Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Sharing of free knowledge in Greek, 2026

Initial Feedback

Thanks for your General Support Fund proposal on behalf of Wikimedia Community User Group Greece,

I’ve had the opportunity to review your application and I’d like to ask a few questions to better understand certain points and see your roadmap more clearly.

First of all, I can see that you’re following a long-term strategic plan, which can have many benefits in terms of continuity and sustainable development. However, I couldn’t find any update in this year’s application regarding how the plan you submitted last year has progressed up to this point in 2025. If you have a report published for the first half of the year that reflects this development, I would appreciate it if you could direct me to it, or alternatively provide a brief overview comparing your goals from last year with what has been achieved so far. I believe this would make it easier for Regional Committee to provide better feedback. Especially, because your current plan seems largely aligned with last year, I’m particularly curious about how you’ve advanced toward your earlier targets.

Extra note: It seems there was an issue with the upload of the timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. Would it be possible for you to share the relevant calendar as well?

Thanks.--anerka (talk) 01:12, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Dear members of Wikimedia Community Greece Association good to see you back and thank you for your proposal. Your proposal outlines scope of activities in a well structured timeframe for implementation. It aligns with the Wikimedia movement’s goals and targets a broad audience, including educational programs and community engagement initiatives. The proposal is well-organized in terms of budgeting and resource allocation, and it emphasizes strategic objectives such as partnership building, fundraising, and advocacy, showing an understanding of the broader impact the affiliate seeks to achieve beyond content contributions. However, i would like to know more about following aspects of your proposal:

• Do you plan to diversify the types of contributions made to Wikimedia projects? Currently, the proposal includes metrics for only three Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. It would be helpful to understand whether you intend to expand your activities to other Wikimedia projects, or to diversify the kinds of contributions within these platforms. If yes, please provide metrics.

• Could you provide a clearer plan for managing and supporting any staff hired, including supervision, and professional development?

• How will you measure and report progress on partnerships, funding exploration, and advocacy or lobbying activities, beyond participation and content contributions?

I would gladly address confusion, if any, regarding the questions.Nina1009^{wanna talk?}

General Support Fund proposal decision and comments

@Magioladitis and Geraki: Thanks for your proposed programs and activities for Wikimedia Community User Group Greece for 2026. Unfortunately, the Regional Fund Committee was not willing to fund the proposal due to a number of important concerns, and invites the User Group to reapply for General Support Funding next round provided certain needs and expectations are met. Please carefully review the following comments:

• The committee recognizes that the User Group continues to benefit from established partnerships with cultural and government partners, and that some of these partnerships have been working with the User Group even before it received funding. The committee also feels the organization is served well by its current strategic plan, which notes important strengths of your organization (such as connections to educational opportunities) as well as challenges (such as active members being situated in different cities).

• The committee had a number of concerns about the proposal including:
  • That we did not receive responses to Regional Committee questions above, which the user group leadership was notified about via e-mail on 8 November 2025.
  • The proposal is generally unchanged from the previous year’s proposal. There are typically some updates and changes from the prior year based on programs and activities that are working well and what is not working. This kind of reflection and effort to make adjustments is especially important because your organization has only started being able to conduct its work with general operating for the first time this year. There are also other parts of the proposal that are not updated which should be, including the annual plan, timeline, and SWOT analysis.
  • It’s not clear that the User Group conducted meaningful community engagement with its members and Greek Wikimedians about this next annual plan. While the Regional Fund Committee is aware that the User Group was hosting the CEE Meeting 2025 earlier this year, which coincided closely with the proposal deadline for the region, the User Group should have begun planning this proposal earlier, well before the conference itself.
  • There are more practical issues with some of the documentation associated with the proposal that make review difficult. For example, the annual plan slide contains KPIs that are not fully readable given the way the document is formatted.

The Regional Fund Committee invites your user group to reapply for funding next round, with proposals due on 2 March 2026, provided that the following needs are met:

• That we receive responses to committee questions during review in a timely manner,
• That the next proposal shows evidence that the user group is learning from its programmatic work and outcomes, and making changes in its annual plan where needed to meet its goals. Updates to your SWOT analysis are also requested, and can be provided in your annual plan.
• That the user group prioritize improvements in its own organizational skills in the following areas:
  • internal time management skills,
  • human resources skills for staff management,
  • community engagement for annual planning, and
  • grant proposal preparation

We encourage you to incorporate this capacity building work into your next annual plan as well as developing these skills in preparation for your next proposal where possible.

I am happy to meet to discuss the decision further and provide guidance where possible. If supportive, we can also make a plan to meet to discuss progress towards these needs before the next General Support Fund application deadline, currently set for 2 March 2026. On behalf of the Regional Fund Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 07:07, 6 December 2025 (UTC)