Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/WMEE Grant Application for 2026

Initial Feedback

Dear members of Mittetulundusühing Wikimedia Eesti,

This is a very strong proposal! We appreciate how it builds on your prior successes, especially in strengthening media visibility and GLAM partnerships.

It'd be great to learn more about your plans for forming new partnerships following the conclusion of the collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Could you also provide a bit more detail on how you intend to expand your contributions to Wikidata, Wikiquote, and Wikimedia Commons in addition to Wikipedia?

Thank you! Nataev ^talk 22:35, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Dear members of Mittetulundusühing Wikimedia Eesti,

Thank you very much for your application and for your continued contributions to the Wikimedia movement! I had the opportunity to review your 2025 report alongside this current proposal, gaining a general understanding of this year's activities and events. To better grasp certain points and your goals for this proposal, could you please clarify the following:

Since 2025 is still wrapping up, could you paint a clearer picture of the impact your work and collaborations so far have had on Wikimedia visibility and contributor engagement? For instance, it would be helpful to see how these achievements compare to the targets you set in your previous application.

Did the number of events and the level of visibility achieved correspond with community growth?

Regarding the plan to organize "more photo expeditions abroad" could you share a bit more about your roadmap for these? What are your expectations from these organizations and how do you plan for execution logistics, and overcome the abroad plannings?

Thanks :) --anerka (talk) 00:20, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Dear members of Wikimedia Estonia, glad to see you back! thank you for your proposal. Wikimedia Estonia continues to show a clear commitment to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy 2030, particularly through its efforts to promote digital literacy, foster educational collaboration, and engage in policy and advocacy work that supports a free and open knowledge environment. Its partnerships with governmental institutions on copyright reform and anti-SLAPP initiatives reflect a forward-looking approach and contribute meaningfully to strengthening the legal framework for free knowledge in Estonia. Additionally, your focus on sustainable retainment of volunteers is a very strong and necessary goal towards overall sustainable growth of participants to knowledge sharing. 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 Wikiquote. It would be helpful to understand whether Wikimedia Estonia intends to expand its activities to other Wikimedia projects, or to diversify the kinds of contributions within these platforms. If yes, please provide metrics.
• The committee previously encouraged Wikimedia Estonia to reduce its reliance on contest-based programs and explore alternative ways to engage and retain volunteers. In your 2026 proposal, contests and campaigns still appear to form a central part of your activities. Could you please clarify how you have taken last year’s feedback into account in your current planning in more details?

Specifically, how do you envision balancing contests with other forms of sustained community engagement, including training, collaboration projects/partnerships, that encourage long-term volunteer participation beyond competition-based incentives?

I would suggest that one way to approach this question is to organize thematic edit-a-thons, or collaboration with institutions addressing content gaps, with reflections and feedbacks after each activity.

• Wikimedia Estonia lists “Innovate in Free Knowledge” as one of its contributions to the Movement Strategy 2030. Could you please elaborate on what specific innovations you plan to introduce or experiment with under this theme?

For example, are you exploring new Wikimedia projects, new knowledge formats, or new technological tools that support access and participation?

It would also be helpful to understand how you plan to measure or document the outcomes of such innovation. Being more specific for the innovative approaches would be more helpful for us to understand more in this area.

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

@Nataev:, @Anerka:, @Nina1009: I try to provide answers. Feel free to ask for clarifications if the following does not do a good enough job at explaining the stuff, or if I missed some questions.

We have been looking to form as many strong and beneficial partnerships as possible for multiple years now, especially looking at the direction of involving state institutions. This has proven challenging: Estonia’s need to raise defence spending to more than 5% of GDP leaves very limited resources for other areas, which in turn makes it difficult to engage the state in new initiatives. For us, the main issue is not the lack of partners – those we have in abundance on a project basis – but the nature of available funding. To meaningfully grow our capacities, we would need funding well beyond what the WMF can provide. As for Ministries specifically and in 2025, we are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on content coverage, with the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs collaborating on the Copyright Law update, and with the Ministry of Education and Research we have an indirect cooperation related to media literacy. As for newer things, we are looking into partnering with the European Solidarity Corps in 2026 to run an exchange program.

