Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Basque Wikimedians User Group (2026-2028)

Feedback from the NWE Regional Funds Committee

Dear Basque Wikimedians UG team,

Thank you for your multiannual base grant proposal submitted for 2026-2028.

The Regional Funds Committee evaluated your overall clear and ambitious annual plan, and its expected key results. We found your approaches with video production, voice recordings and podcasts innovative and an impactful way of bridging knowledge dissemination for external audiences with the Wikimedia Community.

We welcome your expansions from your well established education programs, including increased coordination across multiple stakeholders, expanding your reach in cultural sectors, translating the experiences of Wikimedians in Residences from other countries, your work with WikiEmakumeok (WikiWomen) groups, and extending your funding base through Erasmus+ projects and applications.

We have a few questions about your plans:

• Could you tell us a little more about your planned alignment to UN SDGs - what does this mean in terms of planned directions and what specific SGDs you are thinking of?

As stated in the Annual Plan, our goal is to map our projects to see how they are related with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), what will help us identifying other subjects that we are not covering. The goal of this KR is Objective and its key result is exactly that you ask: knowing with specific SDGs we are covering and which not. We can't answer this before we conduct the research itself. -Theklan (talk) 14:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

• How do you evaluate or reflect on your innovations in terms of their pick-up, usage, value, scalability and impact? (e.g. podcast series, educational video series, etc)?

We understand that Basque is a smaller language than English, so there are not so many OERs out in the wild. As we have understand need to innovate in free knowledge, we have added and encyclopedia for children, comic strips, podcast and video series, and many other innovations, that may be harder to do for larger communities. We normally evaluate those in terms of knowledge created, as we can't know the exact impact from Commons (we have asked many times to have statistics, but the WMF is not providing those). We measure external views (i.e. in places that are not Commons) in order to provide statistics for funders (mostly the Basque Government). We also think that this kind of long term efforts are cumulative (the more you do, the more important they become) and reputational (they make Wiki[mp]edia better). We understand that scalability is difficult, because they are costly and need medium and long term planning, but once all the gears are working, we try to get new series done, as replicationg the first ones might be easier than starting from zero. -Theklan (talk) 17:15, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

• Could you please explain to us a little better your operating structure, in terms of the capacity and role of involved team members, volunteers, subcontractors and external partners?

The association has 63 members and a six-member board of directors. This board sets the general direction of the association and manages membership and volunteer issues.

However, in order to implement projects funded through different sources of financing, we have a team of five salaried employees.

1. This team is made up of an Executive Director (Theklan) who has the ability to design, develop, and manage projects as a whole. He is also responsible for managing relationships with other institutions and external partners. He has a thorough understanding of the Wikimedia movement and aligns our work with our strategies and plans. He maintains close relationships with our external partners, such as the governments of Navarre and the Basque Country, as well as with museums for our cultural projects and local universities for our educational project.
2. A person who leads the Ikusgela project (Aioramu), an expert in multimedia content, who manages all work related to the creation of educational videos, supervising the work of external contractors. We contract companies that are experts in these types of projects and are located nearby, so that it is easy to manage the work. We have years of experience with them that support our decisions, and our funders approve. We work closely with them and supervise every job they do.
3. A person responsible for all the cultural collaborations we develop in Navarre (Anarrarti), who has the ability to create links between institutions. She maintains close relationships with our external partners in Navarra, such as museums and educational entities.
4. A new colleague who deals exclusively with communication (Maddi_Eseberri_Colomo) for the entire association. She has the ability to know how we should communicate each project and collaboration we are carrying out through the various communication channels.
5. Myself, (Edagit), I take care of all the administrative tasks required by our work, from managing accounts and invoices to creating the accounting reports required by our active funding sources. I also prepare budgets and new grant applications.

-Edagit (talk) 15:07, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

• Can you tell us more about this practice in your governance: “Leadership is chosen between willing people who present themselves and are voted in the annual meeting” (as it was mentioned in the annual report for 2024). Do you plan in the future to have a more strategic selection and/or increased sectoral representation on your governing board/group? (e.g. people from GLAM, educational entities or WikiWomen groups?)

How people is chosen for the Board is specified in our bylaws, so we can't have external representation co-opted, as all the members of the Board must be, by law, members of the User Group. However, we always try to add expertise, and encourage people to participate. As our UG is mostly male (this is slowly changing), most of the board members have been male. We are trying to encourage members of the WikiWomen groups to be part of the board. Other members have expertise in education or social movements, and the board has it's own capacities. -Theklan (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

• Did you manage to submit the project you planned to CERV in October 2025?

No, we didn't manage to do that, as we didn't have a solid plan yet. We tried to involve Wikimedia France, but as Wikimania is near, it couldn't happen in this term. However, we are still planning to submit it in a future call. Meanwhile, we were added as partner to a new Erasmus+ call by Wikimedia Europe, so we will decide on next steps in the upcoming weeks. -Theklan (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please be so kind as to provide your answers to the Committee’s questions by 16th November 2025.

Thank you very much!

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee == ABruszik-WMF (talk) 11:06, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Round 1 2026 decision

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 52,633.60 EUR EUR annually for the implementation period of 1st January 2026 - 31st December 2028, taking into account the current NWE regional budget for the year.

Comments regarding this decision:

Therefore, the total 3 years budget of the Group is 157,900.80 EUR:
• FY2026: €52,633.60 EUR (USD $60,639.17)
• FY2027: €52,633.60 EUR (USD $60,639.17)
• FY2028: €52,633.60 EUR (USD $60,639.17)

We wish you the best of luck with your implementation in 2026-28, and looking forward to learning about the results of your "History of the Basque Country in 100 objects" project, among others!

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) 07:56, 3 December 2025 (UTC)