Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Community grant focused on building external funding for Wikimedia projects.
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Applicant information
[edit]- Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)
- University of Warsaw
- Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)
- No, it is my first time applying for a General Support Fund
- You are applying as a(n). (required)
- Nonprofit organization with Wikimedia mission
- Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)
- Yes
- Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- Yes
- Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
- 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
Main proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)
- Community grant focused on building external funding for Wikimedia projects.
- 2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants)
- N/A
- 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)
- 2025-08-01
- 4. Proposed end date. (required)
- 2026-07-31
- 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)
- No
- 6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
- No
- 7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
- International (more than one country across continents or regions)
- Poland
United States Across the countries we incubate projects in, right now we have partners on other projects in Germany, Switzerland, Armenia, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, and Brazil.
- 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)
The big problem we are working to solve is the limited resources for Wikimedia related work, and the lack of credit that professional get for their contributions. Our team has been working on this for some time. We started by looking at how professional organizations are engaging now (almost not at all; Buttliere & Vetter, 2024) and determined that Wikimedians need accepted, vetted, and standard metrics to better indicate to decision makers the impact of these contributions for e.g., public knowledge, also developing Wikimedia Impact Metrics, the Wikimedia Impact Tracker, and the Wikimedia Impact Visualizer (Buttliere, Vetter, Ross, 2024). As a part of this work, we found that many high quality contributors want to be doing more, but they simply do not have the time, know how to find resources, or are otherwise in some way disempowered from the system when competing against well established affiliates. Especially in a landscape dominated by large existing players that know the system well, newcomers appear to be feeling somewhat frozen out. Thus our team has decided that a program of knowledge sharing around how to get grants would be of great value to the community. One major reason for this problem is that right now affiliates are not incentivized to share grantmaking knowledge and activities. In a system where people are competing for similar limited resources of funding, it does not make that much sense to share grantmaking opportunities, since it will create more competition for you. This is good for the individual or affiliate but kind of bad for the community overall. Our major strategy is to encourage integration without competition by opening up the pool of grants that can be applied to, i.e., to large state funders and projects necessitating partners from multiple partners or regions. The COST Action that we submitted last year (Buttliere et al., 2024) included 19 Wikimedians from 14 nations, with the majority of those nations being on the targeted list for inclusion. This project is explicitly about incubating further projects by providing funding for travel and presentation, along with further grant making activities, which we intend to use to hold WikiScience preconferences for Wikimedia events within Europe. We believe Wikimedia is very fitting for the ‘weird’ grants, which need e.g., people from 3 random nations but have substantial funds available and little competition due to the specificity of the project requirements. In this case Wikimedia’s worldwide network can be of great value. We will potentiate this. —--------------- Some potential grants that we feel Wikimedia could go for within the EU: Below we list grants that are available from the European Union/ European Commission, as a part of their Work Plan 2025. They establish a new work program each year. The idea would be to have someone explicitly looking at these things and identifying ways that Wikimedians and Wikimedia affiliates could be applying for these grants.
—- CHIST-ERA Science in your Language - https://www.chistera.eu/sites/www.chistera.eu/files/CHIST-ERA%202025_Announcement_0.pdf —- —- Topic: “Science in your own language (SOL)” This multilateral call focuses on automatic translation of scientific knowledge in order to overcome language and cultural barriers. It has been designed from a dual perspective. Firstly, to account for the needs of scientists or technologists who generate knowledge in their own language but need to publish, compete or peer review in a different one. Secondly, to assist scientists, technologists or citizens who would like to benefit from the knowledge contained in documents or repositories featuring languages unknown to them. —- Citizens’ engagement and participation - https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/CERV-2025-CITIZENS-CIV?isExactMatch=true&status=31094501,31094502&order=DESC&pageNumber=4&pageSize=50&sortBy=startDate —- European Union Prize for Citizen Science - https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/CERV-2025-CITIZENS-CIV?isExactMatch=true&status=31094501,31094502&order=DESC&pageNumber=4&pageSize=50&sortBy=startDate —- Topic 1: School Education: Enhancing basic skills - https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD-SCHOOL-BS?isExactMatch=true&status=31094501,31094502&order=DESC&pageNumber=5&pageSize=50&sortBy=startDate —- —- The objective of this priority is to support EU countries in their efforts to enhancing literacy, maths and science skills by implementing effective teaching, learning and assessment practices, with a specific focus on foundational years (ECEC and primary education). —- —- Topic 6: Digital education: Assessment of digital skills and competences https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD-DIGITAL-SC?isExactMatch=true&status=31094501,31094502&order=DESC&pageNumber=5&pageSize=50&sortBy=startDate —- —- Projects under this topic will focus on the assessment of individual students’ digital skills at primary and/or secondary level including VET, the end of the secondary education cycle and explore the feasibility of assessment practices that are explicit about the level of digital skills in a variety of contexts (e.g. if digital skills are developed through a specific subject or in a transversal way). These projects will allow to identifying factors and criteria which are necessary for developing a comprehensive and robust assessment methodology for digital skills, thus supporting the creation of a progression model to assess digital skills. —- —- Topic 8: Digital education: Innovative data collection and exchange approaches in primary, secondary education (including vocational education and training) for data-informed decision-making - https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/ERASMUS-EDU-2025-PI-FORWARD-DIGITAL-DM?isExactMatch=true&status=31094501,31094502&order=DESC&pageNumber=5&pageSize=50&sortBy=startDate
—--------------
The goal of this community grant is to stimulate external grantmaking by developing lists of people who are looking for external funding, potentially relevant grants that Wikimedians can be going for (many examples given below), and getting people together in virtual coffee hours to talk about specific grants together.