Involving other Wikimedia projects has always been important for us. We have a long history of collecting contributions to Wikimedia Commons (for instance, the HELP campaign that I started in the summer of 2010 is likely the first ever photo collecting campaign in Wikimedia), and Estonian Wikiquote is currently the 6th biggest Wikiquote language version. We also have activities for Wikidata, but we do lack people with a technical background, and for that reason, it does not make too much sense to give any promises, as we may get some things done, and also may not. For some Wikimedia projects, the Estonian community simply cannot reach the critical mass needed to sustain them (e.g. Wikivoyage and Wikinews). Estonian Wiktionary is ranked 34th in size, and Estonian Wikisource 59th – they could and should do better, but are clearly not abandoned. In short, we try to support all projects as much as we can where there is potential for growth. And in addition to the Estonian Wikipedia, there is also a Võro Wikipedia, which we have tried to support especially for the last 5 years.

Wikimedia visibility work and contributor engagement in Estonia may look different from many other countries, and this sometimes requires additional explanation of our strategy and reasoning. Our aim is not simply to attract attention, but to focus attention where it matters most. It would be incredibly challenging to increase the number of contributors as we already have pretty much the highest per capita contributor numbers in the world, and for that reason, this attention-seeking is more in a) attempt to just keep the high numbers where they are right now, and b) focus on areas where we may achieve growth in quality (either high quality content, potential skilled contributors, or covering themes that are not so well covered). To keep contributor numbers as high as possible, we have also diversified our activities so that people with different interests and skills can find a suitable project. Although we do not focus solely on Wikipedia, the Estonian Wikipedia has over 255 thousand articles (none of them created by bots), and that is roughly the same as in Greek or Kazakh Wikipedias (both languages have more than 10x more speakers). Because of this, achieving significant growth in other Wikimedia projects would require substantially larger programs and, accordingly, much greater funding.

This year we have been holding more Wikipedia trainings in schools, but next year we plan to explore the possibility of conducting trainings for Wikipedians. Due to the increase in traveling exhibitions next year, we would look at providing some Wikipedia lectures in various locations around the country. In 2025, we aimed at more media coverage, and in 2026, we will try to increase it even further, however, it remains to be seen if we will be successful. We aim to increase our international presence (starting a visiting Wikipedian program, organizing international meetings, involving more foreign students, and doing more cross-border photography projects). We will look more into Finno-Ugric topics (including offering support to smaller Finno-Ugric Wikipedias), and we also aim to strengthen our chapter with targeted recruiting.

It may be worth highlighting that although we run many competitions, they are only one part of our work. They simply stand out more clearly in reports, whereas ongoing efforts – writing dozens of explanatory letters about Wikipedia, holding numerous meetings with potential partners, and all the like – are harder to summarize. Competitions are also easier to commit to publicly: once we agree to hold one, it will certainly happen. Many other planned projects, however, depend heavily on partners, and therefore we prefer not to overpromise on initiatives that may not materialize. Yet we do have substantial non-competition activities. For instance, right now in the Tartu Central Library, we have an exhibition that took us months to set up and what we started planning for more than a year ago (125 Years of Estonian Encyclopedias).

In our context, competitions are not only numerous but also quite diverse. They differ not just in topic but in purpose and target audience. We run, for instance, the Wikipedia language editing competition, which focuses on improving article language quality over several months, as well as short, intensive team competitions that take place over a single weekend. Some competitions are tailored for experienced Wikipedians, while others are designed specifically for newcomers. And of course, there are our photography-related initiatives, usually 3–4 competitions or campaigns each year, through which we have produced significant long-term results and high-quality contributions.

When organizing competitions, we do not just make an announcement – we actively engage people and involve our partners throughout the process. For instance, right now we have the Estonian science photo competition going on, and in there we are partnering with the Estonian Young Academy of Sciences and Estonian Research Agency, and science popularization magazines Eesti Loodus and Horisont are sponsoring the event, just as a map-making company Regio. Sponsors are providing 100% of the prize fund and helping out with promotion. In other words, we do not simply put together a competition for its own sake. We build partnerships, engage communities, and work toward meaningful results.

In 2024 we indeed had a lot of competitions (partly due to Ministry funding that allowed an increase in this field), however, already this year, we have 30% fewer competitions and campaigns, and our focus has been more on trainings and other events. And while we list a lot of activities, we might need to point out that on the staff side we have a mere 2.0 FTE. This should also explain why we have to make choices, and some activities, which require more human resources, may not be practical.

