Talk:Updating the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations/Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations

See also:

Just pointing briefly to some concerns about the Funding eligibility changes, so that they are easier to find. Effeietsanders (talk) 19:18, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Fostering innovation

We are at uncertain times and we know our environment is changing rapidly. Readers and editors are declining, our energy and our money are finite, and every hour of staff and volunteer time we spend here is an hour we do not spend elsewhere. That is the test this proposal has to go through, and I don't think it passes.

Strip it down and this is the same move we have made before: marginally tighten the eligibility criteria and bolt on another layer of reporting. If I were playful I would ask for impact of those past changes before going for a new one. Where is the post-mortem and quantified analysis of Global Metrics?

Before we set up new criterias, "impact" metrics etc... any new proposal should answer the following questions:

• Since the last proposal, how much of the money awarded through our grant system was actually lost to fraud, misuse, or unrecoverable failure? Not "at risk" in theory. Lost. Those adding controls carry the burden of proof, so produce the number.
• What was the impact of the previous proposal? How did it lift up overall quality? How much time did it consume for what outcome?
• Is the time spent on those reporting (mismanagement risk mitigation) of higher value than spending time experimenting?
• How, concretely, does this proposal improve our odds against the trends actually threatening us: the reader decline, the editor decline, the collapse in engagement? More reporting reverses none of those.

There is thirty years of management research on where innovation actually comes from, from Deci & Ryan's Self-Determination Theory to Spreitzer (1995, AMJ 38:1442) and Zhang & Bartol (2010, AMJ 53:107): autonomy and agency drive it, supervision and reporting suppress it. The reporting cost lands on everyone: foundation and affiliates staff and volunteers. Every form to fill we add is agency we take back time to do things.

At a moment when our resources are shrinking and the threats are existential, are we really choosing to invest scarce time in building more bureaucracy. That is backwards. We should be cutting tape, not laying more of it.

If there is a genuine control gap, name the specific failure it fixes and show it is worth more than the experiments it will cost us. Absent that, this proposal, as any other proposal right now, should be rewritten the exact opposite way with the goal to reclaim much needed time to do meaningful experiments and actions. schiste (talk) 06:38, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for these thoughts. I think the values and intentions for our movement you express are very similar to those that underpin these proposed changes.

In the current state of our Community Fund, we are accepting grant applications without giving applicants (affiliates or otherwise) any direction about what we are hoping we do with that money, aside from it being related to Wikimedia and aligned in some way with the 2030 strategy, which is a very long list of initiatives that the movement thinks are important. The result is that when someone asks for the impact of that ~$16M USD we spend on Community Fund grants each year, we can't really answer that question. We have not clarified as a movement or at the Foundation what we actually want grantees to do with it. And we ask grantees to manually report an enormous amount of information about what they did with the money and its impact, in a format that creates a huge burden on grantees and the staff at the Foundation who process it, and we still can't answer that question, because we have never defined the strategic purpose. Effective at what? Impact on what?

This obscures the often really good, impactful work that affiliates and grantees are doing-- likely not for those closest to the work, but certainly for Regional Funds Committees and Foundation staff who support funding decisions.

Additionally, user groups are increasingly asking for general operating support, becoming more formalized organizations with administrative overhead. This isn't inherently a problem, but it becomes one when groups don't have the organizational capacity to execute the work they would like to do, or when groups have overlapping missions and areas of work. This is inefficient bureaucracy that doesn't serve our mission.

What this proposal intends to do is (1) clarify very basic expectations for what user groups (build communities and/or content) and chapters or thematic orgs (build communities and the relevance of the Wikimedia Movement in their locality or context) are supposed to do. The approach they take is up to them. (2) Clarify basic organizational health expectations for affiliates (not at all dissimilar to the existing affiliate health criteria, but adjusted for user groups), so that organizations know what capacities they need to maintain and build to keep their organizations healthy. (3) Reduce duplication of efforts and administrative overhead so that we can work together effectively and not in competition with one another for audiences or money. (4) Centralize and simplify the impact reporting the Foundation requires of affiliates and grantees, so that we can leverage data for better insights and reduce administrative load for volunteers.

To clarify, this is not a proposal that was created to address waste and fraud in our grant ecosystem. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer, and thank you for clarifying that the root reason of that proposal isn't fraud, it does help have a narrower discussion :)

As you shared, "we ask grantees to manually report an enormous amount of information about what they did with the money and its impact [...] and we still can't answer that question.". And this is not a new situation, from GAC in 2011, the FDC in 2012, the Learning & Evaluation teams in 2013, Global Metrics in 2014 and the 2015 survey that found them among the most burdensome parts of the process, common metrics in 2017, core metrics in 2021, to today the problem is exactly the same and all of the proposals are actually very very similar and fall of them failed at exactly what this proposal promises: making our impact legible.

Because we've been trying for almost 15 years, and each iteration was done in the same way, including this one, this feels like an ill fated proposal. I'm not seeing what is that new and different from today, or all other past attempts, that it would solve anything.

So here is a concrete proposal before this proposal advances: publish a post-mortem of Global Metrics and of the 2021 core metrics. How much did each regime cost in staff and volunteer hours, what decisions did the data actually change, and what did we learn that we would not have learned otherwise. If nobody can produce that, then we already have our answer about what an eighth regime will yield. Given our current situation, and 15 years of trying one way, let's change our operating system. One of the things the FDC retrospective itself concluded was that the "level of bureaucracy in the application process, reporting and metrics was overly burdensome" and that it did not allow evaluation of projects over time nor comparison among applicants. The people who ran the most rigorous version of this system told us the model doesn't work. Let's cut reporting to the legal minimum, define the two or three signals we actually need, and give the reclaimed hours back to volunteers to experiment against the declines that are actually threatening us and use reclaimed staff time to do capacity building with "small" grantees and design a coherent strategy to align large grantees with a movement direction.

We have been treating our grant system as transactional program without a clear strategy associated to it, let's try treating it as a capacity building program.

PS @RMaung (WMF) I really appreciate you answering, and my message isn't personal to you: this is a systemic situation that, even with your long tenure, predates your arrival at the Foundation. If anything I write feels like an attack on your work, I apologize, it was not meant that way for a single second. schiste (talk) 07:20, 11 July 2026 (UTC)07:20, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

@Schiste Thank you for the PS-- not taken as an attack at all. Movement time and effort is precious, and especially now, we cannot afford to waste it.

Our goal is to reduce reporting for grantees and affiliates-- returning to a system where affiliation and funding eligibility are connected also means it will be easier for us to deduplicate reporting and organizational health requirements for grantees who are also affiliates. But more to your point-- the key difference, in my view, is that the Foundation will be responsible for reporting on outcomes, not grantees. Grantees and affiliates can track what is valuable to them depending on their context and needs, but the reporting requirements that are relevant to funding eligibility and affiliation will be done centrally by the Foundation. This is the reason we want to increase adoption of the ERT, or at least work with grantees to pipe the data they collect with other tracking tools into that system. It allows us to remove the burden of metric reporting, and if the Foundation ever determines that we need to use something different as an outcome metric (hopefully not, but perhaps every year or so, as the history you provided above might suggest!), we don't need grantees to adapt their own systems, the Foundation handles it in adapting our own analysis pipeline.

I'm curious what specifically about the proposal you see increasing bureaucracy and reporting requirements, because the intention is to do the opposite. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

By design, making a change on those topics and introducing a new tool to be used is increasing bureaucracy. Which is not always a bad thing. In this case, in a "normal" situation, there are bureaucratic additions (regarding quantitative data for recognition/funding as an example) I would probably support. But as I said, we're not in a regular situation. And adding a new tool, that is still in very active development, do add a transition burden and use burden. Plus all the edge cases that will trigger discussion, stress and tension.

But we're not in a normal situation and we have had almost 15 years of experience, and this proposal is in line with everything that was done before and failed. And now it's costing a lot of time from volunteers in staff discussing it and will cost even more volunteer and staff time to implement and manage the change (and I'm sure you do know change does have a cost).

Is this proposal altogether bad and dangerous by itself? Absolutely not.

In a time where traffic is dropping as fast as it is and we need to make the most of the time and energy we have will this proposal take time and energy? Absolutely.

Maybe language is the issue, but what I'm trying to convey is that this proposal isn't a game changer AND at this time it actually harms us. Measuring impact matters, but right now doing things and experimenting matters much more, that's the only way we could manage our way out of the situation. schiste (talk) 08:55, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Schiste, please recognize that you are complaining about wasting time and money while at the same time asking for more oversight and etc (i.e., wasting time and money :) and asking to create a report about the impact - they need to be able to measure it consistently before such a report can be created.

