Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/AvoinGLAM 2026

statusUnder review

Wikimedia Community Fund

AvoinGLAM 2026

Fluxx IDR-GS-2508-19821

start date2026-01-01

end date2026-12-31

budget (local currency)75027 EUR

amount requested (USD)82589.72 USD

grant typeGroup of individuals not registered with an organization

funding regionNWE

decision fiscal year2025-26

funding program roundRound 1

organization (if applicable)AvoinGLAM

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Universal Code of Conduct

Application Privacy Statement

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the web service of Wikimedia Foundation Funds, where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

Applicant information

Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)

AvoinGLAM

Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)

Yes, I have already applied and received a General Support Fund

You are applying as a(n). (required)

Group of individuals not registered with an organization

Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)

No

Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

Fiscal organization name.

Open Knowledge Finland ry

Please provide links to the following documents if they are available

These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.

• Organizational website
• Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
• Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
• Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan

Organizational website: https://okf.fi/

Detailed financial reporting and/or audits: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WtPF51WA8dHBsUnk6cXSf89_E2zVjYam?usp=drive_link Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes https://www.okf.fi/fi/yhdistys/ (website unfortunately broken) Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan TBD December

Main proposal

1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)

AvoinGLAM 2026

2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants)

No

2.1. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)

N/A

3. Proposed start date. (required)

2026-01-01

4. Proposed end date. (required)

2026-12-31

5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)

Yes

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GmTa6HSURs7g8T2iJpuA4GPFM1tJXIz8XQrf9tlzOg/edit?usp=sharing

6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)

Yes

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/AvoinGLAM/AvoinGLAM_charter

7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)

International (more than one country across continents or regions)

The Oulu Löyly event will have a regional focus of the Nordic and Baltic countries while inviting participants globally to address specific issues of the event.

The Finnish advocacy network gathers knowledge organizations to joint information sharing and coordination on advocacy regarding open knowledge and culture.

We continue to contribute to the global activities of the global GLAM Wiki community.

8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

Challenges we are addressing

In 2026 we focus on community heritage and problems that small, under-resourced communities face when trying to share their heritage as part of the cultural commons. These issues are practical and technical: a lack of affordable, easy-to-use platforms that build upon information from other cultural heritage resources. Issues may also be legal and rights-based, with a need to grant communities sovereignty over the heritage they share. They may also be epistemological, with communities struggling to fit cultural expressions into the standard internet mould.

Our advocacy for open knowledge and culture will address digital sovereignty, both in safeguarding indigenous and community control over their cultural heritage and in the broader geopolitical struggles affecting open access. Further challenges to open culture and knowledge are posed by the changing security apprehension and the repercussions of AI. We must also address the challenges of our own sustainability by strengthening alliances, securing resources to have more capacity to support long-term impact.

We continue to provide support for the global GLAM community in establishing a strong position within the Wikimedia community and contributing to a thriving cultural commons together with partners and allies.

The sustainability of culture is threatened by political and economic pressures that seek to erase, control, or commodify cultural knowledge.

Our programs

Events – Oulu Löyly is a regionally focused, internationally relevant hands-on event as part of the Oulu Cultural Capital program. It focuses on giving space to underrepresented voices from small cultural heritage organizations to Nordic minority communities, and explores solutions for digital preservation, cultural rights, and self-determination. The goal is to bring together cultural heritage professionals, creative actors, decision-makers, and technologists in a joint think & do format to create practical solutions and policy proposals. We continue to collaborate on the OKFI events. In 2026 we will focus on the joint Winter Festival.

Public Policy Advocacy The Finnish Advocacy Network will bring together a broader network of cultural heritage professionals as well as reach out to the different networks of open knowledge in Finland. The work has started in 2025 by setting up the structures, and in 2026 we start coordinated work on spearheading topics. We focus on digital sovereignty issues arising from the work in Oulu Löyly, responding to changes brought about by the changing security landscape and repercussions of AI. Our goal is to employ an advocacy coordinator that can establish the basis of a permanent and growing activity, supporting other knowledge organizations in Finland.

