Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Evaluation and Planning for Scaling the Language Revitalization Accelerator/Final Report
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Part 1: Understanding your work
[edit]Per the recent update on the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy process, Wikimedia Affiliates that are General Support Fund grantees will fulfill their affiliate reporting requirements through their final or yearly grantee report.
If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate, you will use this form for your affiliate reporting and to address the affiliate health criteria. You do not need to submit a separate report to AffCom. Follow the guidance in the green boxes to report on how you met the corresponding affiliate health criteria.
If you are not a Wikimedia Affiliate, aligning your responses with the affiliate criteria is optional and not required.
1. Please share to what extent your programs, approaches, and strategies contributed to addressing the challenges you shared in your proposal. If they did not contribute as you believed they would, please share what obstacles you faced and what, if anything, you learned from them? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 1.) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 1.1 (Goal delivery). Describe how you actively delivered on mission goals, e.g. content creation.
In 2021-2024, we piloted a model for launching and growing new language revitalization projects to measurably reverse the trend of language extinction over time. The pilot took the form of an annual fellowship to which anyone could apply. We soon learned from the contents of applications that mother-tongue Wikipedia work—creating new language versions of Wikipedia, amplifying oral knowledge on Commons, and more—has become an increasingly popular tactic for teaching, sharing, and using endangered languages online. In response, we developed a special track of our fellowship for on-Wiki language work, which, in two years, has brought 20 underserved language communities (and their knowledge) into the movement's fold. In 2024, the track supported 10 mother-tongue Wikimedia projects.
The Wikimedia track was the first thematic working group of our fellowship. Before its inception, we provided bespoke support to each fellow, which limited our ability to scale. By contrast, fellows participating in the Wiki track were exposed to a standard curriculum on the principles and tactics of language revitalization, as well as a specialized support structure tailored to the specific needs of Wikimedia projects. We hired a Wikimedian-in-Residence to provide that support, guiding fellows through the technical specifics of Wikimedia platforms and the process of establishing a community presence within the movement. This proved to be a successful model for streamlining intensive support—not just for Wikimedia projects but for fellows whose mother-tongue projects emphasize education, traditional ecological knowledge, or other areas. The working group model is important to our growth strategy for the next three years and is described in our 2025-2027 Strategic Plan, a link to which is included below.
In parallel with concluding our fellowship pilot, we published a new strategic plan, which will guide our programs through 2027. We dedicated considerable program hours to developing that plan in order to reflect on what we did well in 2021-2023, what we could have done better, and how we can grow our impact. We initiated that evaluation by holding a community feedback round in Q1-Q2, inviting fellowship alumni, volunteers, and other key stakeholders to share what Wikitongues means to them. Seventy-five people from 27 countries completed a survey, and we conducted one-on-one interviews with a select group of respondents; this qualitative data informed the assessment of the pilot period. After completing an early draft of our Strategic Plan in Q3, we invited our community to critique the plan in a public feedback round. Twenty-one people responded, rating the plan 4.48/5 stars. We incorporated elements of their feedback into the final draft of the plan (linked below). Anonymized survey responses are available upon request.
Though it is still early, having this strategic plan has made it easier for us to be decisive and make decisions as an organization. We have designed better programs, more efficiently evaluated prospective partners, and more easily made tough decisions when hiring staff. Moreover, we now have a more rigorous understanding of our role in the Wikimedia movement, particularly in relation to the nascent Language Diversity Hub, giving us a pathway to consolidating language diversity efforts in the movement over the next 18 months. This is our second strategic plan and the first developed in response to structured feedback from our community. To make time for this process, we scaled back our other programs, reducing our fellowship to just 10 activists in 2024. So far, it appears that this time allocation was worth it, and we will likely continue to involve our community in the development of future strategic plans.
Perhaps the most surprising outcome of 2024 was the success of our Wiki Loves Mother Tongue campaign, which significantly increased our User Group's contributions to Wikimedia. Historically, our volunteers and Wikimedia track fellows collectively contributed new Wikipedia articles, Wikidata items, and other platform edits in the hundreds. In 2024, however, our contributions entered the thousands. This suggests that thematic campaigns are a robust way to incentivize contributions, and that there is an appetite in the movement for more emphasis on linguistic and cultural diversity. We will monitor our output this year to better understand whether 2024's results were an anomaly or something to replicate.