@RMaung (WMF) it feels burdensome and also not that open to newcomers, but maybe i misunderstand something. Also, problems of what it measures are very obvious. If you know care about new editors and edits, to me it is even incentivizing the wrong things. at a minimum people will have to make sure their activities are measurable by your tool - even though i am pro metrics and you probably know about my research project on P&E dashboard

I think in general WMF can easily and should put out direct requests for proposals. e.g., I want proposals on how to deal with AI and I will make available 100,000 to 5 teams, or something like this. And those teams should be able to be relatively new to the movement if that is their situation.

The proposal feels a bit to me like restricting funding to all the groups we have already been funding, which we already kind of admit is not working that well, while limiting newcomers and expecting them to e.g., become a user group, establish governance, and etc before taking on any substantial projects beyond 1 month/ rapid work.

Best,

Brett NabuKudurru (talk) 11:03, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I meant the opposite, what sentence did you read as me wanting more oversight please? I want to fix it to make sure my point is properly conveyed. Thank you for feedback :) schiste (talk) 07:54, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I too would be interested in knowing what happened with Global Metrics. It would seem good to know what lessons were learned before moving forward with a new metrics framework. At the same time, I believe that some metrics which provide comparable values are important so that relative value from programs, organizations, money, and time can be compared. I am concerned that millions of dollars have been spent, both inside WMF and through grants, but tracking the return on spending is a real challenge. ↠Pine (✉) 04:37, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

I, three would be interested! That was before my time, but the basic metrics framework outlined there is similar to the basic metrics attached to affiliate accountabilities in this proposal-- content (unreverted content pages added and edited); community (existing editors or newcomers engaged); and context (this is the one that isn't included in the historical metric frameworks, but this would be rubric, not metric based, and the burden of measuring this would also fall to the Foundation). I don't think the metric framework this proposal implies is new or revolutionary compared to these older frameworks. The change we are proposing is that a metric framework is actually attached to accountability and strategic roles; and that the Foundation should be responsible for measuring and reporting on it, not grantees and affiliates. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the comparison with Global Metrics, please see Talk:Updating the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations/Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations/Funding Eligibility#Visualization and comparison of proposals. ↠Pine (✉) 03:21, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

@RMaung (WMF) I wrote a grant, or a scientific paper, which has 35 authors and is cited e.g., 100 times, and i give talks at academic conferences about the value of wiki and etc - is there any way to measure these outcomes? It is the old problem of measuring only white people knowledge and then saying they are more intelligent. Best, brett NabuKudurru (talk) 11:06, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Please show community consent and support

Is there any Wikimedia community affiliate which is willing to sign to indicate consent for this system? Can anyone in the Wikimedia Foundation or otherwise show community support for this? Can someone at the Wikimedia Foundation talk about what kind of community consent or approval backs this proposal? Is community approval desired, or is that not necessary for this proposal?

Wikipedia is a democracy and projects are supposed to have community consent to proceed.

When there are major changes then one way to show user consent / consent of the governed is to have individual users and Wikimedia affiliates organizations sign approval to proceed. Right now, the current model of governance is asserting that approval exists until and unless the Wikimedia community organizes a protest. Even still, when there is a community protest, it can happen that there are claims that the protest is not legitimate or that it does not represent the silent majority of Wikimedia community members who approve and consent of all proposals, but who never participate visibly in the democratic process.

I would like to see Wikimedia affiliate representatives indicate some approval of this plan. Would it be possible to have public comment from whatever community organizations are willing to endorse this plan? In the absence of such endorsement, then what should everything think and say about this plan? Is this supposed to be a top-down plan without community consent? Is there something problematic about showing community consent? Is community consent even useful or desirable in our governance model, or is it better that an institutional process outside of community consent presents these projects?

I am aware that we are coming out of 15+ years of planning the 2030 Movement Strategy, which is not implemented. We tried to have a governing charter which included 10,000s of thousands of users contributing 100,000s of hours to building the thing - Movement Charter/Ratification/Voting. That is in the past, and I get that, but we still have the basic challenges of democracy and consent.

Do we even want democracy and consent? If so, where is it here? Bluerasberry (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

This process has involved extensive community input, and the plan and process have been documented here. Many volunteer stakeholders, including many affiliate representatives, have weighed in on the issues facing our ecosystem and made recommendations. See Towards a Healthy Ecosystem of Movement Organizations, Affiliations Committee Recommendations, the Future Affiliate Landscape, and Key Challenges for a New Grantmaking Strategy.

We have taken these concerns and ideas; used Foundation staff time and expertise to draft our good-faith attempt to operationalize those recommendations into a model proposal; made changes based on initial rounds of feedback with the GRDC, AffCom, Trustees, and movement organization EDs; and shared it here for broader community feedback. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I think @Bluerasberry point is actually important; we shouldn't mix "asked for feedback" with "support and consent for the proposal". If it's helpful in any way to give some context, Bluerasberry, affiliates have a monthly call with the Wikimedia Foundation. Last one was in July 7th, where this proposal was presented, and WMF staff did a quick check-in on how people felt about this proposal, with the overwhelming responses being that people felt mostly negative towards it, expressing feelings of confusion, frustration, negativity, among others, both towards the content of the proposal but also around the process. Several concerns were raised that haven't been addressed in this new proposal, and some new changes have been introduced that would have probably not received good feedback, such as the introduction of new criteria to access multi-year grants. However, as a staff on an affiliate, and per @Schiste comments, I can say that it does indeed take a lot of time to both read these documents, prepare a position, and share it with the relevant stakeholders inside the organizations that we're part of to approve it. Scann (WDU) (talk) 13:50, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it is fair to say that this proposal came as a surprise to most stakeholders, even those who follow these processes closely. We were under the impression that any such proposals and subsequent decisions would be a direct result and based on the work of the GRDC. Their strategy will only be published for Wikimania though. Then this prosposal comes along weeks earlier and the process and timing seem very obscure. The proposal might be informed by some of the feedback from stakeholders, but who mandated it in first place? For Wikimedians due process matters, especially on delicate issues like the ones at hand here. A lot of time and resources went into setting up the GRDC to ensure trust and representation. Yes it takes time. And yes it is always quicker and easier to draft complicated proposals alone or within a small group of like-minded people. But this is not how this movement works, as Lane pointed out above. I think we need to respect the process we agreed on as well as the work that has gone into it, particularly from the GRDC. Ki7sun3 (talk) 17:52, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

While I appreciate these proposals, I do not believe they should be enacted by default absent some enormous expenditure of volunteer and affiliate pressure to reject them. There was a discussion in the Next 25 meeting about a desire to find better ways to approve things. This might be a good pilot use case for finding a better way to make decisions. At the same time, I am interested in what can be done to reduce conflicts between affiliates and to improve the grants system, so my comment here is more about how enactment is done and less about whether enactment happens. ↠Pine (✉) 04:32, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

• Please note that I have edited my original comment. ↠Pine (✉) 01:44, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Very high burden of administration on volunteers

Volunteers are very eager to engage in Wikimedia programs, do wiki things with others, and do all the social and editorial tasks of advancing the Wikimedia Movement.

Volunteers are not eager to do administrative bureaucratic tasks, especially when those tasks are extra and distinct from doing Wikimedia programs. At a glance, this scheme seems like it will greatly increase the administrative burden on unpaid volunteers who want to be in good standing with the processes that this guide governs.

I would like to see recommended caps on time and labor for participating in these programs. The Wikimedia Foundation has a habit of placing extraordinary high burden of reporting and administration on unpaid Wikimedia contributors when they try to connect to movement organization. Please be explicit in defining the expected time costs of administrative compliance. Please do the calculations and put in the user guides how long compliance is imagined to take, because I want to avoid the disconnect in understanding where we have governance processes where the WMF imagines the time cost is trivial, where from the volunteer and community perspective the administrative workload is such that only paid staff can comply.

The burden of administrative compliance and requirements that volunteers leave wiki programming to do the labor of administrative compliance is a major driver in converting functioning, productive wiki volunteer organizations into failed, disbanded organizations. Please be explicit about how much work is being requested. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:42, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

• I too am concerned about administrative overhead, especially for groups with no staff. I would like to see WMF commit to fund all time required for administrative compliance once that time exceeds a certain amount, such as 4 hours per month. Also, hopefully most of that time can be handled by existing WMF staff or affiliate staff rather than requiring groups to spend time trying to find someone to do administrative work on a part-time basis. ↠Pine (✉) 04:21, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

  This is helpful feedback, as the intention of this proposal is to reduce bureaucratic overhead and reporting requirements across the movement (in part through Foundation-driven reporting and though deduplication of grant and affiliate reporting requirements). I think we can do a better job of clarifying the scale of some of these organizational health-related requirements (see also my reply here).RMaung (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Recruiting new users is overemphasized in strategy

In about 2014 the Wikimedia Foundation set the general goal of all outreach to be recruitment of new participants.