As for metrics for our next year's activities, it is challenging to provide them with meaningful accuracy as exact results or activities cannot be predicted. Or to be more exact: there are activities (like many of the competitions) where we can provide fairly accurate metrics, but we have way more activities than that, and those other ones usually fall in the category of "highly unpredictable". For instance: this year I personally have looked into the possibility of getting altitude data of all Estonian villages/towns/parishes/etc, but this data requires additional processing and massive clean-up, and I have not yet found a way to get that done (i.e found an university student in geoinformatics who to dump all that raw data who could solve it as a course work). But even a small data or image donation could easily change all the metrics significantly, while at the same time it would have hardly any actual impact on the project's sustainability (i.e., it would not bring us more editors).

This is also why I approach aggregated metrics with caution: they often fail to capture what truly matters. It resembles the McNamara paradox – measuring only what is easy to measure, treating what cannot be easily measured as unimportant, and thereby drawing misleading conclusions. When precise and imprecise numbers get lumped together for reporting purposes, the end result becomes unreliable. For that reason, I would prefer not to place excessive emphasis on the metrics section. We do set numerical targets for each individual project and we do measure impact, but because our projects differ so widely in nature, combining all the numbers into one simplified picture quickly turns into a tangled – and not very meaningful – summary.

In the past, we have had multiple photo expeditions to Latvia (I personally organized the first there in 2012, and that was the very first wiki-photo-expedition in Estonia). In the near future, we also aim to add Finland and involve more foreign students as well, and we already have preparations ongoing to pull that off. Expeditions to Latvia are rather easy to organize (there is not that much difference if we are covering South Estonia or North Latvia or both).

We do sometimes have edit-a-thons (for instance, a few weeks ago we had this where articles were created in 5+ languages, but we classified that as a workshop). In general, however, edit-a-thons are not very practical for us because it is difficult to gather enough participants when the event must take place at a specific time and in a specific physical location. Tartu, where we are based, has a population of under 100,000, so it is not exactly Berlin, Paris, Rome, or New York in terms of potential turnout. When we have a group of people interested in wiki-related topics, we usually opt for training sessions instead – often held online, which is far more convenient and saves significant travel time, especially considering that Estonia’s territory is larger than Denmark’s or the Netherlands’.

There are plenty of activities we could group under the innovations category. Even under competitions, we have held events like 24h team article writing competitions, which is very different from the standard approach and truly embraces the cooperation side of Wikipedia. But the main innovation we have been looking into since 2017 is the virtual exhibition concept, and we see this as a future side project of Wikipedia with an absolutely huge potential. I have presented this idea at the conferences (an example) and written on the topic (for example on GLAM Newsletter). But there are also some ideas where we have struggled to finish them due to the lack of manpower; for instance, we have tried to develop an art portal with Wikidata.

To conclude, we aim to further improve our performance and involve even more partners each year. Wikimedia projects could be developed by everyone, and so we should involve everyone. We aim to grow in areas where we see more potential and need. Our planning spans over many years. We do not possess the resources to do everything we would like to do. For that reason, we prioritize different activities between years and aim to do so that the previous year's activities would support next year's activities. Kruusamägi (talk) 19:16, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal decision and comments

@Kruusamägi: Hello Ivo, and thanks for your proposed programs and activities from Wikimedia Estonia for 2026. Unfortunately, the Regional Fund Committee was not willing to fund the proposal due to a number of important concerns, and invites the chapter to reapply for General Support Funding for the next round provided certain needs and expectations are met. Please carefully review the following comments:

• The Regional Fund Committee expressed some support for aspects of Wikimedia Estonia’s proposed programmatic plan, which includes engagement with university students, GLAM collaborations with smaller cultural institutions, and partnerships with multiple Estonian ministries that bolster the chapter’s programming.

