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Feedback and Questions from the Global Advocacy Team on the Public Policy Advocacy Part of your Application

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Latest comment: 9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

We kindly require more information to make a proper assessment and recommendation on this application. As it is currently written, the scope of work does not seem to fall under public policy advocacy as the focus tends to lean towards awareness raising work rather than influencing government policies.

  • What is the policy being targeted? In order to qualify for funding, public policy advocacy initiatives need to target a specific policy or bill. No such policy or bill was mentioned in response to question. While the plans involve the exploration of how AI discussions intersect with open access and digital sovereignty discourse, there’s no specific government policy or bill actively debated on the topic. Notably, the rest of the application does not mention AI.
  • What are the tactics involved to influence policy/bill? You mention working on the Open Heritage Statement and related initiatives (#CultureGoal2030) in order to enshrine culture as a public good in global agreements. How, if at all, does this relate to the TAROCH initiative? What actions do you have in mind to enshrine culture in the Open Heritage Statement?
  • What are the “developments in the legal landscape” that you seek to confront?

Thank you for your clarifications by 16th November 2025.

On behalf of the Global Advocacy Team, ABruszik-WMF (talk) 10:48, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Kindly see the response to question #3 in the following section.
On behalf of the AvoinGLAM team, Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) 🦜 11:43, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Feedback from the NWE Regional Funds Committee

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Latest comment: 9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dear AvoinGLAM Team,

Thank you for submitting your 2026 plans for the General Support Fund. The Regional Funds Committee evaluated it and wishes to provide the following feedback:

We appreciate all the work and investment done in 2025 with regards to the GLOSS initiative and GLAM revamp, applications to support a cultural hackathon event connected to Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026, support for the GLAM Wikimedia 2025 Conference in Lisbon, in particular enriching the conference program with bringing in relevant connections and thematics, as well as the GLAM community surveys (for GLOSS and for the Oulu events) that discussed the thematic priorities and needs of the Wikimedia GLAM community. We would also like to congratulate the achievement in successfully engaging institutions in the TAROCH initiative in Finland.

Regarding your 2026 plans, as they remained very open and dependent on the success of other funding sources, we have the following, more general questions:

  • The proposal complements the proposal by Wikimedia Suomi, especially concerning the most central element as the Oulu Events in the summer of 2026. Should the necessary funding not materialise, how would that change your overall activity plan for 2026?
  • Should the Oulu event receive enough resources, what follow up activities would take place based on the Conference outcomes that are not covered by the Conference grant or other grants, and would be part of the GSF?
  • Connected to the Public Policy Advocacy review (please see above), can you please provide for us there an idea of where and when activities of the advocacy circle might be implemented in 2026?
  • How are you dividing your time and budget to integrate Metabase x GLAM Wiki pages between the Content Partnership Hub’s funding and the General Support Fund funding?
  • What plans do you have for 2026 to update your Charter from 2023 and to extend your active volunteer base?
  • How the local/regional aspects of your work are directly impacted by the global activities you participate in, and how the work with Finnish networks and indigenous communities, for example, are connected and participating in your global projects?
  • How do you see AvoinGLAM’s current and future role in the Wikimedia Movement’s GLAM landscape, in relation to the Content Partnership Hub, the emerging GLAM User Group, the World Heritage User Group and specific affiliates that work in fields related to culture and heritage?
  • And lastly, how do you plan to improve the documentation and sharing of your activities for the Wikimedia community, or contribute to skill development in the GLAM community?

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please be so kind as to complete your responses to committee feedback by 16 November 2025.

Thank you very much!

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee == ABruszik-WMF (talk) 10:53, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