The specific work packages we propose to work on over the next year include:
====The development of a database of funding opportunities.
- Identify current grant opportunities relevant to Wikimedia work, with relevant information such as links to Request For Proposals (RFP), due dates, and legibility.
- Update the database to ensure that upcoming and expired opportunities are added and removed..
- Encourage specific individuals in the movement to apply
- Workload: Half a day a week for the entire grant period for both grant partners.
====Development of a database for people that are interested in getting grants: In order to understand who needs what, we need to start with a database of people. This database would enable network building and collaboration, by listing professionals with an interest in applying for grant opportunities, their contact information, and basic demographics. Only those who have signed an agreement to publish their contact details would be listed.
- Workload: 2 weeks full time to set up; 2 days per month per partner to maintain
====Monthly email of external funds that are available. The goal is to stimulate grants by sending around periodic emails calling for people to apply for specific grants that we have learned about. In the longer term we see ourselves also as consultants for specific Wikimedia affiliates to help them find and achieve external grants.
- Monthly email of relevant potential grants for Wikimedians. Calls to join us in this endeavor.
- Workload: 2 days a month for both grant participants to develop, draft, send, and respond to emails associated with the emails (i.e., onboarding potential members).
====Focus efforts on a specific grant (one per quarter) to support and submit. The idea is to facilitate external grants. To this end we have found major success in opening our regular friday meetings to others. The idea is to focus once a month on helping a team that is aiming for one of these grants to find partners and develop their project.
- Host online virtual coffees to meet
- Workload: 2 days per week for both grant participants i.e., read proposal, develop feedback.
- Submitting a good grant = 2-3 months full time depending on size and complexity.
Strategies:
There are a wide range of activities that the grant will support, mostly through community building and network development, Workforce development and capacity building, and also Matchmaking and identifying relevant grants to go for. These actions include:
Community Building and networking.
- External Grantmaking ‘introduction pack’ - share information about external grantmaking opportunities to onboard contributors to the initiative. - Identifying individuals that are interested in grantmaking activities. - Virtual coffee sessions - informal networking opportunities between members. - Conferences - lead organisation of a workshop or meetup for grantmaking.
Workforce Development and Capacity Building
- Training - enable members to build grantmaking skills (and support development of new training in relation to external grantmaking). - Career path development - enable mobility ofWikimedia scientists and Wikimedia Champions in and out of academia. - ‘Peek into the kitchen’ - more sharing of grantmaking processes to widen understanding, improve efficiency, and inform additional activities.
Matchmaking and identifying relevant grants to go for.
- Acting as a ‘Clearinghouse’ e.g. brokering collaborations and sharing learnings about external grantmaking that can benefit all Wikimedia communities. - Matchmaking funders with researchers for funding - finding coincidences of wants to fund research of interest to both parties. - Matchmaking researchers with stakeholders (funders, journals, societies, institutions, private sector, service providers, etc) for grantmaking - Co-development of research questions and grants with members.
The main mechanisms of this work will be through list servs and other survey packaged software. For instance, we aim to develop a landing page where people can sign up for the project, and then they are put into the email list that we send the grants out to. Similarly, we expect to build a page where people can indicate grants that they would like to find partners for, or that they think Wikimedia can be a good fit for in general. This will essentially be a survey where people indicate details about the grant and then it is added to the database (e.g., yearly, one off, who is the funder), which is then also searchable and also being sent out with grants e.g., 3-6 months in advance.