• Learning and Evaluation/Global metrics

This was never an obvious best choice, and we have always had other groups with other priorities. This new system further solidifies global user attention toward recruiting new participants, such as with the table in File:Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations - Table Version.pdf In the context of changing society, declining readership, AI disruption, and the other rapid major threats that are coming to the Wikimedia Movement, I want to challenge the fundamental direction of the strategy to focus on recruiting new participants. I know that in theory groups can set other priorities, but because the mandatory reporting systems require reporting new events and new user recruitment, then that transfers editorial pressure from the Wikimedia Foundation on to the Wikimedia community to produce certain kinds of content and not do other activities.

Here are some important outcomes which I do not think this system values:

• Recruiting external funding. If a group somehow gets a non-WMF funder, then that itself does not get recognition or praise in this system. Instead, the external funding just gets converted into the metric of how many new users that program was able to recruit as the primary success metric
• Keeping stable institutional partnerships, such as with GLAMs, universities, government agencies, or other expert organizations. Again, these partnerships get evaluated as a new user metric
• Research publications, journalism, art, presentations, or any kind of media where Wikipedians talk about Wikipedia - Wikipedia is the nonprofit community center of many of the world's biggest social and ethical issues, and Wikipedia has an outsized role in global public perceptions of government, policy, and the place of technology in society. Everywhere in the world people are setting policy on AI, and Wikipedia is at the center of that, everywhere, right now. This new system does not sufficiently value, for example, if a Wikimedia affiliate organization has an institutional partnership to produce good journalism, or research papers, or other media products or cultural experiences which are off-wiki and which do not recruit actual Wikipedia editors. These are things that actual humans want to do in social ways with other humans, but this proposed system directs people at scale to separate from each other and focus on editing in the Wikimedia platform, alone, without connections to other humans.

It is possible to name other kinds of programs. I agree that new user recruitment and count of events are important, but when we make these kinds of requests at scale, globally, in a confined online reporting system, and the measure of success is only the metrics in that system, then that diminishes the humanity of the projects and has the unintended effort of centering the priorities of computer systems, rather than the wishes of the humans who operate those systems.

A clear activity which the Wikimedia Foundation could do right now to help fix this problem is to right now, run and publish a multi-year analysis of all the grant funded programs for a year, or for multiple years in a region. I expect that if the WMF did this, then that report would omit many of the community's own best projects in the humanities, because our system puts so much emphasis on certain digital metrics while failing to collect and sort others that the community would choose. If I am mistaken, then please show me the aggregate report which does show the connection between grant funding and nonstandard metrics of success. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Bluerasberry! I agree that these are important outcomes that can't be directly measured by on-wiki content added or contributors engaged.

I just want to point out that the outcomes you identify here are exactly the type that this proposal would expect chapters and thematic organizations to be held accountable to-- all this work is meant by the expectation that such organizations build movement relevance in their localities or contexts: ["Affiliates make sure that the Wikimedia movement is relevant in their local and thematic contexts. They do this by (1) promoting the Wikimedia model and mission in their localities and regions through engaging policymakers or media; (2) connecting the Wikimedia projects to new audiences of readers, and/or (3) connecting the movement to broader knowledge ecosystems through partnerships and strategic fundraising."]

This work would not be measured by direct on-wiki outcomes, but through a rubric making clear the type of context-building activities that are expected, whatever combination an organization so chooses.RMaung (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I am sure that bureaucratic success metrics are often at odds with results that any reasonable person would consider to be a success. But I really don't understand the problem with This new system does not sufficiently value, for example, if a Wikimedia affiliate organization has an institutional partnership to produce good journalism, or research papers, or other media products or cultural experiences which are off-wiki and which do not recruit actual Wikipedia editors. Why should the system value this at all? asilvering (talk) 22:47, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

• A complicated reply here, because I think I disagree twice. First, I partly disagree on the facts: that table clearly lists, as examples of "impactful program delivery" that would qualify for Level 5 maturity Promotes Wikimedia context by engaging in strategic partnerships with local and/or aligned institutions and organizations; or by engaging in media or policy advocacy in their locality, which would cover bullet points 2 and 3. It also consistently refers to "supporting" and "activating" the community in addition to "growing" it.

It's true the first bullet point (external funding) is not directly represented in the metrics, and I think that gets to my second more philosophical disagreement, which is a bit in line with asilvering's comment: I think it's reasonable to expect WMF-funded programs to impact WMF projects. If a group gets additional external funding, and that doesn't get converted into any impact on direct success metrics, that strikes me as a decent reason for the WMF not to fund them more. Or, if a group only produces things like research papers and news articles (which the rest of the world provides plenty of incentive for!), I am not sure it truly belongs within the WMF's funding remit. I can see the argument that generally raising the profile of Wikipedia is a first step toward recruiting editors, and it would be difficult to directly track editors recruited in this way. But I would prefer to see the WMF direct resources primarily toward the "core" of the wikis. LEvalyn (talk) 02:03, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Clarification of mandate and approval

In their resolution 8 July 2024, and the appendix about three movement pilots, the WMF Board of Trustees mandated what is now the GRDC with "the responsibility and decision-making authority over the allocation of Wikimedia grants currently disbursed under the Community Fund. In coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation, it will have the authority to adjust current grantmaking structures to better fit the evolving needs of the movement, including modifying how regions are categorized, and establishing global or thematic funding goals." The GRDC's main roles and responsibilities were later given more detail.

Movement volunteers, affiliate staff, WMF staff and the BoT itself invested a lot of time and resources in the complex process required to set up the GRDC, and since August 2025, 13 committee members and WMF staff facilitators have been engaging widely within the movement to collect input and then produce a draft Grantmaking Strategy 2026, published 17 July. The draft is up for consultation on Meta until 17 September.

On 8 July, WMF staff published their proposal for Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations, which is sidelining the board mandated GRDC strategy process. Their proposal will be presented to the BoT in September, possibly before the GRDC will be able to learn from movement input and present a final version of their strategy. The staff proposal is unsigned, and it's unclear to me who has mandated this work, and who has approved the actual texts. Can someone please clarify?

Also, I would encourage all that share an interest in governance and resource distribution in this movement, to read and comment on the GRDC's draft Grantmaking Strategy 2026, which is where we should focus our attention at this point. The competing staff proposal is mixing aspects of affiliate recognition, funding and WMF administrative challenges regarding metrics and impact evaluation. Perhaps it should be shelved until the GRDC strategy process has been completed and presented to the movement as a whole and the BoT (that ordered the process to be undertaken)? Elisabeth Carrera (WMNO) (talk) 07:21, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi, @Elisabeth Carrera (WMNO)! This proposal is presented by the Wikimedia Foundation in the context of another pilot, Updating the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations. It combines elements related to affiliation and grant-making, which are within the scope of the Affiliations Committee and the Global Resource Distribution committee respectively, and are also closely intertwined in the current ecosystem. The Foundation staff involved in the creation of this proposal are in regular conversations with both committees. They have tried to align as much as possible with the recommendations both committees have produced recently, especially the Affiliations Committee Recommendations and the Grantmaking Strategy proposal from the GRDC. Both committees will continue providing strategic guidance and WMF staff will continue working on the operational implementation of these recommendations. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, @RMaung (WMF). I have followed the two pilots and their written outputs as well as the AffCom recommendations. But I don't see a direct correlation between those documents and the WMF staff proposal. I expected the pilot committees and the BoT, after community input, to complete their strategic processes. And then for WMF staff to be asked how to best implement formal resolutions.

This movement has inefficient governance processes, and I think the timing and content of this proposal add to that. I'm not well-aquainted with the inner workings of the WMF administration. Can you please clarify which department has worked on this? Who asked for the work to be undertaken in this manner, and who signed off on the resulting proposal?

If you want open, trusting exchanges about the affiliate landscape and future grant-making with those of us that represent communities, more clarity would be welcome. Elisabeth Carrera (WMNO) (talk) 11:35, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

• @Elisabeth Carrera (WMNO): thanks for mentioning the GRDC, which I had forgotten. The above comments in part align with my request at Talk:Updating_the_ecosystem_of_Wikimedia_organizations/Recognition_and_Funding_for_Movement_Organizations/Funding_Eligibility#Visualization_and_comparison_of_proposals. I believe that a visualization could be helpful for understanding the proposal. I will make an additional comment in that section regarding the GRDC and other grant-making entities and roles. Additionally, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I believe that this combined proposal tries to do too much and should be separated into proposals regarding affiliate structure, grants, and evaluation. Separate proposals would be easier to review in phases, although eventually the approved changes should align and pull in the same direction. ↠Pine (✉) 06:05, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

@RMaung (WMF) Thank you for engaging in general, good to see someone from WMF in the discussion at least. though why head of metrics is talking about funding i do not know! maybe because you will be metrics director. @Bluerasberry and I proposed some time ago to do an analysis of impact from affiliates about science, we did ask for funds and were rejected, but i think now WMF is taking up the idea at a broader scale i think we can help to be honest. Best, Brett NabuKudurru (talk) 11:12, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Online questions given during the Wikimania session on Fri 11am Paris time

Q3: If there are system that is not broken, why break it? For example, if there are several wikimedia groups (including non-affiliates) in a country but dont overlap each other, why do we force them to merge or "one group to survive"?
Q2: What will happen to WMF grantees that are not affiliates? Movement Strategy helped grow and sustain smaller movement partners, especially those advancing knowledge equity. Will the WMF work with AffCom on affiliation pathways for these organizations? In the past, AffCom has denied affiliation to long-term WMF grantees despite years of demonstrated impact. Will the WMF and AffCom establish a clear, coordinated approach?
Q1: If timebound funding (like one year only) but higher than rapid grant require an applicant to be an affiliate, even for one year?

