Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/Wiki GLAM Culture and Heritage Conference (WGCHC)/Final Report

Conference Fund Final Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 15 January 2026

Funding program: Conference Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Title of proposal: Wiki GLAM Culture and Heritage Conference (WGCHC)
Username of applicant: Alchimista
Name of organization: N/A
Amount awarded: 202416
Amount spent: 129710 USD, 110784 EUR

Part 1: Understanding your work

1. Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?

The conference theme of Resilience was felt throughout the sessions and we believe it helped raise the profile and attention on the conference within the Wikimedia movement and beyond. There were a lot of people eager to attend the conference and be part of these important conversations and activities because of the resonant theme.

2. What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?

The Global GLAM Strategy Session lead to 5 strategic pillars that can be used to guide GLAM activities going forward. The conference became a vessel for strategies within the GLAM Wiki community to materialize and carry forward afterwards. Although detailed plans are not finalized, both a potential GLAM User Group and the Content Partnerships Hub have the mandate to continue with the work in a global and coordinate way together with all contributors, affiliates, the Wikimedia Foundation, and allies and partners. The conference also strengthend partnerships beyond the wikimedia movement; the presence of many institions from around the world as well as key Open movement actors is a positive sign for future opportunities and invovlement.

The conference had a significant impact on both the Wikimedia community and GLAM institutions in Portugal, helping to reduce long-standing prejudice toward Wikimedia platforms and open knowledge practices. We noted increased openness among Portuguese GLAM institutions, some showing interest in data donation or even hosting a Wikimedia in Residence in the future. The event strengthened connections, sparked new collaborations, and provided practical examples of how Wikimedia platforms can support heritage preservation, scientific dissemination, and cultural engagement. Locally the conference, and in particular the cultural tours and the Workshop in Portuguese, have opened dozens of doors for Wikimedia Portugal and Wiki Editoras Lx to create new partnerships and collaborations with the institutions. With the existing partners the conference has also offered new ideas and examples for projects to do together with the wikimedia organizations.

Wikimedia Portugal and Wiki Editoras Lx gained new capacities and skills for organizing events within the Wikimedia movement based on the experience gained over this year. This was the largest Wikimedia event ever hosted in Portugal and a lot of effort wet into meeting many stakeholders expectations.

Many people indicated learning practical examples of how to promote, encourage, and measure gender based priorities in their GLAM Wiki work going forward, based on activities and sessions at the conference.

3. Would you say that your work improved participants’ ability to apply new skills and knowledge?

Yes

3a. If yes, please describe how and why you think this was successful. Please describe why you think this is the case.

Based on the survey results from after the conference it was noted that many sessions in particular and the conference overall provided new skills and knowledge that participants will take forward in the work and activities. As organizers we tried to offer a wide variety of subjects as well as skill level required to participate, and to strucuture the program such that participants always had an option for different skill levels. Some key examples are the workshop in portuguese which opened up the eyes of several new GLAM Institutions in portugal, as well as broadened the scope of possibility for existing partnerships. Another example was the web archiving workshop which managed to strike a good balance with the theme of resilience, the necessity and urgency of the activity, and provide practical methods using wikimedia tools and projects. 93.3% of respondents to the survey indicated either agree or totally agree when asked whether the program and sessions were relevant for their work and interests, and 92.2% respondents indicated they either agree or totally agree when asked wether it helped them improve their competencies and knowledge.

4. Please use this space to upload media and other files that help tell your story and impact. You can also provide links to them.

Field to type in URLs.

"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:GLAM_Wiki_2025 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_Wiki_2025/Program/Program https://drive.google.com/file/d/16GJfa0820fkr3WUAFfnjfO2ingm24YNM/view?usp=drive_link https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/16/my-first-glam-wiki-conference-lisbon-portugal/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/14/a-journey-through-glam-wiki-2025-when-knowledge-becomes-connection/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/10/from-dagbani-wikipedia-to-glam-wiki-portugal-a-journey-of-growth-and-connection/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/15/eduwiki-hub-in-action-highlights-from-wecudi-2025-and-glam-wiki-2025/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/29/from-lisbon-to-you-tune-in-for-glam-wiki-2025-online/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/26/greetings-from-lisbon-my-glam-wiki-story/ https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2024/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/December_2024/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/April_2025/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/June_2025/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/July_2025/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/August_2025/Contents/Portugal_report https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2025/Contents/Portugal_report"

5. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Not applicable

6. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GLAM_Wiki_2025_Program_Committee_Work_plan.pdf

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

From the beginning there was a priority for portuguese language content and protuguese speaking participants. With this in mind we made sure to have presentations and panel discussions in the main auditorium in Portuguese, to provide simultaneous interpretation between portuguese in english throughout the presentations in the auditorium, to hire portuguese speakers for diverse backgrounds and geographies for paid work, to provide information and documentation in both protuguese and english, to receive scholarship applications and program submissions in portuguese and english, and to record the auditorium in both portuguese and english. This effort will benefit the protuguese speaking community globally by providing valuable resources and information for new projects and collaborations that didn't exist previously. Our scholarship allocation also met our diversity, equity and inclusion goals. We managed gender balance and inclusion across geographies, and provided scholarships to every Wikimedia region proportionally to the applications received. The scholarship recipient summary attached provides an overview of the data.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. Were there any major challenges or things you found difficult that you would like to share? What would you do differently next time?

Wikimedia Portugal legal structure and accounting obligations in particular made payments above 5000 Euro very difficult to process, made it difficult to manage visa fee reimbursements in a uniform way, and caused adminstrative burden on staff and the board that was not easy to manage, and changed throughout the year. In general managing capacity was a recurring topic for the entire COT as well as the committees, and WMF support. We collectively took on a very big task with organizing this conference in relatively short amount of time and at times were faced with lack of human resources and time to contribute. That being said the participants and volunteers generally commended the organizers for our effort, smooth and effective management, clear, timely and usfeul communication throughout. Being in the Schengen area meant that many scholarship recipients needed to apply for visas to attend the conference. Unfortunatly a disproportianatly high number of people were denied visas, and were denied on appeal. Despite our best efforts there were 15 people who were not able to attend because there visa was declined. This year also two embassies closed or stopped receiving applications so scholars had unexpected difficulties securing application appointments. Maintaing information about the conference in Portuguese and English was a priority from the beginning. But securing proper admin priveleges and then maintaining the content proved to be a technical challenge as well as a time burden when these responsibilities and skills were not evenly distributed, or shared between multiple people. These bottle necks meant that information and updates were delayed at certain times. Two key areas desreve to be mentioned for improvement in future global events planning. The first is communicating accessibility accomodations. Although there were equipment and infrastructure for low mobility individuals (elevators, chairs and tables for eating, assistance and guidnace support available) as well as quiet areas, areas for childcare and childcare support services, these were not well communicated to participants or used by participants to their potential, and therefor the feedback in survey reflects that. Second, our closing party did not meet anyones expectations. Our capacity in the COT meant that no one was individually responsible, rather it was coordinated and planned by the hosting organization and we only provided some basic information for conference participants. When it was clear that our capacity didn't allow for adquate coordination and management of any closing event we should have canceled it rather than delegate responsibility externally.

9. Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?

We are very happy with the incredible support we received from everyone at the Wikimedia Foundation. Key to this collaboration and effort were Giovanna Fontanelle, Cornelius Kibelka, and Erin Morris, who provided guidance and support throughout the conference planning, organizing, and hosting. Thank you! As organizers we didn't successfully leverage support for external communications when it was available. It would also be helpful to have a clear mandatory operational guidelines from the foundation for future conference organizers. A toolkit or guide for visa reimbursement could also be helpful.

10. What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum?

Locally there are a lot of new opportunities from having many GLAM institutions present at the conference. WMPT will continue with the partnerships already in place and suggest to futher develop new projects based on the activities of the conference. There are also new partnership opportunities from institutions that have only just started to know about the GLAM Wiki projects. WELx will pursue small activities first in house, like editathons and similar events, to build into more lasting relationships and partnerships in the future.

11. Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.