• Past committee feedback: Based on feedback provided last year, there were a number of areas that did not appear to be addressed in the current proposal:
  • The evaluation plan, which focuses on general on-wiki contributions and participation metrics, does not include any other metrics related to your broader organizational impact, nor some of the most important challenges you have identified in this proposal, such as difficulties with recruiting new members, challenges with volunteer engagement, and public understanding of why open knowledge is beneficial. Relatedly, the chapter’s most recent report lacks participation outcomes, which makes it difficult to assess these metrics in the current proposal.
  • The committee requested that Wikimedia Estonia deprioritize contests and campaigns to other programming that supports volunteer engagement. While the number of contests and campaigns appear to have been reduced since 2024, the committee still noted that they are a significant part of the programmatic plan as they were last year. While these events may be easier to plan and implement compared to other kinds of programs, it does not mean they are an effective way to support community engagement, nor the best way to use movement funds.
  • Investments that were made into the chapter over the past two years have not appeared to support improvements in volunteer recruitment and membership, and this is a concern in terms of the sustainability of the chapter.
• Governance: A second area of concern relates to the governance practices of your chapter, and we are aware of ongoing communication with AffCom regarding some of these matters:
  • Wikimedia Estonia notes in its proposal that it is in agreement with Wikimedia Foundation’s Friendly Space policy and the Universal Code of Conduct. However, the chapter lacks a code of conduct and related enforcement mechanisms to address harassment and other disruptive behavior within your organization and events that the chapter hosts. It is not clear to the Regional Fund Committee how the chapter can meaningfully support the Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct in the absence of such policies. Furthermore, a lack of organizational agreement on how to handle problematic conduct is a significant risk to the stability and sustainability of your organization.
  • The Regional Fund Committee was also concerned that the chapter’s current board only consists of two members at this time. While this may be consistent with the bylaws that the chapter has set, the Regional Fund Committee is not confident that a board with so few members can provide sufficient support to an affiliate operating at this scale.
• While less urgent than the above concerns, the committee also had some broader suggestions for future consideration including:
  • Ensuring that your community feedback mechanisms for annual planning are clear. The proposal notes that organizational priorities are set with constant consultations and meetups. Are these discussions documented?
  • Concerning the planned work on Wikidata, we understand and accept some uncertainty over participation and on-wiki contributions when programs are newer or there are more variables. Our expectations are not to rigidly tie funding to whether a specific number of participants or articles is met or not. Affiliates tend to get better with their metrics estimates over time with new initiatives, and it is normal for initial targets to be less accurate. Another approach would be to consider looking at impact outside of these content/participation metrics altogether for Wikidata (or other programs). Otherwise, by not including any expected outcomes clearly related to Wikidata, it is not clear to the committee why it is important to invest in that work.
  • Some committee members also suggested that a future proposal could include a risk management plan or a SWOT analysis for the organization to help Wikimedia Estonia in a variety of ways, including being able to assess the feasibility of different programs and the chapter’s preparedness to run them. The Foundation has some resources available on conducting a SWOT analysis here.

The Regional Fund Committee invites Wikimedia Estonia to reapply for General Support Funding next round (with applications due in March 2026), with the following expectations:

• That the evaluation plan include a set of affiliate-defined outcomes outside of participation and on-wiki contributions that address its current challenges,
• The participation metrics from the 2024 report are included,
• That the chapter makes a more meaningful shift away from contests and campaigns in its programmatic model than the current proposal. The chapter can continue to run some of these activities, but they should not represent a major part of Wikimedia Estonia’s programming,
• That a more concrete plan is presented for how Wikimedia Estonia will recruit affiliate members and board members in its next proposal. Outcomes from this recruitment work should be included in your evaluation plan and metrics, separate from general participation metrics (such as editors and general activity participants),
• That Wikimedia Estonia begin developing a code of conduct and related enforcement mechanisms in consultation with its membership and other Estonian stakeholders where relevant. There are several documented examples of these practices in other movement organizations for reference. Progress towards the development of these organizational policies should be made clear in Wikimedia Estonia’s next General Support Fund proposal,
• The Regional Fund Committee will also coordinate with AffCom regarding any additional expectations or guidance related to your governance practices stemming from their communications.

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) 21:54, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

This feedback started with a comment, "This is a very strong proposal! We appreciate how it builds on your prior successes, especially in strengthening media visibility and GLAM partnerships." Yet the conclusion was a recommendation for no funding at all. We would appreciate clarification on how these two assessments align.

With the current timeline and decision, our only practical option would be to terminate all staff contracts (3 Wikimedia-experienced people with 2.0 FTE in total) immediately and pause activities for several months in the hope of receiving funding again next summer. This would cause substantial organizational damage and reduce sustainability to the point where Wikimedia Eesti might cease to exist. We do not believe this is the intended outcome.