2. Is there a plan to build on the key successes you had? If yes, please describe the plan and if no, please share the limitations to do so. For instance, did the activities lead to any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future? (required)
In 2021-2024, our Language Revitalization Fellowship supported 50 language projects, 20 of which measurably expanded language diversity across Wikimedia platforms. Our 2025-2027 Strategic Plan builds on that success by scaling the fellowship's capacity—enough to support up to 100 languages per year. We will achieve that growth by dividing the program into three tiers: an intensive tier with funding and consistent hands-on support for participating fellows, a P2P tier with funding opportunities and lighter support for participants, and a self-guided program to which almost anyone can apply. As we alluded to above, we're able to scale our support without linearly growing our team by emphasizing thematic working groups—a key learning from the success of our fellowship's Wikimedia track in 2023-2024.
As of this report, we're in the process of onboarding 20 fellows to our 2025 intensive cohort and have invited about 30 activists to our first-ever P2P cohort, which we plan to onboard in April. We're still designing the self-guided layer of the program, which we plan to launch sometime in 2026. Right now, our fellowship's biggest constraint is funding. Ideally, our fellowship's intensive tier would support up to 40 fellows per year, but we can't afford to give grants to that many fellows or hire the support staff needed to effectively support their work. Similarly, we could launch the self-guided tier sooner if we could afford to have more hands on deck.
As we described above, an unexpected outcome of drafting our new strategic plan was arriving at a better understanding of the distinction between Wikitongues and the Language Diversity Hub. Thanks to that clarity, we're now in active conversation with the LDH steering committee and relevant WMF staff about consolidating our programs, which would build a wider "front door" to the Wikimedia movement for underrepresented and unrepresented language communities. This could have a catalytic impact on the movement's reach in the next 3-5 years.
3. Please provide a link to reports that detail the activities that took place in the last year. This can include an annual report, Meta pages, and websites. If there are no links available, briefly describe the implemented activities and programs below or upload any files. (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 3.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.1 (Affiliate health & resilience), 4.1 (Internal engagement), 4.2 (Community connection), and 4.3 (Partnerships and collaboration):
- Describe your activities engaging new users, new members for your decision-making body(ies), and developing leaders and organizers (2.1).
- Describe your activities creating or hosting spaces to encourage greater collaboration and engagement among your members (4.1).
- Describe how you engage with the contributing community that you serve and/or support (4.2).
- Describe your partnerships with other affiliates or with non-Wikimedia entities (4.3).
We have attached a summary of our fellows' community impact in 2024, as well as our 2021-2023 Impact Report. Our 2024 Impact Report will be ready in the next few weeks, once we finish our 2024 financial statements. We will submit that as soon as it's ready. Our Meta page also has information about our impact: [1].
4. Are you interested in sharing what you achieved or learned this year with the wider community through different peer learning programs (e.g. Let's Connect program, Diff)? (optional)
We are happy to share our work as is relevant and possible!
5. Did you collect feedback from your community or target groups on how the activities implemented impacted them? If yes, please attach/provide information on the results (e.g. community surveys, stories, impact booklets/reports, interviews with partner institutions, etc). Did you collect other impact-specific data? (required)
For affiliates, the response to Question 5. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criteria 4.1 (Internal Engagement), 4.2 (Community Connection), or 4.3 (Partnerships & collaboration), where applicable.
As described above, we collected community feedback to inform our 2025-2027 Strategic Plan. For these purposes, "community" included fellowship alumni, volunteers, User Group members, partner representatives, and other key stakeholders. We gathered initial feedback through an open-ended survey, which was completed by seventy-five people from 27 countries in Q1-Q2. After drafting an early version of our Strategic Plan in Q3, we invited our community to critique it in a public feedback round. Twenty-one people responded, rating the plan 4.48/5 stars. Throughout the process, we also conducted 1:1 interviews with select respondents. The interviews were not recorded, but we can provide anonymized survey responses upon request.
Additionally, we have collected several testimonials about the community impact of Wikitongues programs. Please let us know if you would like to share these testimonials publicly so we can secure permission from the individuals to whom they are attributed.
"Just a few months ago, the idea of revitalizing our language seemed impossible. In a short time, Wikitongues has made the difference. Because of Wikitongues, I'm confident our dream of becoming fluent Afro-Seminole Creole speakers again is well within reach." — Windy Goodloe, Wikitongues fellow
"No organization of Wikitongues' size has impacted as many people as Wikitongues has." —Jonathan Mayers, Wikitongues fellow
"Wikitongues is a reliable friend which I have relied on so often to discuss my linguistic cons and strengthen my Creole lectures at Indiana University Bloomington. From listening, sometimes, to the last speaker of a near-extinct language and the strategies in place to prevent the worst, I always feel more inspired and intelligent after one minute of scrolling down the available resources." —Websder Corneille, Adjunct Lecturer at Indiana University Bloomington
"I have been a fan of Wikitongues for years, it is a part of what drew me to linguistics. As a teen, I remember watching videos of endangered languages and wanting to be a part of that process and envisioning those videos for my own family's endangered dialects." —Maggie Jones,
Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics (Indigenous Languages Program), First Nations University of Canada"I believe that Wikitongues is doing one of the most important parts in promoting linguistic diversity and addressing language endangerment: raising awareness. Through Wikitongues, people from all around the world have the opportunity to see and hear the beautiful diversity of languages from across the planet. For communities in diaspora, online resources are invaluable for reconnecting with or staying connected to their heritage languages." —Evan Owens, BA candidate in Linguistics at the University of Amherst
6. During the fund period, did your efforts do any of the following? (required):
For affiliates, the response to Question 6. also partially addresses Affiliate Health Criterion 2.2 (Diversity balance).