[Placed by Ambrosia10 who was a room assistant during the session] Ambrosia10 (talk) 09:39, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Feedback on the proposed changes to recognition and funding for movement organizations

I apologize in advance for the length of this comment and for touching on several different topics. Thank you very much for taking the time to read it and consider my thoughts. I believe I am one of the people who has been following and using the grants system almost from its very beginning, and from several different perspectives: as a grant recipient, as a member of the community, and as someone who has been involved in discussions around its development and evaluation. Because of that, one of the things I have felt most strongly over the years is not resistance to change, but exhaustion caused by constant reforms. Not exhaustion from the work itself. Not exhaustion from projects or communities. But exhaustion from having to repeatedly learn how a new system works. I understand that change is a natural part of development, and I do not expect a funding system to remain unchanged forever. However, almost every major change comes with the promise that it will fix the problems of the previous model. Then come new criteria, new standards, new forms, new terminology, new expectations, and a new period of adaptation. Just when communities invest time and energy into understanding a system and making it work, we are asked to start over again. This is not a small cost. It is time and energy that could otherwise be invested in projects, community building, content creation, and bringing new people into the movement. This time, however, I do not think we are simply discussing a change in the way funding is distributed. In my opinion, this proposal represents a change in the very philosophy behind the funding system. Until now, the system was relatively simple: "if you have a good idea, people who can implement it, and a realistic plan, there is a possibility that you can receive support". Of course, with responsibility, transparency, and reporting. The new proposal seems to send a different message: having a good idea and a community capable of delivering results is no longer enough. Before that, you need to develop the organization itself. In other words, we are moving from a model where you prove that your project works, toward a model where you first need to prove that your organization is sufficiently developed. Organizational development is becoming a prerequisite for community and project development, and this is where I see the biggest concern. I do not question the importance of financial transparency, accountability, clearer organizational roles, or better understanding of impact. These are all legitimate goals. I also welcome the proposed increase of Rapid Grant limits, because for years there has been a clear gap between smaller grants and larger project grants for initiatives that fall somewhere in between. I also understand the need to identify responsibilities more clearly and to ensure that resources are used properly. However, administration should not become more important than the ideas, people, and communities that make the movement exist. Today, there are many small communities and user groups that achieve excellent results almost entirely through volunteer work. They do not have employees, large administrative structures, or complex governance systems. What they do have is knowledge, experience, motivation, and results. Under this proposal, many of these communities will have to redirect a significant amount of their time and energy away from projects and toward building administrative capacity simply in order to maintain access to longer-term support. Instead of developing projects, we risk developing administration. This concerns me especially because I believe the biggest challenge facing the movement today is not a lack of funding. The movement has more resources than before, but the number of active contributors and volunteers remains one of the biggest challenges. For years, we have talked about the need for more editors, more volunteers, more organizers, and stronger communities. At the same time, we continue to invest more and more resources into the movement while many communities struggle with declining or stagnating participation. If this is one of the main challenges we face, I think we should ask ourselves whether our biggest reforms should focus primarily on organizational structures, or on supporting the people who actually create and sustain the work. Why are we asking volunteers to spend more time navigating bureaucracy instead of spending that time creating impact? Another concern I have is that this model may unintentionally encourage further centralization. Organizations that already have employees, financial systems, legal support, established procedures, and administrative capacity will naturally find it easier to meet these requirements. Smaller communities will not have the same possibilities. Over time, this could create a situation where smaller groups either remain permanently limited to smaller project-based support or feel pressured to merge with larger organizations in order to access more stable funding. In that process, we risk losing something very valuable: the diversity of organizational models that has always been one of the strengths of the Wikimedia movement. Many small communities exist because people come together around a specific topic, a local initiative, a particular interest, or a specific need. They are not trying to become large chapters, and becoming a large organization should not be the only recognized path toward growth and impact. I do not believe the intention of this proposal is to weaken user groups or small communities. However, I do think there is a real risk that this could become one of its unintended consequences. Organizations do not appear because someone first creates a perfect administrative structure and only afterwards builds a community. They appear because people gather around a good idea. Administration should grow as a consequence of successful work and community growth, not become a requirement before that work can even receive support. Overall, I see positive elements in this proposal: stronger transparency requirements, clearer organizational roles, better understanding of responsibilities, and improved opportunities for medium-sized projects through increased Rapid Grant support. But my main concern remains that the balance is shifting away from people and projects and toward organizational structures. My fear is that, while trying to create a more efficient and accountable funding system, we may unintentionally make it harder for exactly those communities that have proven for years that meaningful results can be achieved without large administrative systems. Before making such a fundamental change, I think we should ask ourselves a simple question: Are we building a system that creates more people, more communities, and more meaningful projects – or are we building a system that creates more administration? For me, the answer to that question is much more important than any new funding model. MikyM (talk) 09:22, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for these thoughts, @MikyM, and I apologize for my delay in replying.

Firstly, I absolutely understand the frustration and fatigue of reporting systems changing-- it is taxing for those of us who manage and process these changes at the WMF, and I know this is an even bigger burden for volunteers, affiliates, and other grantees. We don't take any changes to the reporting system lightly, and we are taking time to make sure that any further changes are sustainable ones. The goal is to create a more efficient process for everyone involved that can last.

I am curious about some of your comments above about how administrative overhead is incentivized in this model-- I ask because the intention is to disincentivize administration for its own sake (the Project Grant is intended to support good, impactful projects that don't need a formal nonprofit or other entity to enable them); while ensuring that grantees who do ask for operational support through General Support grants are still prioritizing on-wiki outcomes and organizational health. You wrote that ["Organizations do not appear because someone first creates a perfect administrative structure and only afterwards builds a community. They appear because people gather around a good idea. Administration should grow as a consequence of successful work and community growth, not become a requirement before that work can even receive support."] This resonates deeply with the intent of the proposal, so I would love to understand better how you see the Project tier of funding having the opposite effect. RMaung (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my comment carefully, consider it, and respond to the concerns I raised. I genuinely appreciate this kind of engagement, and I believe it is important to acknowledge it. I would, however, make one small distinction regarding the word “frustration”. What I am describing is not simply frustration with having to learn another system. It is closer to a form of destabilization. Repeated structural changes can have a negative effect on volunteers, especially because adapting to new procedures, terminology, requirements, tools, and expectations is not their professional role but something they must do in addition to the work they are already contributing freely. Volunteers are not merely one stakeholder group within the Wikimedia system. They are its foundation, its load-bearing pillars and, in many parts of the movement, its roof as well. They initiate activities and, to a very large extent, implement them. Without volunteers, very little of what we call the Wikimedia movement would exist. The role of professional and employed structures should therefore primarily be to support volunteers and make their contribution easier, more sustainable, and more effective. To answer your question more directly, my concern about the Project tier becomes clearer when the proposed model is compared with the current funding system. At present, the General Support Fund explicitly identifies individuals, groups, Wikimedia affiliates, and organizations as potential applicants. It provides sustained and flexible support for annual or strategic plans, larger projects, and programmes. In other words, both recognized and unrecognized groups, as well as individuals, currently have a possible pathway to funding beyond the Rapid Fund when they have developed a larger project, a connected programme, or a strategic plan that requires sustained investment. The proposed model changes this substantially. Project Funding of up to USD 100,000 per year would be available only to recognized user groups, while General Support Funding would be available only to recognized chapters and thematic organizations, apart from a very narrow exception for explicitly invited movement partners. Consequently, an individual or an unaffiliated volunteer group would be limited exclusively to Rapid Funds, regardless of how many years of experience it has, how strong its results are, or whether it has successfully implemented larger and recurring programmes in the past. If such a group needs more funding than the Rapid Fund permits, it would first have to seek recognition as a user group and establish a group-specific administrations and funding requirements. A recognized user group would not necessarily have to become a legal entity, but it would still have to create and continuously maintain a considerable organizational structure. If it wanted to retain access to General Support or multi-year funding, it would have to become a recognized chapter or thematic organization, which involves an even higher level of formalization and legal and governance requirements. I think we can reasonably agree that this represents additional administrative work, even if creating administration is not the stated intention of the proposal. This is the sense in which I believe the model incentivizes administrative overhead: not by explicitly asking groups to create administration for its own sake, but by making organizational recognition and organizational development prerequisites for access to any funding beyond the Rapid tier. The decisive difference is that, under the present system, a group can demonstrate that it has a good idea, an experienced team, a coherent programme, a realistic plan, and a strong record of results. Under the proposed model, those qualities would no longer be sufficient on their own. Before the programme could even be considered for Project or General Support funding, the group would first have to demonstrate that it had developed the required organizational structure. This is precisely the reversal I was referring to: organizational development becomes a prerequisite for project and community development, rather than something that develops gradually when the actual work and needs of the community make it necessary. There is also an important point about the proposed Rapid Fund limit that remains unclear to me. Under the current rules, the maximum amount is USD 5,000 per application, while an individual, organization, or group can access up to USD 10,000 in total per fiscal year. The proposal refers to a “proposed USD 10,000 limit”, but it does not specify whether this means USD 10,000 per application or USD 10,000 in total per year. If it is a per-application limit, how many Rapid Funds could an individual or unaffiliated group receive in one fiscal year, and could those grants overlap? If it is an annual limit, then individuals and unaffiliated groups would remain limited to the same total annual amount as today, despite losing their current possibility of applying for General Support. Clarifying this point is essential for understanding the real effect of the proposed changes. I do not doubt that the intention of the Project Funds is to support good and impactful projects while discouraging unnecessary administration. My concern is that, as currently drafted, the eligibility rules may produce the opposite practical effect: they may require successful volunteer groups to build organizations around their projects simply in order to preserve access to a level of support that is currently available to them without affiliate recognition. MikyM (talk) 16:27, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