Even just this week, we had a Tallinn Christmas meeting with 16 participants (and another coming in Tartu next Wednesday with 10 people registered), ran a Wikipedia + Wikisource workshop on Tartu Hackerspace with about 15 participants, took down a large Wikipedia/encyclopedia exhibition, had two articles published in the media, and announced WLM winners. All of this activity is regularly reported here. This transparency is our own initiative, not a WMF requirement. It shows clearly that our contributors are active and that our work is consistent, substantial, and community-driven.

It is true that we have a relatively small number of people, but that comes from the fact that Estonia has the 3rd smallest population in the region, comparable to Malta + Montenegro. When taking into account the population size, Estonia consistently ranks as one of the highest-performing Wikimedia communities worldwide. We are very active across many Wikimedia projects and languages, have a good track record, and consistently collect high-quality content. Our level of activity relative to population size is extraordinary.

Competitions may appear numerous because they are highly visible and easy to report on, but they represent only a small portion of our activities and are usually funded externally. For example, the currently ongoing science photo competition has a prize fund that is 100% externally financed, as were several others, including two supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Naturally, we do not decline such opportunities when they fit our calendar and goals. As competitions are mostly externally funded, then it is only natural that we have more of them in 2024, when we received 15k from the Ministry.

Securing external funding is challenging. This year alone we unsuccessfully applied for three different sources for various programs in total of over €30k and also failed at finding a sponsor for WLM. But we will keep on trying. And we will succeed at some point. But it is well known that first there was COVID-19, and since 2022, the Estonian state has focused its attention on defence spending, resulting in a significant reduction of budgets in all other fields. That makes it harder to carry out external fundraising.

Each competition serves a specific role, is set up differently, and helps to target a different group. In 2025, we covered Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikiquote; had something for both newbies and for old-timers; had different topics, and also included a copyediting competition. In short, competitions help us engage with diverse groups of contributors and target many ways of contributing. That is part of our core strategy to engage as many different target groups as possible, and that helps us to maintain very high editor numbers relative to population size.

Even in this year, we have put a lot of effort into Wikipedia trainings (especially in schools), getting more noticeable media presence (in the last month alone, there have been 4 articles in media and one radio interview), and set up multiple public exhibitions. We have looked into involving new target groups, promoted various Wikimedia projects, and started new projects. We have continued to push for copyright reform to get freedom of panorama in Estonia. We have conducted interviews and recorded videos, organized a lot of wikimeetings, and taken a record number of interns (who are also volunteers). That is just a greatly simplified and shortened list of our activities. To state that we have a heavy reliance on contests is very misleading. Even in the budget, they count under 5%.

Regarding staffing: adjustments in the last two years simply brought salaries back to a normal level, as they had previously fallen significantly below the national average. We did not add any extra capacity. It just made it possible to avoid losing trained staff due to uncompetitive wages and keep performing at a high level.

We have explained in our previous grant applications that Estonia's rapid economic growth means average salaries rise ~7% annually and that during the year the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Estonia’s inflation exceeded 20%. We have not added staff (though this would clearly strengthen our capacity) or launched costly new programs; we are simply seeking the minimum required to maintain our current level of activity. And that applies both to this year's budget and to previous years. In addition, it could be stated that the number of volunteers and chapter members has clearly grown in recent years.

Volunteer recruitment naturally becomes more challenging for a 15-year-old organization: most active Wikipedians who could join have already done so years ago. Recruitment now occurs mostly outside the Wikimedia community, which is harder. Still, we adapted years ago and did it well: the people we recruit today are often more active than earlier recruits.

In this year alone, we added 3 new chapter members and lost none. We expect to continue with modest growth in the number of members in 2026. We focus on recruiting potential board members rather than increasing numbers for their own sake. And yet, our membership list is now longer than it has ever been.

We have two promising board candidates identified months ago for our spring general meeting. Half of our board was renewed recently, and two new audit committee members were elected, so allowing time for stability is important. Volunteer recruitment is challenging for all affiliates, but based on population size, Estonia recruits more effectively than most.

It might be important to point out that at a moment total there are 7 people involved in decision-making (staff of 3, board of 2, and audit committee of 2) + there is a separate accountant. 6+1 people also have access to see what is happening in the bank account. It does not fall on just 2 board members.

