Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Belgium Yearly grant 2024/Final Report
Add topicFeedback from the Committee Support team
[edit]Hello,
I am sharing the following review of your report from the Committee Support team side, on behalf of the Affiliations Committee:
- Criteria 2.1 Affiliate health & resilience [Q3]: There is no data shared on the breakdown of the membership or leadership.
- Criteria 2.3 Good governance & communication [Q14]: There is no documentation about your governance practices (decision-making, elections, membership criteria, conflicts of interest, etc.)
- Criteria 3.3 Universal Code of Conduct compliance [Q14]: Nothing was shared about UCoC.
- Criteria 4.1 Internal (membership) engagement [Q3, Q5]: There is no documentation about how you communicate with your members and participants
- Criteria 4.2 Community connection [Q3, Q5]: There is no documentation about how you communicate with your members and participants
- Key observations: affiliate demonstrates strong programmatic work, with a particular focus on closing the gender gap; reporting needs more quantitative data and documentation of governance practices
Please make sure to address the following observations in your improvement to the report.
Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
- @Geertivp: many thanks for your detailed answers. Please make sure to update your report on Fluxx with this response -- after that I can go ahead and approve it on AffCom's behalf. Best, RamzyM (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
Answers from the Wikimedia Belgium Board
[edit]Criteria 2.1 Affiliate health & resilience [Q3]
[edit]- There is no data shared on the breakdown of the membership or leadership.
Wikimedia Belgium is since 2014 a non-profit organisation in Belgium. It fulfills all legal requirements, be it administration, taxes, insurances, reporting, and communication. The statutes are published in the Belgian government journal.
In 2024 we acquired two additional women board members; we appointed a freelancer Communications- and Project manager.
This allowed us to implement more activities. One of the ladies is younger, and adds with her academic background, experience, and skills. The other has experience in Women’s organisations and culture. The third one has profound communication skills.
With the complete board we had a two days off-site training, evaluation and planning meeting. It is good and crucial that the board learns from each other's capacities, skills, background, ideas, wishes.
We allowed two board members to attend international conferences. This augmented their skills.
We supported volunteers in executing their projects, also financially. We facilitated a volunteer meetup. This allows us to stimulate collaboration and understanding amongst volunteers.
We supported other socio-cultural organizations and programs, e.g. by organising an edit-a-thon about Women in ICT.
We have an Advisory board of 11 members, consisting of previous board members, to support the board in taking or evaluating strategic decisions.
We have a comité of 4 members Friends of Wikimedia Belgium, that help us to organise collaboration with socio- cultural organizations like museums, archives, heritage organisations, education projects.
In 2024 we had 135 associate members, who pay in principle a yearly membership fee of 20 €. In 2014 the Board decided to waive the fee for active members who actively contribute to the Wikimedia platforms. In 2024 we got 10 new associate members and 1 extra effective member.
Every year we organise a General assembly. The General assembly consists of 41 effective members, who have the right to vote for board members, and to approve the general ledger accounts. The yearly financial statements are prepared by the accountant, and are audited by an independent audit team. Their report is presented, and approved at the yearly General assembly.
We can request help from project managers that are willing to organise activities as a volunteer; expenses are compensated.
More information:
- wmbe:Membership register
- wmbe:Legal obligations
- wmbe:Statutes
- General Assembly minutes
- wmbe:Advisor to the Board
Criteria 2.3 Good governance & communication [Q14]
[edit]- There is no documentation about your governance practices (decision-making, elections, membership criteria, conflicts of interest, etc.)
Important decisions are made by the Board. Board elections are organised every year as part of the General Assembly. Board members are appointed for 2 years, the chair needs to be approved every year. Board membership can be renewed. The statutes allow to revoke a Board member via a special procedure of the General Assembly. There is a procedure for conflict of interest.
The types of membership are described in wmbe:Membership register
All decisions and organisational procedures are published on https://be.wikimedia.org.
More information:
- wmbe:Statutes
- General Assembly minutes
- Annual Accounts 2024 (legal statements)
- Financial report 2024 (WMF grants)
- wmbe:Board
- wmbe:Template:Wmbecontact
Criteria 3.3 Universal Code of Conduct compliance [Q14]
[edit]- Nothing was shared about UCoC.
We contributed to the UCoC discussions at the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin.
Complaints about UCoC in Belgium can be issued via complaints@wikimedia.be.
We adhere to the Friendly space policy. In March 2025 we had a (small) incident during an edit-a-thon. In the first place we interacted with the concerned parties, and helped them clarify the issue. We subsequently discussed this amongst the Board. We mentioned the issue in the next newsletter, and we appoint since then a conflict coordinator at every activity. We request participants to adhere to the Friendly space policy when subscribing to and starting an activity.
More information:
Criteria 4.1 Internal (membership) engagement [Q3, Q5]
[edit]- There is no documentation about how you communicate with your members and participants
- We maintain an activity list.
- We publish a monthly newsletter.
- We have an online chat meeting every Tuesday from 19:00 to 21:00 via https://chat.wikimedia.be
- You can have a video conference at any time via https://meet.wikimedia.be
- You can ask questions via info@wikimedia.be
- We maintain a number of websites
- We are compliant with GDPR
More information:
- wmbe:Template:Wmbecontact (including Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn).
- wmbe:Newsletter
- wmbe:Activities
- https://wikimedia.be/calendar (activities)
- https://wikimedia.be (public website)
- https://wikipedia.be (gateway to Wikipedia)
- https://friendswikimedia.be
- wmbe:WMBE GDPR privacy declaration
Criteria 4.2 Community connection [Q3, Q5]
[edit]- There is no documentation about how you communicate with your members and participants
See also the previous topic.
We organise a yearly volunteer meetup.
During, before and after the activities, participants can ask any pertinent questions. They get an immediate answer, or later, depending on the complexity, and if there is an immediate answer.
We facilitate Wikimedia training, most often at museums, libraries, archives, heritage organisations, education institutions.
Using any of the below channels, members, volunteers, participants, or third parties can contact us.
More information:
- wmbe:Template:Wmbecontact (including Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn).
- We write on Diff https://diff.wikimedia.be
- We published a book about how to use Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Key observations
[edit]- affiliate demonstrates strong programmatic work, with a particular focus on closing the gender gap; reporting needs more quantitative data and documentation of governance practices
For the documentation, and governance procedures, see above.
- https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/users/Geertivp
- Since 2019 I have thought 194 programs, and trained 2361 volunteers;
- My students performed:
- 72.4mln words added
- 293k references added
- 1.35mld Page views
- 497k pages edited
- 46.7k pages created
- 117k uploads to Commons
- https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/users/M0tty