Grants:Committees/Committee Open Call/Northern and Western European Candidates
The Northern & Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funds Committee is looking for new members. The committee partners with the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Resources team to review applications to the General Support Fund and to make funding decisions for communities and affiliates across the region. Members bring their own knowledge and judgement to that conversation; the program officer does the analytical groundwork and facilitation, so the committee can focus on deliberating together. It is a community-led body: members are there to weigh what makes sense for the movement, not to represent any one organisation.
For the committee's role, our approach to grantmaking, eligibility, and the general terms of service, please read the general open call. The information below is specific to Northern & Western Europe.
What we're looking for
[edit]At this time we are looking to strengthen the committee with new members who bring one or more of the following. You do not need to match all of them, and several can sit comfortably in the same person.
| Profile | What they would bring |
|---|---|
| German-speaking community member | A bridge to the German-speaking communities (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium): a large share of the region that is currently under-represented on the committee. |
| Native or fluent English speaker | To strengthen the quality and pace of deliberation, which is conducted in English. A voice from the UK or Ireland would be especially welcome. |
| French-speaking community member | A voice from the French-speaking communities would be welcome. |
| Younger perspective + newcomer engagement | Someone who brings fresh perspectives and different points of view alongside experience in attracting and retaining new and younger contributors and editors — a shared challenge across the region.
|
| AI, knowledge equity & information literacy | A researcher or practitioner who can help the committee think not just about what AI can do for Wikimedia, but about how Wikimedia pursues its core mission in an AI-mediated digital society — and what that means for contributors, free knowledge, and the communities we support.
|
| Fundraising & strategic communications | Many communities tell us they want to get better at raising money and at telling their story well. A member with fundraising experience and/or a strategic-communications or narrative background would strengthen deliberation and the capacity-building support grantees ask for and, where relevant, public-policy advocacy. |
| Advocacy | Public-policy and advocacy experience: someone who understands how regulation (the EU's AI Act, copyright, platform rules) lands on free-knowledge communities. This sharpens deliberation on proposals with a policy or advocacy dimension and helps the committee judge the policy capacity-building more communities are asking for. |
| Grantmaking & governance | Professional grantmaking experience and/or strong nonprofit governance know-how, to help assess organisational health, sustainability, and how well a proposal's plans hold together. |
| Equity & inclusion | A strong equity-and-inclusion lens, including lived experience, to keep questions of gender, language, geography and access at the centre of funding decisions and to support knowledge equity across the region. |
What makes a good fit
[edit]Beyond any single area of expertise, we're looking for people who are comfortable reading budgets and programme plans, willing to say plainly when something doesn't add up, respectful of community agency, and able to handle conflicts of interest openly.
We value diversity on the committee across age, gender, background, language and geography, and we especially encourage younger candidates and people from under-represented communities to apply.
What's involved
[edit]The work runs in two review rounds each year: a larger one in the autumn (about two-thirds of applications) and a smaller one in the spring. The busy stretches are the few weeks of reading, deliberation and decision-making inside each round, when members report spending roughly 5 to 15 hours a week, depending on how fast they review the materials, how familiar they are with the region, and how many proposals come in. Between rounds there's the occasional light task - some training or planning - but most weeks have none. You would learn mainly by doing, with support from staff and fellow members and access to self-paced orientation materials. Membership is a volunteer commitment of a minimum of two years (up to a maximum of four).
How to apply
[edit]To apply for the Northern & Western European Committee, please review the open call and then submit your application below by providing a statement below with the following information. Please keep your statement under 500 words.
- What country are you based in, and which languages do you work in?
- Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee.
You're also welcome to respond to any of the prompts below. Answer the ones that fit, there's no need to cover them all:
- Your involvement in the Wikimedia movement and/or the wider free-knowledge ecosystem, and any relevant experience from outside it.
- What skills, experience or perspective would you bring? For example grantmaking and governance, fundraising or strategic communications, policy and advocacy, education or cultural heritage, equity and inclusion, engaging younger or newer contributors, or knowledge equity and technology, though we're open to others.
- How do you think you could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working?
- Is there anything you'd be curious to help the committee do better?
Applications may alternatively be sent to the Regional Program Officer, Alla Garcia (agarcia
wikimedia.org). You are not required to post your application on Meta-wiki. Please use the subject line "NWE Regional Committee application" and your name or username. Please note that after we receive an application by email, we publish the applicant's username / full name on Meta, to keep the process transparent.
To be considered in the current round, please apply by Sunday, 26 July 2026.
Please note that we select new members twice a year, but you can apply continuously all year long, leaving here your application.
Applications received by email
[edit]Applications
[edit]Netha Hussain (talk • accounts • contributions • edit count)
[edit]What country are you based in, and which languages do you work in?
- I am based in Gothenburg, Sweden. I have lived here for the past 10 years. I work primarily in Wikipedia (English and Malayalam), Commons, and Wikidata. In my day job, I work as a radiologist and researcher.
Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee.
- I have been a Wikimedia volunteer since 2010, with a sustained focus on medical content and gender equity in Wikimedia projects. My volunteer work aligns with several of the thematic areas this committee is seeking. On gender issues, I have spent over a decade writing about women and women's health, and I have built and published open analyses of gaps in Wikipedia's knowledge about women, which inform where resources are most needed. On GLAM and cultural heritage, I have worked with institutions in South Asia as well as online to bring content to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. On AI, I am co-developing a research article about the perceptions of Wikimedians about AI-generated content. I was a part of the Individual Engagement Grants Committee (2015) and the Projects Grant Committee (2018) in the past.
- I would like to join the Regional Committee because I believe grant making works best when the committee has members who understand both volunteer realities and evidence-based evaluation, for which my experiences are a good fit. I can also bring my experience from the South Asia region and my previous work with the grant committees, and can bring institutional memory from what worked and what didn't among volunteer communities.
How do you think you could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working?
- I would be able to contribute my perspectives and experience on Wikipedia's content and current trends, knowledge gaps across communties, structured worklist and tools, the state of AI in Wikimedia projects as well as Wikimedia in Education.
Is there anything you'd be curious to help the committee do better?
- I would be happy to work on making the feedback loops clearer, by helping applicants strengthen weak proposals and encouraging/helping grantees to publish more of reusable outputs that multiply the value of each grant. One caveat though: I haven't been participating in the grandmaking domain since 2020 or so, and therefore, I would like for the committee members and staff to correct me wherever I am wrong or misguided.
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* What country are you based in, and which languages do you work in?
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* Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee.
:* Your response