We believe initiating these actions, making people aware of the opportunities, and brokering these collaborations will have a strong positive effect on the community.
How this projects achieves the Strategy 2030 goals------------------
This project meets the Strategy 2030 and Wikimedia Community goals by helping people get credit and resources for the work that they are doing. More than this, the goal is to help WikiCommunities bring in additional resources so that they can do more work.
This grant benefits the community by developing capability to get outside grants, thus also easing the budget problems that are occurring. This project is conceived of as a part of a larger initiative to ease the budget constraints of the foundation, especially by building capacity for Wiki organizations to seek and get funding from outside organizations.
The project will support communities that may have funding problems especially now. The goal of this project is to help underserved communities in terms of the funding landscape get training and resources that they need, especially from larger state funding. Especially with the recent funding problems as caused by the recent administration, the goal of this grant is to help teams move to more stable and larger state funding agencies, especially in developing regions.
- 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 | No |
| Gender and diversity | No |
| Community support and engagement | No |
| Participation in campaigns and contests | No |
| Public policy advocacy | No |
| Other | No |
- 10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/14lwv3AcPDScN-d1VYhowvXiRJpHzMClHfOpZayEUTBk/edit?tab=t.yis2esf039m9
- 11. Describe your team. (required)
Brett Buttliere is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw, Institute of Europe and the Americas, Science of Science Lab. He has worked on digital infrastructure for science, and in the last years has been advocating for more engagement from scientists with Wikimedia.
Matthew Vetter is a Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He co-chairs the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative and WikiProject Writing. His research is on Wikipedia-based education, Wikimedia policy, and generative AI. As a Wikimedia volunteer, he has has served on the Wikimedia regional grants committee for North America since August, 2021.
- 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)
Our team has by now worked with a number of Wikimedia Affiliates, the Rapid and Research fund teams, WikiEducation is an organization Matt has contributed very much to and is a partner on a research grant of ours (Buttliere, Vetter, & Ross, 2024). WikiEurope and WikimediaPolska are big time beneficiaries of the COST Action, the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative is another program Matt has contributed very much to.
- 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, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, Ensure Equity in Decision-making, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Manage Internal Knowledge, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt
Metrics
[edit]Wikimedia Metrics
[edit]- 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.
| Metrics name | Target | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 100 | We expect to have at least 100 people sign up for our email list. |
| Number of all editors | N/A | N/A |
| Number of new editors | N/A | |
| Number of retained editors | N/A | |
| Number of all organizers | 10 | Our goal is to engage with Wikimedia projects and especially grantmaking those individuals who are active but also struggling to pay their bills. We expect to recruit at least 10 individuals who are already quite involved and 10 more who are new faces that we hope to bring in. |
| Number of new organizers | 10 |
- 14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)
| 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)
Our project is not primarily about generating contributions to the knowledge base itself.
Other Metrics
[edit]- 15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)
- Yes
| Other Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of external grants identified. | One of the main goals of our work is to bring more grants to Wikimedia. The first step in this is to put some systematic effort into identifying grants and making them available to the community.
We hope to identify at least 10 potential grants a month, meaning a minimum of 100 grants identified. The goal is to find annual grants, meaning that they can be applied to year after year. |
100 |
| Grants applied to/ supported. | The major goal is to be submitting grants while it is a difficult target, we would like to be aiming to submit at least 2 grants one each six months. We also aim to support other grants, but we simply cannot promise that other people will do it. Matt and I will each aim to lead one grant each during the first year. | 2 |
| Amount of money brought in. | Ultimately, the goal is to be putting in grants so that funding is coming in. We are hoping to achieve a 2 to 1 funding return from the grants that are applied to in the first year. Importantly, this will be only measured in most likely the year following ours, since grants often take around 6 months to be awarded. | 100000 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
Budget
[edit]- 16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)
- No
- 16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)
N/A
- 16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)
- N/A
- 17. Your local currency. (required)
- USD
- 18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)
- 48000 USD
| Year | Amount (local currency) |
|---|---|
| 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.
- 2, Matt and I are the main project members and the ones who will do the work.
- 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.
- .5, That is half of one full time person.
- 19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)
- N/A
- 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 | 40000 USD |
| Operational costs | 8000 USD |
| Programmatic costs | 48000 USD |
- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
Additional information
[edit]- 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)
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
Feedback
[edit]- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.
- Wikimedia Community Fund/Proposals
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