a set of interconnected challenges emerged, organised into the following focus areas:

• Equity in access to resources
• Funding priorities and impact
• Affiliate sustainability and funding structures
• Regional Fund Committees

This strategy is intended to address these challenges and support a grantmaking system that is more equitable and effective in advancing the Wikimedia Movement's goals. While this strategy seeks to serve the Wikimedia community as a whole, including readers and those who access Wikimedia's content through tertiary sources, those most directly affected by the proposed changes are the organisations that currently receive Wikimedia Foundation funding (or that may seek to do so in the future) and the communities they represent and serve.

2. Strategic assumptions

In order for the Committee to develop a strategy focused on the distribution of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Fund, we needed to make a number of assumptions about the internal and external operating environment. This included taking into account the emerging strategic priorities for Wikimedia, as well as operational parameters and financial constraints. These assumptions, shared below, will be reviewed on an annual basis and updated as needed:

• The GRDC will continue to operate under a mandate from the WMF Board of Trustees beyond August 2027 (the end of the pilot period), with responsibility for setting the strategy and policies for resource distribution across the movement.
• The decision-making scope of the GRDC will continue to be limited to the distribution of the Community Fund, but with an advisory role in terms of how much of the WMF budget should be allocated to grants.
• Wikimedia Foundation fundraising is out of scope of the GRDC, including any potential changes to the future use of the banner to raise funds from readers.
• With a documented decline in Wikipedia’s readership, the overall budget for the WMF is likely to plateau or reduce over the coming few years, putting more pressure on resources including those available for grantmaking.
• There will be increasing competition for funds within the Wikimedia movement, as well as in the wider philanthropic and grantmaking ecosystem.
• Multi-year funding for established and effective affiliates will still be available, supported by a multi-year Grants Budget where possible.
• The existing model of individual funding decisions being made at the level of Regional Funds Committees (RFCs) will continue, but may evolve in response to the recommendations in this strategy.
• Human editors (including Users with Extended Rights) will continue to be central to Wikimedia’s content creation, curation and governance model.  
• There will be sufficient capacity and expertise within the Wikimedia Foundation to support the work around funding eligibility, if a tier model were to be created

3. Planned outcomes

Wikimedia’s vision is of a world in which “every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge”. Everyone involved in the Wikimedia movement will have different motivations for doing so, however we are all driven by that vision, in the shared belief that open access to knowledge is a public good and supports education, an informed society, innovation, and equity. The overall purpose of this strategy is to create a grantmaking system that supports a more equitable, sustainable, and impactful Wikimedia Movement. Through its implementation, we expect grantmaking to help attract and support new contributors, retain experienced editors and community leaders, expand readership, and strengthen the financial sustainability of affiliates. We also believe that providing funding for open knowledge communities ultimately supports better long term outcomes for our global society.

The short to medium term outcomes of this strategy are expected to be:

• Grantmaking that is fair, transparent, and aligned with evolving Movement priorities
• Clear funding pathways for communities that currently face barriers to entry
• Funding decisions that are clearly connected to outcomes and expected impact
• Regional Fund Committees that are resourced and empowered to make funding decisions that reflect the realities of the communities they serve
• Grantees planning with confidence on the basis of predictable funding decisions that are communicated in a timely and transparent manner.

The medium to long term outcomes of grantmaking are expected to be:

• People from all backgrounds and communities are able and supported to contribute to Wikimedia, in their preferred language(s) and preferred or available formats
• Communities around the world are contributing to the creation of free and open knowledge on the Wikimedia platforms
• Sharing free and open knowledge is an essential aspect of civic and cultural life of communities around the world
• More people have access to reliable, neutral, freely available and representative knowledge and information in their own language(s)
• Open and freely available knowledge on the Wikimedia platforms is supporting global innovation, research and economic development
• The affiliate ecosystem is more financially resilient, with more organizations developing independent funding and income streams where possible within their local context.

We know that achieving these outcomes will take time and require sustained commitment across the Movement. They are not a fixed endpoint, but rather the direction this strategy sets for Wikimedia grantmaking over the coming years. As the Wikimedia Foundation implements this strategy alongside movement stakeholders, approaches and mechanisms will be reviewed by the GRDC and others to ensure they continue to respond to emerging needs and evolving priorities, based on evidence and learning.