- 6.1 Bring in participants from the following groups: indigenous groups , speakers of minority languages, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA)
- 6.2 Develop content about the following underrepresented topics or groups of people: women, indigenous groups, speakers of minority languages, underrepresented geographical regions (ESEAP, LATAM, SSA, MENA, SA), other
- 6.3 Support the retention of: Editors, Organizers, Partnerships, Wikimedians in Residence positions
7. What, if any, effective tactics or approaches can you share that worked well when dealing with the programs under points 6.1-6.3 that you selected? (optional)
As described above, the Wiki Loves Mother Tongues campaign drove an unexpectedly high level of contributions in 2024, with an emphasis on content about and by the above groups.
8. If you developed partnerships, which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors (optional):
Permanent staff outreach, Staff hired through the fund, Partners proactive interest
Part 2: Metrics
[edit]| Metrics name | Target | Result | Comments and tools used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of all participants | 50 | ||
| Number of all editors | 240 | ||
| Number of new editors | 120 | ||
| Number of retained editors | 120 | ||
| Number of all organizers | 20 | ||
| Number of new organizers | 10 |
| Wikimedia project | Target - Number of created pages | Target - Number of improved pages | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 300 | 300 | 5010 | 13400 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 50 | 1030 | ||
| Wikidata | 500 | 1800 | 7400 | |
| Wiktionary | 312 | |||
| Wikisource | ||||
| Wikimedia Incubator | ||||
| Translatewiki | 2466 | |||
| MediaWiki | ||||
| Wikiquote | ||||
| Wikivoyage | ||||
| Wikibooks | ||||
| Wikiversity | ||||
| Wikinews | ||||
| Wikispecies | ||||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
11. Did you set other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No
11.1. Other Metrics.
In your application, you outlined some other open metrics that you would like to measure. Please fill out the achieved results for each of the open metrics you defined.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Languages added to Wikipedia | In the form of active incubator versions or newly approved Wikipedias; target to be determined by the composition of the 2024 Accelerator cohort. | |||
| Languages added to Commons | In the form of mother-tongue media samples and other content; target to be determined by the composition of the 2024 Accelerator cohort, up to 10. | |||
| Languages added to Wikidata | In the form of lexemes; target to be determined by the composition of the 2024 Accelerator cohort, up to 10. | |||
| Languages added to Wiktionary | In the form of mother-tongue word entries; target to be determined by the composition of the 2024 Accelerator cohort, up to 10. | |||
| Languages added to Wikisource | In the form of mother-tongue documents and incubator versions; target to be determined by the composition of the 2024 Accelerator cohort, up to 10. |
Part 3: Skill Development / Capacity Building
[edit]12. Reflecting on your programmatic (external) and organizational (internal) work, did your grant support you to undergo any skill development that made a difference to your success? If yes, what skill was developed, and how did it lead to success? (e.g. received coaching on public speaking, attended training on nonviolent communication, hosted professional development conversations on leadership, learned and used a new tool for project management, etc.)? Can you share any materials? (required)
For affiliates, use this space (Question 12.) to address Affiliate Health Criteria 2.2 (Diversity balance) and 3.1 (Diverse, Skilled, and Accountable Leadership):
- Describe actions taken to prioritize gender balance in affiliate leadership, as well as any areas of diversity relevant to your affiliate's context (2.2).
- Describe the management, financial, or other leadership skills of your affiliate leaders. If you have a succession plan, please include it here (3.1).
- Describe any training or skill development (as outlined in the question above) (3.1).
- Incorporate into the annual report a disclosure of conflict of interests (if any) from the leadership (3.1).
As a remote organization, we have invested time in developing a better workflow for collaborating across time zones. For at least three years, we've maintained a robust project management system that organizes tasks by points and work cycles into two-week periods—a riff on the agile methodology. The system has served us well in planning, but we've struggled to effectively communicate the relevant details of each team member's day-to-day work, as well as the contents of their external meetings with volunteers, partners, and funders. This year, we made progress toward bridging that process gap by building a custom CRM in Airtable, which we integrated with our planner, and by having each team member commit to documenting their work in Notion. So far, these enhancements are working well.