The proposal refers to a “proposed USD 10,000 limit”, but it does not specify whether this means USD 10,000 per application or USD 10,000 in total per year. If it is a per-application limit, how many Rapid Funds could an individual or unaffiliated group receive in one fiscal year, and could those grants overlap? If it is an annual limit, then individuals and unaffiliated groups would remain limited to the same total annual amount as today, despite losing their current possibility of applying for General Support. -- Another relevant key issue here is that the current limiting cap probably is the total size of the rapid grant funding available, not per-applicant limits. That is, without also increasing the rapid grant funding, higher funding per applicant means a smaller number of grants or tighter limits on where the grants can be used which would be both worsening. --Zache (talk) 05:58, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Additionally, it should be kept in mind that the Rapid Fund is currently part of the region’s overall budget rather than a separate funding allocation. In some regions, demand on the fund is extremely high, while in others the available budget is so limited that it is not even sufficient to support the basic funding rounds throughout the fiscal year. Do you realize how much additional pressure and uncertainty this creates for those organizing campaigns and projects? MikyM (talk) 07:59, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

To be fair, the solution for limited rapid fund is to increase its size (even if it means that resources to increase would taken from yearly GSF grant funding) --Zache (talk) 08:26, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Quick update after feedback received

IMPORTANT: there is a new update below that supersedes this one.

Hello, a quick update from the Ecosystem pilot team, based on the feedback received so far:

• We are extending the deadline to provide feedback about this first draft to August 31. There will be more requests for feedback after this one, as this proposal evolves.

• We will not present a request for approval to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in September. Instead, we are aiming for December. We will request approval only for the Affiliation changes.
• The Funding Eligibility draft complements the Grantmaking Strategy draft by the Global Resource Distribution Committee. We both need more time to align these drafts and improve them based on feedback received.

We will share more updates as we process comments and improve the proposal and plans. In the meantime, we continue welcoming your thoughts. Qgil-WMF (talk) 12:38, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! I would also suggest you try to collect feedback joinging existing (offline/online) events that are happening in the coming months in the different regions rather than just set up separate consultation calls. Jan-Bart (talk) 07:24, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes! This was part of the plan already. We are submitting session proposals to the upcoming conferences. We have been doing so in the past two years since the pilots were announced, and last year we had several session combined with the GRDC. About online calls, in general, we request / suggest organizers to invite us for a presentation or a workshop and many have responded in the past (or took the initiative and reached out to invite us). This is not to say that we won't organize own session to discuss topics related to the proposal, but if they happen, they will be proposed as a complement to existing activities and events, not as an alternative. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:26, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@Qgil-WMF: On the Wikimedia user groups page, there is an information: As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen movement governance and improve affiliate support, the Wikimedia Foundation recommended, and the Affiliations Committee, after careful evaluation and discussions, have agreed to pause the recognition of new User Groups, Chapters, and Thematic Organizations until March 31, 2026. Given that the WMF Board will make a decision in December 2026, doesn't this mean that this deadline will be postponed at least until December 2026? I feel sorry for the people who have been waiting for a decision for so long (since August 2025); this template (Template:Affiliate recognition pause notice 2025) should be updated so they know how much longer they will have to wait. Gdarin | talk 16:44, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Gdarin thank you for pointing out that that template needs an update. AffCom and the Foundation staff involved in the Ecosystem pilot are still discussing what are the implications of this new timeline for the reopening of the affiliate recognition process. We will share an update when a decision has been made. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:38, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this timeline change. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk). I support Wiki Workers United 13:23, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@Qgil-WMF, @RMaung (WMF) : is there need for this point to give feedback on Funding Eligibility or metrics or event registration tool?

(Note: For the later ERT I would prefer to move ERT stuff as whole to separate proposal and use somekind co-creation process on what/how we would like to measure things as it is generally interesting on how we could measure the impact on comparable way AND also howto automate pre-elligibility checks. It is not bad idea as such, but I think that community, not just affliates, would like to participate on defining how it works) --Zache (talk) 16:10, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@Zache Very good question. On funding related topics, we encourage everyone to share their feedback about the Grantmaking Strategy draft with the GRDC. It is the basis the Funding Eligibility implementation proposal aims to build upon. The GRDC and the Ecosystem pilot are especially interested in hearing about what parts of the strategy receive support and which ones need more iterations (if any). Both are also very interested in hearing about potential inconsistencies within the Grantmaking Strategy, and in relation to the Funding Eligibility implementation proposal. Both are very very interested in hearing from people and groups who haven't given their feedback yet. For example, affiliates and other organizations in Southern latitudes, smaller or younger affiliates and other groups, individuals and informal groups applying for grants, and also volunteers from the wiki communities interested in the impact of grantmaking in the movement. Increasing the diversity of feedback helps everyone identify where there is more consensus and where there is more work needed.

And to the point you are probably implying, right now there is no need to drill down into details already discussed about the Funding Eligibility proposal, metrics, ERT... Please give us a bit of time to GRDC and the Ecosystem pilot (and AffCom, as needed) to sync on the basic ideas, and this will help all of us continuing these conversations. Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:10, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Feedback from Wikiesfera

We participated in the Wikimania session about this proposal and the one by the GRDC, and we want to leave our thoughts written here as well.

For those who did not attend Wikimania, virtually or in person, you should be aware that the GRDC members were openly unhappy in their session with how this proposal has come about, and the evident conflicting points with theirs, turning this into an unexpected race between competing proposals to see who gets to the Board first. It is useless to discuss strategy if implementation is already decided.

Attendants to the session about this proposal were clearly unhappy both by the contents of the proposal and the lack of an honest process to request feedback. You cannot drop a proposal on the EDs and then next day publish it on Diff, and say you have consulted them. You cannot drop it on Meta with a two week deadline and a date for a Board meeting in September and say you are honestly looking for feedback. It is clear that Wikimania was to be another check in the box, to say it was presented to the community there as well, and expect nothing to happen in August because it is really hard for people to mobilise then. It would require astounding amounts of spin to even present the reaction to this proposal at that session as being mixed. Everyone was either against it or against the current status of paused affiliation (which is understandable), but nobody supported this proposal, and there were so many reasons for that that we entirely suscribe.

We want to highlight just a few: Who defines impact? How is the Foundation going to go anywhere in the world and tell locals what they ought to be doing or achieving, or if it is enough or not? Who is positioning themselves as experts over those who are literally on the ground? If the Foundation decides one year to prioritise one topic, that means everyone has to do the same? There was unfortunately no response to these questions. On top of that, there was a real pushback against the framework the Foundation (or the people behind this proposal) is using. People did not accept the premise that overlapping affiliates are a problem to be solved, or that they are born out of interpersonal conflicts. It was telling how no examples could be provided of this. Neither was the premise that there is in general a widespread problem to be solved. No examples of mismanagement, money not being used for the purposes it had been granted, or anything of the sort were presented. Of course it is easy to say you want affiliates to be efficient, but where is the data that shows affiliates are currently being inefficient?