Collaboration of the Cultural Commons. We will continue work started with the GLAM pages revamp to make resources accessible for GLAM Wiki contributors as well as partners and allies. We work together with the Content Partnerships Hub to mobilize their Metabase platform for providing the data for the GLAM Wiki pages. This is expected to be funded by the Content Partnerships Hub initiative.

Our approaches

Our excellence is to bring people together in informal, out-of-the-ordinary settings, to allow them to creatively address the challenges in their work in collaboration with unexpected co-creators.

The collaborative work addresses public policy, infrastructure, best practices, and outreach issues regarding the cultural commons.

We communicate with a broad network, and plan to consolidate this work to strengthen the global GLAM community in Wikimedia as well as beyond.

Our strategies

In Oulu Löyly, we bring together a multi-skilled group of actors to create practical outcomes for policy, innovation and collaboration.

Through the Finnish advocacy network we plan to reinforce the collaboration among knowledge preservation and sharing actors in Finland to confront the challenges arising from the developments in the legal landscape. A new part-time advocacy coordinator (external funding to be applied) will provide a fertile ground for bringing the different knowledge actors together in a long-term strategic activity.

We will support efforts to enshrine the public value of knowledge in global legal mechanisms, such as in #CultureGoal2030 and in the Open Heritage Statement produced by the TAROCH initiative of Creative Commons.

Through the collaboration of the cultural commons, we coordinate and participate in empowering the global GLAM Wiki community, through community activities and managing internal knowledge and external communications.

9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)

Category	Yes/No
Education	No
Culture, heritage or GLAM	Yes
Gender and diversity	No
Community support and engagement	No
Participation in campaigns and contests	No
Public policy advocacy	Yes
Other	No

Culture, heritage or GLAM

9.2. Select all your programs and activities for Culture, heritage or GLAM. (required)

Introducing new approaches to underrepresented culture and heritage, e.g. decolonising or reparative work; oral and visual knowledge; outreach to communities of origin, indigenous and first nations self-determination, Supporting institutions to open up their collections, data, metadata, and research, Supporting GLAM professionals to incorporate use of Wikimedia in their work, through documentation, training, or Wikimedian in Residence programs, Partnering with institutions, professional associations, and allied organizations to raise awareness of open culture, ethical sharing, and related issues

Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Public policy advocacy

9.6.1. What specific laws, or legislative topics, are you targeting with your advocacy plans? Please be as specific as possible. (required)

We will explore the space between digital sovereignty and open access, as open access is being criticized harshly from security perspectives. On the other hand, it relates to indigenous data sovereignty and new trends in the sustainable data commons, ensuring communities, especially small, under-resourced, and indigenous, retain control over their cultural heritage.

The repercussions of AI include the desire of memory institutions to close access to their materials. We will explore the available policy actions to address the threats of the erosion of openness and growing challenge of bias with knowledge sources being commodified or protected.

9.6.2. What are the main methods and tactics via which you plan to advocate for this public policy change? Please be as specific as possible. (required)

We will collaborate on initiatives aiming to enshrine culture as a public good in global agreements. In 2026, through Oulu Löyly activities, we have the opportunity to explore this in practice, collaborating on the Open Heritage Statement and related initiatives (#CultureGoal2030) and envisioning further policy action initiatives together with a broad network of likeminded actors.

Through the Finnish advocacy network we plan to reinforce the collaboration among knowledge preservation and sharing actors in Finland to confront the challenges arising from the developments in the legal landscape. A new part-time advocacy coordinator with further funding we apply for, will provide a fertile ground for bringing the different knowledge actors together in a long-term strategic activity. We will also explore the possibilities for Nordic collaboration in policy issues.

We had to abandon our project for creative advocacy in 2025, as our fiscal sponsor Open Knowledge Finland was defunded. We would like to re-initiate this project on popularizing knowledge and science, but we cannot manage it within this staffing. If hiring the part-time advocacy lead proves successful, we can seek further support for this.