13. What is one capacity/skill area that you would like to focus on for the next year? And how do you plan to achieve this capacity? (required)
In 2025, we will build on the process improvements we made in 2024, further enhancing our team's efficiency. This will include iterating on the ongoing process of more clearly defining the division of work between our Director, Programs Director, and Wikimedian-in-Residence.
14. If you have additional information or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. Use the space below to upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your report.
For affiliates, also use this section (Question 14) to fulfill the Affiliate Health Criteria requirements.
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for affiliate governance, including affiliate leadership and membership with a breakdown of the demographics; how elections are conducted; how conflicts of interest are declared; and how decisions are made and communicated (2.2, 2.3, 3.1).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for activities incorporating, promoting awareness about, or enforcing the Universal Code of Conduct in your affiliate's activities (3.3).
- Describe and link to any public-facing documentation for internal membership engagement, such as notes from your regular meetings and how you communicate to or involve your membership (4.1).
Response to requested revisions:
Criteria 2.2 Diversity balance (especially gender) [Q6]: Engaged speakers from Indigenous and minority language communities, with content focused on women and underrepresented regions. No specific gender balance data, but diversity is core to all programming.
Wikitongues strives to maintain an equitable and fair gender balance among our leadership, staff, and fellows. Currently, our board members are 2/3 men and 1/3 women; our FTE staff are 1/3 men and 2/3 women; our active interns have a 50/50 gender balance; and our fellows to date have been 2/3 men and 1/3 women. We maintain broad diversity in our community by ensuring our annual fellowship cohorts include representation from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and, when possible, Oceania. All five regions are represented in our 2025 fellowship cohort.
Criteria 2.3 Good governance & communication [Q14]: Described improved decision-making via a strategic plan developed with broad community input. No details on leadership or election processes. UCoC mentioned but not elaborated.
Wikitongues operates with a lean, collaborative leadership model. Executive roles are assigned based on skill and function rather than elected office. Input is gathered through open forums, surveys, and feedback during program design. As we develop our long-term strategy, we are exploring participatory models to formalize leadership pathways, while staying accountable to our mission and community. We enforce the UCoC and friendly space policy obligations that govern our spaces during meetings as well as in organised trainings.
Criteria 3.1 Diverse, skilled, and accountable leadership [Q12]: Implemented agile-based planning, improved documentation through Airtable and Notion. Focus for 2025 includes clearer division of labor among leadership. No conflict of interest disclosures included.
All Wikitongues board members sign a Conflict of Interest disclosure as part of onboarding. We can provide individual board agreements upon request.
Criteria 3.3 Universal Code of Conduct compliance [Q14]: UCoC acknowledged; activities or enforcement not specified.
We uphold the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) in all Wikitongues activities. Our community members are informed of the UCoC upon joining our fellowship, any online meetings, or local events. During onboarding, fellows are informed that reports can be made via email to core leadership via fellows@wikitongues.org. We have not yet formalized a standalone enforcement policy and haven't yet received any reports of misconduct from our community, but we would handle any report of misconduct according to UCoC best practices.
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]For affiliates, also use this section (Part 4: Financial reporting) to address Affiliate Health Criterion 3.2 (Financial & Legal Compliance).
| Description | Planned / received budget for this category (USD) | Amount spent (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Personnel costs | 58000 | 15320 |
| Operational costs | 0 | 0 |
| Programmatic costs | 58000 | 42680 |
| Total General Support Fund | 58000 | 58000 |
| Other revenue | 371114 | 205651 |
| Remaining funds from General Support Fund | N/A |
15. Please state the total amount spent from this fund in your local currency. (required)
58000 USD
16. Please provide an overview of the amount spent from this fund in the following budget categories in your local currency. (required)
- Operational costs: 0 USD
- Programmatic costs: 15320 USD
- Staff and contractor costs: 42680 USD
17. Did you have any other revenue sources (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes
- 17.1. Provide the total amount received from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 371114 USD
- 17.2. Provide the total amount spent from other revenue sources in your local currency. (required): 205651 USD
18. Provide a financial report document which will provide the details of funds received and spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
The link above leads to a draft of our December financial statement. We're currently in the middle of a year-end financial review with our accountant and can provide a completed report once that review is finished, or we can submit our full 990 in May.
Please note that Wikitongues served as the fiscal sponsor for two grants in 2024. These grants totaled $66,465. Therefore, even though our 12-month revenue was $371,114, only $304,649 represents funds for our organization.
18.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
n/a
19. Do you have any unspent funds from this funding?: No
20. Final confirmations (required)
- 20.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement? You must be in compliance 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 Wikimedia Foundation mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
- Yes
- 20.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
- Yes
- 20.3. 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
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