It did not escape people in the room that this proposal is coming out at the same time there is a rise in the creation of African affiliates. Is this the reason why this proposal is trying to cap growth, regardless of the work an affiliate is doing? It will disproportionately affect affiliates from the Global South, and affiliates who work themes of equity, gender and underrepresented topics and people. Not only that, but affiliates won’t even be able to decide if they want to switch type of affiliation or not, apparently it is Affcom, who has no contact with established affiliates, who will do some kind of audit and place a huge administrative burden on so many groups. And it was being presented as a done deal with a September date of consideration of approval.

This is such a bad proposal on so many levels, but the dishonest search of feedback continues a pattern of the Foundation unilaterally deciding things for the Movement without the Movement, such as when the Movement Charter and the Global Council were killed. Now affiliates are targeted.

We really hope the people behind this proposal heard, truly heard, the discontent at Wikimania and will react accordingly beyond merely pushing back a bit the unreasonable deadlines, because this has broken so much trust already.

On behalf of Wikiesfera, PatriHorrillo (talk) 10:04, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you @PatriHorrillo, this is a thorough and honest account of what many of us have been experiencing, and I'm grateful you took the time to write it so clearly for those who weren't at Wikimania.

As Executive Director of Art+Feminism, I want to add one concrete dimension to what you've described. A+F is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with over a decade of work, staff, and a track record of General Support Funding. We are classified as a user group. Under this proposal, that would make us ineligible for GSF, capping us at $100,000 at best, a reduction of over 70%, arriving just as we approach our 15th anniversary in 2029. That's not a minor adjustment. It's a funding cliff that would threaten the continuity of an organization that has been part of this movement since 2014.

@Zache has done the community a real service by compiling an impact analysis that makes visible what the proposal itself never quantified: the scale and profile of user groups currently receiving GSF who would face this same cliff. Looking at that list, the pattern is striking. The organizations most affected are disproportionately doing work on gender, language, and knowledge equity, and many are based in the Global South. This reflects what sustained, impactful thematic work actually looks like in the movement. It also reflects something the proposal seems not to yet reflect: knowledge equity isn't achieved by a single organization working a single angle. It requires multiple groups, with different communities, different languages, and different approaches, working in parallel and in collaboration. The rule limiting two affiliates from claiming the same thematic focus gets this exactly backwards. Closing off that multiplicity doesn't make the ecosystem more efficient. It makes it less capable of achieving the goal.

The communities most affected deserved to be at the table when this was drafted. I remain hopeful there's still an opportunity for that kind of genuine engagement, and would welcome being part of it. --Kiraface (talk) 20:22, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Comment about movement partners

In previous texts there was a movement partner category, and acknowledgment as partners was thought to be managed by AffCom. However, in this proposal the formalized movement partner definition has been replaced by an intermediary exception for cases where affiliates or the WMF cannot do the work themselves. Movement partners would be WMF invite-only.

Some partners previously mentioned as examples include:

• Open Knowledge Foundation – OKF originated the OpenGLAM collaboration with Wikimedia and others, which started in 2010, and was instrumental in advancing the adoption of open licences for museum collections.
• OpenStreetMap – Wikimedia uses OSM as a map service, and it is also one of the very large linked data datasets that are linked to Wikidata.
• Creative Commons – Wikimedia uses CC licences as its licensing framework. After 2018, Creative Commons also inherited the lead of OpenGLAM from the Open Knowledge Foundation.

The main organizations can probably organize their work directly with the WMF, but all of these also have their own regional groups. At least in theory, such groups could incorporate their work as affiliates by registering as user groups which are doing local level work with GLAMs or integrating OSM and Wikidata or localizing/updating map data.

So my questions are:

1. how would the "there can be only one" rule work if there were a global thematic group and someone wanted to start a local one? Say GLAM User Group as the global one and AvoinGLAM as the local one in Finland.-- Ie. can there be a local and a global group at the same time?
   
   
2. Another note is that these organizations currently can hold community grants that allow them to have employees (for example AvoinGLAM has coordinator), but even if they registered as user groups under the proposal, the size of the allowed grants would be substantially more limited. They would therefore seek to become thematic organizations for getting GSF. -- Would it be possible for a group whose main purpose is broader than just Wikimedia to become a thematic organization under the new proposal?

As a personal opinion, I think that at least for project grants, "movement partner" groups should have much more straightforward access than proposed, as they are groups which have the ability (and a proven track record) for doing high-impact projects. It would also be proper for the Wikimedia movement to formally acknowledge these groups through AffCom, as that recognition could have practical uses.

In general, they could also be eligible for the General Support Fund (GSF) under the same rules as affiliates. I would, however, set a ceiling on what a movement partner can receive. For example, no more than a fixed share of the group's annual budget, and/or a fixed annual maximum per group. The reasoning is that these organizations have a mission wider than Wikimedia have also other funding sources and best use of WMF funding is as an enabler that helps them access to those other sources for wikimedia related projects. Ie. the movement should support their Wikimedia-related work without becoming their primary funder.

--Zache (talk) 04:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Update: Extending the deadline for feedback and collaboration based on your comments

Thank you to everyone who took the time to review the first public draft of the proposal for Updating the Movement Ecosystem strategy. Through the comments you’ve shared online, at Wikimania, and in various conversations, the Board and I have heard clearly that we need to extend the timeline to allow more space for continued discussion and collaboration. Based on your feedback, the Ecosystem pilot team is taking the following steps to move forward:

The original plan to discuss the strategy with WMF's Board of Trustees in September will now be moved to December 2026. This will allow more time for community feedback and discussion on the proposal, both online and in upcoming regional in-person events. We are extending the time to provide feedback on the first version of the proposal for an additional seven weeks, through September 30. We will come back to the Board in December for further discussion on the proposal and community feedback about the purpose and role of movement affiliates, including how we approach areas of overlap and the expectations associated with recognition. The funding elements of the proposal will be developed through a longer consultation process, working closely with the GRDC through March 2027.

We are working with Affcom now, and they will follow up in the coming week on what this means for the current pause on their work on recognition and derecognition.

It’s a priority for me to ensure that this collaboration involves a broad range of perspectives, including those who may not be as visible or consistently represented in these conversations. This includes emerging communities and groups, whose perspectives are just as important as those of more established communities and groups. We are actively discussing how to broaden our engagement so that more people have meaningful opportunities to engage. Our commitment is to ensure that all affiliates, grantees, and other Wikimedians active in movement conversation spaces and events receive the information they need and can engage in ways that are relevant to their local or relevant context, whether that is onwiki, Telegram, Discord, or other spaces. Your ideas on how we can do this better are most welcome.

While our goal has always been to ensure that this draft aligns closely with the grantmaking strategy presented by the GRDC, we’ve heard your feedback that the two proposals need to be better coordinated. The team tells me we received valuable feedback at Wikimania that will be incorporated into both proposals. I have seen first hand the dedication and care with which the team has been working to align this work with both AffCom and GRDC. We reaffirm our commitment to work collaboratively with these two committees towards a more unified strategy. We share the same mission, and I am confident that by continuing to work together and building on the feedback we’ve received, we can achieve this.

We will share more updates as we continue our conversations with AffCom and the GRDC. In the meantime, please continue sharing your feedback on the proposals, and how we can continue to make this process better. BMeehan-WMF (talk) 16:26, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Is posting here more important than the stuff that is happening on your own talkpage? Polygnotus (talk) 00:36, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Its concerning the WMF seems more focused on recognizing affiliates than unions. MBAB (talk) 21:30, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Diagnosis and direction

I have a hard time assessing the proposal as both the premises and the intended outcomes are unclear.

Already at "Context" I disagree with the statement that "The Foundation has taken several steps over the last decade to make funding more accessible". What actually has happened, since the Haifa letter at least, is a decade-long campaign to centralise (micro)management in the WMF by discouraging the development of chapters and any other democratically managed incorporated entities. The results sometimes take many years to show up, for example Wikimedia Foundation elections/2027/Proposed eligibility criteria would not be so difficult to formulate if we had invested in chapters when there was still interest and energies for it.

The specific proposals seem to go in somewhat opposite directions, as they apparently encourage organizational development to possibly facilitate delegation (e.g. hubs) but also place limits on it (e.g. explicitly capping the WMFR budget while WMF does not cap its own) and seemingly increase the micromanagement of impact (e.g. by forcing specific metrics-gather processes).