We do not plan to keep the board that small and have been actively looking into expanding it. With the progress so far, we expect that in 2026 the board size should grow to 4 members. In 2025, we were more concerned with finding new people for the audit committee, and as the board has been functioning well, there was no need to rush with it.

On UCoC implementation: in small affiliates, practical enforcement often comes from shared community norms and the individuals responsible for handling issues. Creating additional substructures solely for the sake of formality is usually not reasonable at this scale. Small affiliates should not be penalized for their size; this is a matter of administrative structure rather than safety.

We can take a closer look at the UCoC topic. But here we must point out that we have started dealing with that already a long time ago (discussed that in general meetings, started translating this). There has not been any reason to speed that up much, especially with the enforcement side, as we must also make sure it is aligned with the Estonian laws and measures taken would actually be efficient, as mere words on paper don't do anything on themselves. We have also joined the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations, where we can get consultations on best practices.

If the concern is the limited pool of people for governance roles, creating additional committees would worsen that situation, not improve it. Given the small size of the Estonian community, editors know each other well and are aware of what is going on. Or to put it another way: one could hide in a big city, but not in a village. We have not neglected UCoC implementation; rather, our local context makes heavy structures both inappropriate and impractical. We can clearly describe the steps we have taken so far and outline our plans for 2026, if this would be helpful.

For our communications, the main location is Slack, which means everything is documented. A large section of that is also open for the general public and not just chapter members. We also hold physical meetings like Wikipedia Summer Days, Christmas meetings, celebrations of Wikipedia birthdays, and the like, which are all open to all community members. Not to mention all the smaller meetings. Even the general meetings of the chapter (which we usually have two per year) are not restricted to chapter members only. Our monthly newsletter has more than 3X the followers than we have chapter members and I can keep on going. This could even be listed as a reason why people may not join the chapter, as they can participate in everything and be informed of all activities without needing to be a chapter member.

We are well aware of what SWOT analysis is, and have conducted them in the past. Even in the last general meeting, our chairman of the board Robert proposed that we should once again do one and kicked open the project. We have not taken on projects we could not complete, as is clear from our track record. The main risk for our action has always been that WMF would not fund us. That is also why we have consistently tried to find additional sources of income. If we get a yearly grant or support from a specific project from outside sources, then that is something we could not use to build up reserves. Membership fees and donations in a small country like Estonia could not go very far.

It is stated that there are worries about the stability and sustainability of our organization, and somehow that is followed by a proposal that we should cease the functioning of the chapter entirely. Closing down all operations on such short notice is not that cheap, and it would be very challenging to avoid bankruptcy (for example, the staff needs to be informed at least 30 days in advance about the termination of employment according to the law, and must be provided compensation).

Even if we manage to pull that off, it could only come at the cost of significant volunteer burnout, with serious damage to all the actions we have prepared for, and using up all our reserves in the process. And then we should resume our actions the same way already in June? Restarting all actions would take significant effort and a lot of time. Even in the very best scenario, we would need to scrap 2/3 of the actions planned for 2026, we would take a massive hit on our volunteer numbers, lose a lot of credibility, and the total cost of actions would remain almost the same.

We understand that questions may arise and sometimes adjustments are needed. We do acknowledge that some reporting details may have been unclear or missing, and we will happily clarify them. A partial cut would have been understandable if something needed to be changed. However, a 100% cut does not align with the feedback given nor with our demonstrated activity and results.

The current situation seems highly problematic, and hence the major question remains: How does the committee see Wikimedia Eesti surviving until summer with high fixed costs and the current grant ending on December 31st?