9.6.3. Approximately, how much of the requested budget will you dedicate to public policy advocacy (local currency)?

4300 EUR

10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)

Developing version https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a_WhItBvvRHJFU51nCG1xjvk120rxHN_ek8Bdjs2b5k/edit?gid=543933506#gid=543933506

11. Describe your team. (required)

AvoinGLAM coordinator Susanna Ånäs (salaried)

AvoinGLAM volunteer steering group 2025, to be elected in December 2025: Andrew Paterson Julia Brungs Kimberli Mäkäräinen Liisi Soroush Ranjit Menon Tove Ørsted Tuomas Nolvi

Advocacy coordinator (to be hired, part time, 12 mo, further funding)

Oulu Löyly team (further funding): Oulu Löyly coordinator, a culture producer (to be hired, full-time, 3 mo) Oulu Löyly trainee 1 (to be hired, full-time, 3 mo) Oulu Löyly trainee 2 (to be hired, full-time, 3 mo) Tech / AV lead (to be hired, part-time, 3 mo)

12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)

In the Collaboration of the Cultural Commons programme, we support the global GLAM Wiki community by organising global calls and other activities. Secondly, we are working on a specific project to connect the data gathered on Metabase to the GLAM pages on Metawiki.

In Oulu Löyly, we collaborate with the Nordic and Baltic chapters to organise meetups for the event and to engage with memory institutions across the Nordic and Baltic countries. In addition, we have mobilised a network of dozens of like-minded organisations, first to respond to our survey and then to participate in and contribute to the think & do event.

We hope that, as a result, we will be able to fuel advocacy in the Finnish Advocacy Network, as well as collaborate more closely with our peer organizations in the Nordic and Baltic countries on advocacy issues.

13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required)

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Manage Internal Knowledge, Identify Topics for Impact

Metrics

Wikimedia Metrics

14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)

14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.

All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.

Participants, editors, and organizers

Metrics name	Target	Description
Number of all participants	250	70 participants in global GLAM Wiki activities (global calls, producing materials), 20 participants in public policy advocacy in Finland and in the Nordic/Baltic states, 150 in Oulu Löyly
Number of all editors	N/A	N/A
Number of new editors	N/A
Number of retained editors	N/A
Number of all organizers	51	30 organizers of global GLAM activities we steer: 20 in GLAM calls and 10 in arranging resources for the Meta pages / Metabase. 5 active organizers in the Finnish open knowledge advocacy network. 16 organizers of Oulu Löyly.
Number of new organizers	N/A

14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)

Contributions to Wikimedia projects

Wikimedia project	Created	Edited or improved
Wikipedia
Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia

Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)

Other Metrics

15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)

Yes

Other Metrics	Description	Target
Partners	Assumed 5 organizer organizations in global GLAM Wiki daily activities, further 5 in the Metabase project. Minimum 5 organizations participating in the advocacy network. Assumed 50 organizations represented at Oulu Löyly.	65
Realizing Oulu Löyly ideas	In Oulu Löyly, we evaluate the outcome of the initiatives and goals the participants set qualitative and quantitatively. We aim for 50% positive outcome by the end of the year.	50
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

Budget

16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)

Yes

16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)

Nordic Culture Fund, unconfirmed, 64 645,00 € Wikimedia Events Grant, unconfirmed, 36 190,00 € Oulu2026, unconfirmed, 8 000,00 € Svenska kulturfonden, unconfirmed, 25 000,00 € Content Partnerships Hub, unconfirmed, 7 138,37 €

16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)

155973

17. Your local currency. (required)

EUR

18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)

75027 EUR

Multi-year funding request summary

Year	Amount (local currency)
Year 1	N/A EUR
Year 2	N/A EUR
Year 3	N/A EUR

Requested amount in USD

82589.72 USD

Multi-year funding request summary in USD

Year	Amount USD
Year 1	N/A USD
Year 2	N/A USD
Year 3	N/A USD

19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required)

Yes

19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.

1

19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)

Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.

1

19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)

None.

20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).

Budget category	Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs	64245 EUR
Operational costs	3750 EUR
Programmatic costs	7031 EUR

21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

Additional information

22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)

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By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

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