The WMF needs to show leadership and give a clear idea which people can be inspired to work with, so that the changes feel like an opportunity, while at the moment they may seem just yet another change for the sake of change, imposed from the top for unclear reasons (cf. Bluerasberry, MikyM above). Nemo 07:13, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

@Nemo bis I think some outcomes are quite clear. The proposal narrows sharply eligibility for recurring operating funding. Since the formal requirements are also raised, getting recurring grants will in practice require staff dedicated to handling them, and because that compliance cost is largely fixed, it weighs proportionally more on smaller entities. The cost is also two-layered. Keeping affiliate status itself requires continuous yearly work regardless of whether any grant is applied for. That is why the ladder also works downwards, and some current chapters will be downgraded.

How it could look like in real life: Currently, GSF grantee numbers have been growing. 82 in 2021–22, 96 in 2022–23, 112 in FY2023–24, 117 in FY2024–25 and 133 in FY2025–26. If that trend continued, a simple linear extrapolation would give 190–200 recurring grantees in FY2030–31. Under the proposal, the number would be lower than now. My guess is that it could settle under 70 yearly GSF grantees, once the most proficient groups have upgraded their status and some have merged their work into larger entities. A mass-approval for already-professionalized/established user groups would speed the transition up, but even then the number of yearly-eligible entities ends up well below today's. So the intented effect is not just reducing number of current affliates, but changing the trend in general. Also, because grant eligibility is tied to affiliate status, whoever ends up as gatekeeper (AffCom or Foundation staff) will have pressure to raise the status requirements to match the available funding.

Globally the proposed model favors established grantees, whose experience and capacity can keep up with the requirements. The Global South has however a cost advantage in hiring people to handle the bureaucracy, so I genuinely don't know how that balance plays out. The more meaningful differentiator, I think, is size. The proposal favors bigger entities over smaller ones, regardless of geography. The end result over time could be for example a sparse network of yearly funded organizations in key countries, rather than the broad affiliate presence all around the world. The Project Fund and rapid grant do not balance this, because building and maintaining organizational infrastructure benefits more from predictable funding, and applying uncertain project money would be smaller groups one task more compared to bigger ones unrestricted yearly grants. -- Zache (talk) 10:57, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying some of the numbers. I doubt however it's possible for us to guess what the consequences will be, without a clear indication of what the intended direction is. For example, one could get the impression that the objective is to migrate some of those recurring grants to new or existing hubs, which would receive more funding to cover such increased need.

It would also help to add a few examples of expected "grants lifecycle" for the most common cases among affiliates. How are affiliates supposed to pay for the compliance costs, is the expectation that they will slowly grow their budget with project funds and use these to cover general administrative costs as well? It would be helpful to include examples from different geographies as well, as you noted, because the baseline costs may differ a lot from one country to another. It might be possible in some countries to pay for a part-time ED or secretary or consultant to handle general administrative obligations out of a 10k project budget, but in the EU it probably won't. Nemo 09:44, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Feedback from Wiki Editoras Lx

We have been a WMF grantee since 2022, with a yearly budget of around 97,000 USD. We focus broadly on equity knowledge and particularly on gender in the Portuguese language, with an impact that goes beyond the NWE region. Grantees such as ourselves have been working closely with the WMF to meet a range of goals, many of them related to professionalization and institutional development. Over the last 4 years, we have invested significant time and resources in building the institutional capacity that the WMF itself has encouraged over many years. Even though we are grantees, and despite our efforts, in may 2024 our application for affiliation was rejected, on the basis of erroneous assumptions on the part of AffCom. We were subsequently advised to not submit a new application, but to await this review of the criteria.

This Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations reform proposal is particularly concerning for organizations such as ours, as it does not appear to acknowledge or take responsibility for the potential setbacks it could create in processes such as those relating to membership/ affiliation. The proposed changes leave us in a very vulnerable position, and without any assurances that our situation will be assessed with the care and attention it deserves. How can we be sure that AffCom is now equipped with the necessary expertise to assess our case?

At this point, becoming a recognized user group is the only way to assure the sustainability of our organization. For that reason, we need a commitment from the WMF that it will provide a transition plan that takes into account the specific steps we need to take to reach this goal, and that we will have suitable WMF support to achieve it. The reason for this is that even if we do become affiliates, we are restricted to the category of user group, with a budget cap of 100,000 USD, which is close to our current grant. This will stifle our growth and restrict our impact.

This proposal appears to be based on a misunderstanding of what user groups are and do, that does not reflect the reality of the movement. It seems to assume that user groups are inherently less mature or less capable than chapters, or that their impact is proportionally smaller, when in practice this is often not the case. Many user groups function as incorporated legal associations with established governance structures, sound financial management, and a strong record of delivering programs and managing funds responsibly. They already demonstrate the organisational capacity that this proposal seeks to encourage. As a result, it seems that the proposed distinction is based on affiliation status rather than on an organisation's actual capabilities, impact or track record.

Many user groups focus on gender and knowledge equity, areas that have been historically underrepresented and knowingly not the focus of most chapters. This is certainly the case in our region, but also the reason why groups with goals similar to ours have and continue to emerge all over the world. Asking these user groups to limit their capacity, budget and consequently, impact, is undermining the WMF’s commitment to equity. At the same time, given the global map of affiliates, it is clear that this reform solidifies support to already privileged regions and chapters that have greater access to other funds.

If one of the goals of this reform is to align funding with organisational capacity, then you should maintain the maximum budget cap for all types of affiliates, with different tiers within each, depending on their organisational capacity, thus addressing the misconception that chapters are more organizationally capable than user groups.

Finally, the definition of thematic groups proposed is very restrictive and does not reflect the way many groups currently operate: our group is made up of Portuguese speakers and not limited to a single region, but the proposed criteria for thematic organisations would require us to be regional or global, which would dilute our impact and work. It is our view that the thematic scope can be inseparable from the linguistic one, so we suggest amending the revised guidelines to include ‘Affiliates with a Thematic Focus Area’: “Any thematic affiliates seeking status as thematic organisations must intend to operate at a regional, global OR LINGUISTIC level.”

On behalf of Wiki Editoras Lx, 21:34, 31 August 2026 (UTC) Anita Braga (talk) 21:34, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Some general reflections on affiliates

This is, I suppose, more of a personal reflection than anything else, though it is one that I am fairly certain overlaps with the perceptions of a fair number of community members "like me". I hope it provides some useful input regardless.

To give some background to the position I write this from: I have been a Wikipedia editor for upwards of half a decade, and can probably reasonably described as "active" or "highly active" for most of that timespan. Most of the things I have done have concerned what one might call "backroom activities"; janitorial work that I do in the hopes of helping sustain a healthy community that is able to continue to maintain and grow the awesome body of free knowledge that it has built.

In a broader sense, background work in service of the community is, as I understand it, also the purpose of affiliates, and I am sure that they work hard to pursue this goal. The blunt truth is, though, that – with the notable exception of WMDE, whose technical contributions especially are seen and appreciated – I struggle to recall instances where I noticed affiliate work making a positive contribution to day-to-day on-wiki activities. Where I have noticed affiliate work, it has often not been in a positive light: Well-meaning but misguided affiliate-organised editathons that leave local communities with the task of cleaning up large numbers of subpar edits by the recruited newcomers are one example; large initiatives like CapX – which to me seems essentially like an inordinately expensive replacement for meta userspace categories and native mediawiki features – are another.

As I see it, there are two ways to make sense of that experience, and perhaps there is some truth to both. The first is that affiliates do good, positive, community-facing work that ends up not being perceived as such. It could well be that I would have a much more positive view of the initiatives I criticise above if I had a better sense of actual, tangible positive impacts that they have had on our projects. If this is the case, that is of course a failure on my end to some degree, but it is perhaps one that could have been avoided by establishing better lines of proactive communication between affiliate bodies and editing communities. In other words, Scenario A is that affiliate reform should aim to "sell" affiliate work as a positive to the vast majority of community members who spend their time editing, as opposed to primarily "selling" it to grantmaking bodies and the highly self-selecting audiences that spend time in meta discussions and at conferences; and to enable communities to better see and appreciate the work done by affiliates.

The other way of making sense of it is more troubling, and perhaps cynical, but I suppose now is the time to bring it up. That explanation is that affiliate work has, most likely for structural reasons that smarter people than me will be better-placed to explain, become somewhat divorced from the immediate needs of the communities that affiliates hope to serve. And that as a result, affiliate work ends up having little tangible impact on what we are all ultimately trying to achieve, which is to provide people with a free, trustworthy, and accessible source of knowledge.