Given the circumstances outlined above, we respectfully request that the committee would reconsider and revise its decision, thereby enabling the continuity of WMEE chapter. Kruusamägi (talk) 16:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

@Kruusamägi: While we discussed a revision to this decision in January, I wanted to confirm here that after follow-up with the Regional Fund Committee on these circumstances and their original decision to not fund, the committee revised their decision to fund WMEE for a six-month period for 58115 EUR while it addresses the original concerns expressed in the decision. I also wanted to offer a few comments based on the committee's review of your response:

• The timing of when the committee learned about some concerns around WMEE's governance practices, such as the absence of a code of conduct at the time, came after initial feedback was given. Based on this new information, the committee agreed that the proposal could not be evaluated in the same way as before.
• The committees expectations remain largely the same for your next proposal. In particular, the committee disagrees with the notion that community norms and personal responsibility are a suitable replacement for UCOC enforcement in organizations, in part because these norms are not clearly defined. The regulations and guidance offered by the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations are also insufficient here because these relate more to the external-facing actions of the nonprofit in general, and do not focus on conduct and conflict resolution within the organization. Furthermore, we do not agree that the UCOC-related requirements are heavy or impractical in general. On the contrary, the absence of these processes and policies create risks around the overall stability of your organization, and may be a factor in explaining why board membership has been decreasing in the chapter. Furthermore, UCOC compliance is a matter of basic eligibility, which means that if adequate progress is not made to develop internal procedures around conflict resolution, it is likely to negatively impact your funding, even if the chapter is able to demonstrate various kinds of programmatic impact.
• It is helpful to understand that some competitions that WMEE organizes are externally funded. However, the proposed budget included at least five competitions (Big photocompetition, EL photocompetition, Keeletoimetamistalgud, Article competitions fund, Science Photo Competition) that would rely on movement funds. The committee continues to emphasize the needs for shifting more of your programming into events and activities that support voluntary engagement. Even if external funding is available to run more competitions (on say, different topics or themes), the main concern is that these events are not especially good at supporting sustained voluntary engagement, which is needed for a stable Wikimedia community, and that the chapter should strike a better balance between contests/competitions and other kinds of programming. It would not, for example, be a good idea to exhaust your organizational capacity to continue to run many competitions even if these are supported through external funding such that you could not consider other kinds of events.

On behalf of the Regional Fund Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): Thank you for the reply! I would now leave some comments from my side.

WMEE does have mechanisms in place to enforce the UCoC. At present, concerns appear to be based on assumptions rather than documented findings. As this topic is already being discussed in another venue, it may be more productive to continue that conversation there rather than addressing the same issue across multiple discussion pages simultaneously. So I would not go into it here.

Regarding the competitions, we believe some conclusions may be based on an incomplete interpretation of the available information, and we would like to clarify several aspects.

a) Yes, we hold many competitions, but that does not mean we don't have other events and activities. In the budget document, we include only items that actually need a budget line, not items that are free or nearly free. The balance between contests/competitions and other kinds of programming cannot be deduced from the budget alone.

b) It is not just "some competitions", but the majority of our held competitions are either partly or fully externally funded. One example: we may have a 500 euros budget for Keeletoimetamistalgud, but that is just for the best newcomer prize that we are responsible for, and our partner provides 2000 euros for the main prize fund (as this money does not touch our accounts, then we don't even mention it in the budget). The assumption seems to be that we cover most of the costs for many competitions, but that is not true at all. And why should our partners provide funds if we would not provide anything?

c) Our competitions have produced strong outcomes, which become particularly obvious when our results are compared with similar initiatives across multiple countries. You mentioned the Wiki Science Competition (WSC), so I will use this as an example. Here are the results from Estonia, which was the smallest country by population participating, but we had one of the highest numbers of participants. This was 100% externally funded, and the quality of submissions has also been notable (at least 5 featured and 3 quality images). These outcomes suggest that the competitions are being implemented effectively.

d) We normally spend less on those competitions than budgeted (and we generally aim to get things cheaper and are pretty good at it -- for example, when we made a bid to hold CEE Meeting in Tallinn, then our planned cost was merely 3/4 of the winning bid). It would be poor budgeting practice not to plan for expected expenses when external funding has not yet been confirmed. At the same time, it is unrealistic to expect sponsorship agreements to be secured more than a year in advance. What is budgeted is the need for spending, but that does not mean we actually spend that much. We usually carry out more activities than what we have planned.

e) It is also important to consider the broader organizational role that some competitions play. For instance, with WSC, which accounts for nearly half of the competition's total budget, we are the international organizers, together with WMCH. This responsibility extends beyond the national event (that was fully externally funded anyway) and includes coordination at the international level. In there, we have even found a bunch of volunteer organizers (some of whom are not Wikipedians, as in the case of Kazakhstan, which was the most successful out of them). Organizing the international side of competitions like WLM or WLE is neither simple nor cheap. We are running WSC for virtually free compared to the absolutely eye-watering costs of Wiki Loves competitions.

