Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025/Final Report

Conference Fund Final Report

Report Status: Under review

Due date: 30 December 2025

Funding program: Conference Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Title of proposal: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025
Username of applicant: Geraki
Name of organization: N/A
Amount awarded: 165622.87
Amount spent: 152283.36 USD, 129388.13 EUR

Part 1: Understanding your work

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

The conference fulfilled expectations in several areas. Notably, participation from underrepresented groups (particularly women volunteers and newer contributors from smaller Wikimedia communities) was higher than anticipated. Conversely, we observed lower-than-expected attendance from academic institutions. However, this has provided us with a clear baseline to restructure our outreach strategy for 2026, specifically targeting university partnerships earlier in the planning cycle.

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

We anticipate sustained collaboration among CEE Wikimedia communities with stronger regional networks. The cross-border connections established during the meeting should facilitate knowledge-sharing in content development, support for underrepresented Wikipedia topics, and coordinated advocacy efforts. We expect to see increased participation in subsequent regional initiatives and improved sustainability of local Wikimedia communities.

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.

Success resulted from hands-on workshop design with experienced facilitators, peer-to-peer learning through working group sessions, and follow-up materials distributed after the conference. Participants valued the mix of technical training and community-building activities, with experienced and new contributors working together, which created mentorship opportunities. Utilizing professional event managers enabled organizers to focus on movement strategy, facilitation, and community governance, not logistics, and reduced operational failure risk (venue, suppliers, safety, accessibility, continuity and vendor coordination).

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.

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	Strongly 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	Strongly agree

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.

Why can’t we do it too? A community’s journey to organize its first CEE Meeting

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?

N/A

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?

We faced administrative hurdles regarding participant compliance. Many applicants did not read the provided guidelines or documentation, leading to basic errors in their applications (such as misspelled names) that required manual correction. Also, although there were clear guidelines elsewhere, some participants were applying for the maximum funding amount regardless of actual need. Next time, we will implement stricter, standardized travel policies to minimize ad-hoc individual requests, to minimize administrative negotiation. Event managers absorbed unpredictable workload spikes that would otherwise destabilize the organizing team. For events above regional threshold size, professional event management should be considered baseline infrastructure, not overhead.

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

A minor bottleneck in inviting participants and facilitating their visa applications was the process of obtaining the Memorandums of Insurance issued by Zurich via the WMF. Although the Travel & Convening team was very responsive, the procedure itself caused a delay of several days. This created unnecessary stress for applicants as their visa appointment dates approached. Streamlining this workflow would be a welcome improvement.

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

Leverage the organizational expertise gained to establish a recurring Greek Wikimedia Meeting. Furthermore, we aim to institutionalize our participation in CEE working groups and initiate structured cross-community collaboration projects, ensuring that the momentum from Thessaloniki translates into long-term thematic collaborations (e.g., on Wikidata and Libraries)

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

Establish clear soft and hard deadlines, and avoid extensions. Consider participant requests only when they do not affect deadlines or add significant operational workload. Plan for incomplete compliance with instructions: assume some applicants will not read guidelines or may submit incorrect information (including their own names -- yes it happened). Build in validation and double-checks for critical fields wherever feasible.
Set up participant affinity groups before the event to strengthen connections and improve coordination. Use these groups both for retention (onboarding and follow-up) and as structured feedback channels for continuous improvement.
Organize a local tour before the actual conference. Providing a structured opportunity for sightseeing early on reduces attendee attrition during conference sessions, ensuring higher engagement in the workshops.
Scope of the "learning day" (pre-conference): For this CEE Meeting we decided to try smth different than workshops for newcomers, so the focus was Linked Open Data (Wikidata/Wikibase) and Libraries. While a majority of the audience was enthusiastic, another group of participants were not interested at all. We still feel the having a specific focus for the LD is a good idea, but the subject should be announced initiallty, before the registration period.
For events above regional threshold size, professional event management should be considered baseline infrastructure, not overhead.

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
Number of Participants	We expect at least 150 members from different affiliations and communities, invited guests, and local and self-funded participants.	150	161	N/A	Data tables from the registration form. Not included ~20 volunteers.
Number of Submissions	We expect approximately 80 submissions for the program based on the number of previous conferences.	80	110	N/A	https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2025_submissions
Feedback from participants	The number of feedback we expect from participants will help us analyze our event while preparing final report.	40	80	Participants were asked to fill the survey during the closing ceremony.	Google Forms
Partner Involvement	We are expecting 15 representatives from the WMGR Partner Organizations	15	12	N/A	The organizers were so focused on organizing the conference itself that they didn't pay much attention to their own collaborations.
Institutions	We expect the involvement of at least four educational institutions in Greece in our event.	4	3	Same as previous.	N/A

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

No

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.

N/A

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://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12wMLI9LrQ3W-XeqOzlbXncNwryqfem3QSjHZajanXCQ/edit?gid=234801694#gid=234801694

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.

129388.13 EUR

17. Please state the total amount spent in USD.

152283.36 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/1SwuzOa8Pi9yWosPdQoVoJhEHFlYJOvZS_lU-EBfqnv0/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.

Offered 'merit' scholarships in order to include more females and newcomers.
Organized a city tour, as it was strongly asked by participants.
Offered Sunday dinner to all participants instead of only the scholars.
Hired a security guard to ensure compliance with Friendly Space Policy.

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

Yes

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

€15.344,87 remained unspent because (a) better-than-expected rates were secured with vendors through our pro managers, (b) the final number of delegates was slightly lower than projected, and (c) the contingency budget was ultimately not needed.

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

B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future request with PO approval

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

We propose to reallocate the underspent funds to be added to the opening balance of our upcoming 2026 General Support Grant. This will reduce the total request amount for that future grant and allow us to flexibly allocate these funds toward the Greek Community Meetup and other high-priority volunteer support costs.

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.

An internal question arose regarding whether the CEE Meeting should be an 'open' event or a 'closed' (strictly community-focused) conference. As the primary scope is to convene the CEE communities, the event is structured around a formal list of delegations, with other participants attending on a 'self-funded' basis. However, since the cost of hosting self-funded participants is still substantial, we decided against advertising the conference to a wider audience once the projected attendance exceeded our budgeted goal.