Visa fee reimbursement plan as part of the initial conference grant application and/or planning phase. If you don't have experience with large events or hosting international participants try and do research and understand the procedures and possibilities well in advance of starting the reimbursements. Fees, payment methods, and currency exchanges etc. are all crucial to the process. Using a clear work plan for each committee was very useful and meant that volunteers knew exactly what to expect in terms of commitment and timeline. As organizers it's important to lead these processes so that volunteers can easily contribute and understand the expectations. Scholarship recipients appreciated having a dedicated communications channel to discuss challenges/issues and support each other, as well as receive centralized information and communication from the organizers. We used a telegram group and many scholarship recipients used the group to ask questions and get help regarding visa processing, travelling, and arriving in Lisbon. Hire people where you can and when it makes sense. It was a huge benefit to have people individually responsible for specific areas of the conference logistics and planning, so that the organizers could maintain the overview, participate in the program, and lead effectively. We hired an MC for the Auditorium, a volunteer coordinator, a communications coordinator, as well as two people responsible for engaging the local GLAM Culture and Heritage institutions. Including the organizers from the previous GLAM Wiki Conference in the committees as advisors really helped with the knowledge transfer and to carry their experience and expectations forward. If you are organizing a recurring conference, giving the organizers a simple advisory role and having a few meetings with them throughout the process really helped create solid frames.

Part 3: Metrics

12. Open Metrics reporting

In your application, you defined some open metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with your metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in.

Open Metrics Summary
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Participants	Number of participants and sessions per focus area (Global GLAMWiki Community, CPLP participants, southern european GLAM Wiki initiatives); 50% of the sessions and participants should be part of these areas.	50	100		Counting the number of sessions and participants.
Total number of initiatives presented	Total number of GLAM initiatives presented at the event	40	65	N/A	N/A
Percentage of presentations related to CPLP	Percentage of presentations related to CPLP, percent of program conducted in Portuguese, and other languages	30	11	N/A	These were scheduled and invited this way.
Strategic vision	Articulated goals of a GLAM, Culture and Heritage focused Wiki structure (eg. user-group, affiliate, or otherwise). The output would be one strategic plan or a timeline.	1	5	N/A	Startegy session published outcome on Commons.
Diversity	Participant diversity (languages, nationalities, genders, age, etc.)	N/A	N/A	Participants from every Wikimedia Region, high gender diversity from survey results, a variety of ages, from 4 months old to 65+ years.	N/A

13. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

Yes

13a. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future. Also mention why you felt you had to change some metrics.

Our first metric should have been divided into separate things to measure, and should not have included ""Global GLAM Wiki Communty"" because in essence everything was from the GLAM Wiki Community, as are the majority of the participants. 25% of the program sessions were lead/presented from Southern European GLAM Wiki projects. We had participants from Brazil, Portugal and Guine Bissau (CPLP: Community of Portuguese Language Countries)

14. Please indicate if you applied any of the following survey and registration tools. Please select all that apply.

1. Standard Registration Form, 2. Post-event participant survey

14a. Please share the result(s) with us, provide the link(s) or summarize the main result(s) and insight(s) from them.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GLAM_Wiki_Conference_2025_%E2%80%94_Evaluation_Summary.pdf

14b. If you used other forms, please share them with us, as these forms might be useful for others to use.

Part 4: Financial reporting and compliance

15. & 16. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

110784 EUR

17. Please state the total amount spent in USD.

129710 USD

18. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload a financial report file.

Please provide a link to your financial reporting document.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WWBrTldke1B-HPlEsnUDOJKtXyGezp5u7es7VfGaeDQ/edit?usp=sharing

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

19. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

Changes are noted in the report.

20. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

No

20a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

N/A

20b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

N/A

20c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

N/A

21. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

Yes

22. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

23. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

24. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.

If you are planning to have in-person planning meetings with the COT, do these early on in the process. We also hosted a partners dinner on the second night of the conference, which was a strategic way to engage our international and local partners together. This was very useful for building relationships. Increased security measures at the venue(s) were a last minute addition and created logistical challenges and an unexpected burden on participants, but did not negatively impact the experience of participants. Volunteers quickly adapted and accomodated the additional responsibilities.