1. The proposal complements the proposal by Wikimedia Suomi, especially concerning the most central element as the Oulu Events in the summer of 2026. Should the necessary funding not materialise, how would that change your overall activity plan for 2026?
  • The event budget is modular with a core event budget and additional modules.
  • The budget will be scaled according to available resources and modules funded.
  • If the core funding would fail (as seems to be the case), we would have to negotiate the use of module funds for the core event budget. If the Wikimedia Conference and Event Fund is open to restructuring the budget, we could reallocate travel costs to production costs. We would seek collaboration with Wikimedia chapters to provide travel funding opportunities for Wikimedia participants.
  • We have remaining promising options, but they would be applied for in November and January, and if successful, they would materialize later.
2. Should the Oulu event receive enough resources, what follow up activities would take place based on the Conference outcomes that are not covered by the Conference grant or other grants, and would be part of the GSF?
  • The GSF includes a total of 24 working days for the coordinator for follow-up activities of Oulu Löyly. These include
    • Analyzing and reporting the documentation of the session discussions and outputs (recordings and online notes).
    • Creating and analyzing the responses of a post-event survey.
    • Analyzing and publishing the map of collaborations formed, and the co-created roadmap at Oulu Löyly.
    • Analyzing registration data, especially for diversity and coverage.
  • The results will be shared in a blog post, published on multiple channels for the international, regional and local audiences.
3. Connected to the Public Policy Advocacy review (please see above), can you please provide for us there an idea of where and when activities of the advocacy circle might be implemented in 2026?
  • The public policy / advocacy activities are embedded in other work. The AvoinGLAM coordinator will oversee the work including
    • Recruiting and supporting a part-time advocacy lead to run the Finnish advocacy network and
    • Participating in the TAROCH (Open Heritage Statement) advocacy work together with the Finnish TAROCH advocacy circle (Music Archives, the Finnish Federation of Learned Societies, the National Library and AvoinGLAM). This work is flexible and goal-oriented rather than scheduled, aiming to encourage Finland to lead the initiative to adopt a recommendation on open heritage.
    • Specific attention will be given to introducing TAROCH (Open Heritage Statement) to the participants of Oulu Löyly. If possible, we would like to use the opportunity to bridge between the Open Heritage Statement and #CultureGoal2030 to understand the dynamics of global culture policy advocacy strategies across initiatives.
    • If possible, we would partner with other Nordic countries regarding public policy advocacy.
    • The allocation for public policy work for the AvoinGLAM coordinator is 15 working days (0,06 FTE)
  • The advocacy lead would work January–December with a 0.2FTE allocation with external funding. This funding has not been applied for yet, and might not materialize, or it could be scheduled differently.
    • They would coordinate the Finnish Advocacy network, consisting of open access -related actors (Wikimedia Finland, Fact Bar, Electronic Frontier Finland, Open Knowledge Finland, Creative Commons Finland, Finnish Committee for Research Data and further, new members) on arising issues in the public policy landscape.
4. How are you dividing your time and budget to integrate Metabase x GLAM Wiki pages between the Content Partnership Hub’s funding and the General Support Fund funding?
  • The work funded by the CPH is scheduled for the time between August and November, after Oulu Löyly and before the end of the funding period of CPH.
  • The planned amount of work is 0.1 FTE (8 days per month in August–October and 2 days in November). AvoinGLAM 2026 financial plan
5. What plans do you have for 2026 to update your Charter from 2023 and to extend your active volunteer base?
  • The new version of a charter is approved once a year in the annual meeting. The revisions have not been drafted yet. Recent versions have been poorly added to Meta, or there are remaining old namings.
  • In 2026, Oulu Löyly will be a way to reach out to potential new contributors and members.
6. How the local/regional aspects of your work are directly impacted by the global activities you participate in, and how the work with Finnish networks and indigenous communities, for example, are connected and participating in your global projects?
  • The topics AvoinGLAM works with are globally informed, but the communities and institutions are local or regional (unless we are working on a global project).
  • Wikimedia is well-versed on issues regarding knowledge equity, and we wish to make these perspectives better represented in the Finnish discussion.
  • When working with Indigenous partners, we will avoid imposing fixed schedules or targets, as it’s essential to respect their sovereignty and let them determine the pace and focus of the collaboration.
  • In Oulu Löyly, we wish to bring indigenous issues to discussion from other parts of the world. We have already contacted Wikimedia Canada and Australia. In Finland, we progress in collaboration with some of the Sámi partners in the Support for Sámi languages in digital services project. We coordinate the activities additionally with the language diversity hub to build continuity.
7. How do you see AvoinGLAM’s current and future role in the Wikimedia Movement’s GLAM landscape, in relation to the Content Partnership Hub, the emerging GLAM User Group, the World Heritage User Group and specific affiliates that work in fields related to culture and heritage?
  • We hope that both structures (Content Partnerships Hub and the GLAM affiliate) will provide inclusive structures for groups such as AvoinGLAM to be recognized as legitimate movement actors, not only invited as individuals. Our perception has been of CPH as a service provider whereas the GLAM affiliate is seen as a strategy-setting community. We hope to participate in strategy setting as well be eligible for receiving (non-monetary) support, for example in the context of Oulu Löyly from the CPH. Currently, we have been very invested in the activities of both entities (Global calls, GLAM pages, survey design in the GLOSS / GLAM community) and have tried to advocate for this kind of division of labour in CPH (as member of the Helpdesk expert committee, representing the GLAM community in one of the preparatory workshops, as well as a partner in the application.
  • AvoinGLAM is a mediator between several different domains in the open culture field. We connect national, regional, European, and international contexts, and different networks, including Open Knowledge, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia. We hope to speak to different contributor segments, including professional and amateur practitioners in different fields, including artistic, heritage, research and policy fields.
8. And lastly, how do you plan to improve the documentation and sharing of your activities for the Wikimedia community, or contribute to skill development in the GLAM community?
Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) 🦜 12:31, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply

Round 1 FY26 decision

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Latest comment: 8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to partially fund your proposal for 60,000.00 EUR for the implementation period of 1st January 2026 - 31st December 2026, taking into account the current NWE regional budget for the year.

Comments regarding this decision:
The Regional Funds Committee has decided to fund the group as it currently stands and operates for the last time this coming calendar year. Given that several GLAM oriented entities are getting formalised and operational in the Movement, the Committee is encouraging AvoinGLAM to combine efforts with those entities at the organisational level (ie. co-apply for funding), or organise itself into a formal entity that can operate with such programmatic, strategic and organisational stability that is required for the coordination of strategic GLAM efforts in the Movement.

We wish you the best of luck with the planned Oulu European Capital of Culture events and AvoinGLAM's sectoral advocacy efforts in 2026!

Next steps:

  1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
  2. If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, –ABruszik-WMF (talk) 07:45, 3 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

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