f) We include every cost in our yearly budget and never ask for or receive external Wikimedia funds (such as money offered for CEE Spring or the like; obviously not counting separate funding for holding international conferences in Estonia, as we could not fit them into our yearly budget). This means there are no hidden costs that go to competitions but actually come from WMF funds. Given the scale of funding typically associated with such initiatives, this distinction is relevant for transparency. On top of that, last year alone, we provided 1,000 euros to another Wikimedia organization for a competition, funded by our external partner.

g) There is the question of sustained voluntary engagement, but we have many activities for that (but there are also some Wikipedians who like to participate in competitions, so we also need to cater to them, so some competitions actually do fall under that specific category). Just sustaining engagement is not enough. Estonian Wikipedia is 24 years old. Some editors will leave us even because of natural causes. We need to actively recruit new people, not just focus on keeping existing ones happy, and, as classical marketing knowledge shows, acquiring new ones is more expensive than retaining existing ones. And we do intend to invest in growth.

h) We usually run competitions as partnerships. We use them as a catalyst to encourage cooperation. Usually, we just have one main partner per competition, but like in the Estonian Science Photo Competition, we had 5. Those things are not about what new articles or images we can get, or whether any new editors will be joining. We are working on our media outreach and network of connections. Focusing exclusively on short-term output metrics can undermine long-term organizational sustainability, which is why partnership development is a strategic priority. Like when a company focuses solely on its profit margin and optimizes for that, it becomes easy to squander its future, as one also needs to think about how to keep clients, employees, suppliers, and others happy, not just how to squeeze everything out from a single metric.

When country size is taken into account, then our volunteer participation rates are comparatively high. Estonia has the most Wikimedians and Wikipedians per capita. That does not support the assumption that we are bad at finding balance. For example, in the CEE region, our population (1.36M, out of which 0.9M are Estonian) is comparable to Cyprus (0.9M in the south + 0.4M in the north). They speak mainly Greek, but even if we add Greece with its 10+M people, then the Greek Wikipedia has less than 2x more active editors, while the population difference is 10x. And I am not trying to say that Greece has bad results… theirs are perfectly normal… ours are not. The comparison would not yield different results if other countries were used in the example.

Additional clarity would be helpful on how WMF measures affiliate efficiency. Maybe there are reasons why Estonia, almost the smallest country in the region, has results comparable to much bigger countries. Maybe we do know things others have missed. Maybe the differences in our actions speak not to inefficiencies but to our weird overperformance. Our experience may offer useful lessons that could be shared across affiliates.

We have successfully shown that competitions can serve as a recruitment and motivation tool, and we have achieved excellent results in Estonia.

Even while WMEE is a small chapter with only a staff of 2.0 FTE, we constantly hold workshops and deliver lectures, write articles for the media, organize photography trips and exhibitions, hold meetings and get-togethers for Wikimedians, give out community prizes, answer requests and communicate with partners, ask for image donations and deal with copyright issues, talk to state institutions and propose better legislation, create educational videos, take interns and look out for volunteers, participate in international Wikimedia activities, etc. Most of that stuff only needs staff time and, for obvious reasons, does not show up in the budget (as we also don't have lines like "board members = 0 euros"). That is also why we publish detailed activity reports separately and why we dislike the metrics, as they oversimplify our activities, leave out some vital actions, and do not clearly show the impact. But nowhere have we said we only do competitions. In fact, they are only a small part of our actions.

We are very cost-efficient and have shown good results, which becomes clear upon closer examination. The only thing we need is some stability, because stability over time is what makes performance truly stand out, allowing the effects to compound. And yet, even now, we are just dealing with half a year's funding, which is detrimental to long-term planning.

To sum it up, our competition portfolio is not just externally supported and thematically diverse, but also cost-efficient, supports voluntary engagement, strategically integrated into broader programming, demonstrably effective in recruitment, a vital part in keeping and building partnerships, and provides high content quality, etc. At the same time, the share of other kinds of programming seems to be greatly underestimated. We are not particularly focused on competitions; we just do a lot of things, and that just happens to involve a few competitions among many, many other activities. Kruusamägi (talk) 19:37, 2 April 2026 (UTC)