It seems, or at least feels, to me that this second element is the more crucial factor. Perhaps that is because the scope of affiliate activities has a tendency to make them function more as distinct micro-communities rather than as extensions of the broader contributor population. Perhaps it's for a different reason entirely. Whatever the case may be, I think the community as a whole would benefit from fundamentally reflecting on the roles we want movement organising bodies (which in some form are certainly needed!) to play, and how we can ensure that those activities remain connected to the needs of the vast majority of wikimedians whose work is focused on contributing to individual projects. Affiliates, as they exist today, fall short of that goal. --Blablubbs (talk) 20:04, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

This is 110% accurate. Thank you for sharing, Blablubbs. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:07, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

@Blablubbs it is vrry sad that (language priviledged) English Wikipedians can not imagine Wikimedia with de-centered English and systems supporting more equitable exchanges for all language groups and levels of wiki experience. Zblace (talk) 17:13, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

@Zblace: The English Wikipedia community, like others, was asked for input. I provided some, and I explicitly framed it as a matter of subjective experience. The insinuation that, because I happen to contribute to that project, my reflections on the status quo as it appears to me must somehow be an expression of my lack of commitment to language equity is uncalled for and frankly offensive. Blablubbs (talk) 21:08, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

哇，讲英文这么损害大脑啊？那我先别讲了，恐怕我讲太多讲傻了怎么办啊……你赶紧上那个《容量交换》那儿帮我找个翻译吧！ Toadspike [Talk] 21:37, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not trying to moderate this discussion (I'm no moderator) and this is just a request to keep replies to this comment by @Blablubbs constructive and on the topics brought in this comment and in the overall Recognition and Affiliation proposal. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:34, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Feedback on metric tool requirement (WMUK)

Below we are outlining WMUK's experiences with participation/content metrics tracking, in the context of this section of the overall proposal:

The Community Fund (comprising all General Support, Project, and Rapid grants) will continue to be split into eight regional categories. All potential grantees—including individuals, unaffiliated groups, movement partners, and hubs—will apply for funding in the category most relevant to their work. Grantees seeking to report outcomes related to on-wiki participation—including content created or improved, new and existing contributors engaged, or contributor retention—must use the Event Registration Tool. This requirement ensures that participant-level outcomes can be measured consistently across grantees directly by WMF using a common methodology. At present, the Event Registration Tool is the Foundation-supported mechanism for collecting these data in a standardized way. Alternative outcome tracking tools will need to be approved by the Community Investment & Partnerships team on a case-by-case basis.

The Wikimedia UK Programmes team already selectively uses this tool, and has started to encourage its use amongst partners and volunteers. This includes the provision of training to Wikimedians in Residence, and adding a section on its use to the training given as part of Wikimedia UK’s Train the Trainer course for volunteer trainers.  

As one tool amongst many that we use both to facilitate the best user experience and promote community engagement, it has many things to commend it, hence both our own use of it, and our dissemination of training in its use to parts of our community.  However, it is by no means a full service tool in terms of monitoring and evaluation, is unsuited to some kinds of events and activities, and does not include the features that would allow it to serve the function that has been laid out in the proposal as it stands. This is not to take away at all from the hard work that has been done by the developers; simply that it won’t serve the function that the proposal appears to assume that it will.

Whilst we understand the desire for ease and uniformity in measuring impact across the global cohort of grantees, we believe that the proposal to mandate its sole use, to the exclusion of all other tools, and as a condition of funding, will not produce the desired data. Furthermore, it will negatively impact programme delivery, with the potential to harm newcomer engagement and the relationship with partner organisations.

The types of events and activity undertaken by a grantee are highly dependent upon their community, their partners, their own strategic aims, and resources.  As a comparatively large chapter with a dedicated evaluation function within the staff team, the implementation of this restriction would present us with significant difficulty, outsized and unnecessary administrative burden, and tie our hands with regard to programme delivery.  

As an example of some of the flexibility which is required for successful programme delivery at Wikimedia UK: we, our volunteers, and our partners currently use the Outreach Dashboard to collect data for reporting on events and programmes. This tool has the following benefits which are not available through CampaignEvents:

• Ability to use the “Enable account requests” feature. This is absolutely crucial for in-person events in order to avoid the venue’s IP from being blocked because of the IP limit on account creation on en.wiki.  
• Gathering of pageview statistics for edited articles - we cannot emphasise enough the degree to which this is a key outreach and advocacy tool for partnership work and for volunteer editors to see their impact. Our experience shows us that it is also a key source of motivation for long-running groups of editors working in a thematic area.
• Ability to link multiple events to a single campaign, therefore showing impact over time.  
• Ability for those managing the event to add usernames independently, which is particularly important for events with a shorter time available for training, or targeted towards those with lower digital skill, for whom figuring out Wikipedia is quite enough to contend with.  
• Ability to see the impact of an individual trainer.
• High level of granularity of data available.
• Flexibility of dashboard design with regard to data collection on the basis of PetScan / SPARQL query, namespace or Category.

We currently do not, and would not, recommend CampaignEvents as a tool for the ticketing or marketing element of events aimed toward those who do not yet have a Wikimedia account. The requirement to create an account before being able to register adds friction and would harm sign up numbers. It is also the case that for some partner organisations, they are tied into the use of other third party tools for ticketing, and we are not in a position to change this.

Furthermore, the messaging function in CampaignEvents - although highly useful for events targeted toward existing users - only works if the user has enabled “Email this user”. For those yet to sign up for an account, this means that we would have to include further instructions about how to change this setting in the event information, forming yet another barrier to participation. Users may have also switched off this function due to harassment or privacy concerns.

Although a link can be made between the Dashboard and a CampaignEvent event, there are some key limitations - once an event is linked to the Dashboard, event organisers lose the ability to manually add users to the Dashboard, and we are yet to see a way that this can be reversed. In our experience this has led to loss of data, and a reluctance to join the two.  It is also the case that only one CampaignEvent can be linked to a Dashboard, which again reduces functionality.  

The proposal suggests that CampaignEvents should be used in order to track editor retention. Despite being an adopter of this tool across various different kinds of events, we are yet to see any functionality that would support this kind of workflow, in a way comparable to either EventMetrics, or something like the WikiStatPortal used on hu.wiki: https://wiki-stat-portal.toolforge.org/modules/lists/huwiki (we learned about the latter through our contacts at the Volunteer Supporters Network Hub pilot). In fact, we have used EventMetrics to usefully track a number of metrics in one go, including new editors, articles improved, new article views, and languages in which activity has taken place.

With regard to monitoring and evaluation of Commons campaigns, particularly the Wiki Loves photo competitions: we have for some years used https://wikiloves.toolforge.org/ to support data gathering and stewardship framework. Earlier in 2026, we were one of a group of affiliates who trialled the use of CampaignEvents on Commons, for Wiki Loves Folklore, using it for both the Scottish and English competitions. We were excited for the possibilities here, particularly around communication with participants during the competition, but ultimately found that although that functionality was useful, it would not be possible to use it to replace the current metrics and stewardship framework, as not everyone who took part signed up to the event through CampaignEvents, despite it being clearly signposted. Fundamentally, it is a process which would sit alongside the competition rather than being an essential part of it. Unless CampaignEvents can be integrated into the competition tools, the two work in parallel, and therefore they're always going to be out of sync. This also potentially adds confusion for new or inexperienced editors, who are a key audience for us in our engagement with the Wiki Loves photography campaigns.

As always, Wikimedia UK would be happy to work with the WMF team to trial new tools or additional functionality, if for example CampaignEvents is further developed to address some of the issues highlighted above.  However we would emphasise that our preferred methodology when employing monitoring and evaluation tools will always be one which allows us to add capacity for supporting our community, rather than restricting it, and so would prefer an approach which allows for using the right tool, for the right task, to monitor the appropriate outcome.

Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 16:40, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

On the Event Registration Tool

Hello! Wikimedistas de Uruguay will leave feedback on the overall proposal later next week, but I've been reading different comments on the Event Registration Tool and the requirement of making it mandatory. Here are a few thoughts that @Paula (WDU) and myself would like to bring as some of the people that have been pushing for its adoption in the Latin American context.

• As heavy users & early adopters of the tool, we love it, and we want to encourage every affiliate and organizer to use it for their normal, standard events. This is important because what I'm going to say below, does not mean that development of the tool should be slowed or stopped altogether. We're not questioning the quality of the tool -- it is the best solution we've had in the movement so far for some of the problems we face as organizers, but there is important context to understand where the ERT lands.

• Understanding what the tool is useful for, and what is not. I'm not sure if the team leading the development of the Event Registration tool has been consulted around this proposal, alongside with Fiona's Romeo team, that have been heavy drivers of adoption of the tool. This should have been step one of this process. I think their feedback would have benefitted from clearly establishing what you can and can't do with the tool.

• This process is undermining organizers' perception of the usefulness of the tool, and the relationship between the team behind it and the community, creating a hostile environment for its adoption. The feedback so far should make this obvious, but it needs to be said. The fact that this has been included as a mandatory requirement (with a "must") has put a lot of organizers against the tool, because now it feels like a top-down mechanism to monitor grantee work rather than support it. This is wasting a significant amount of time, money and energy put into the development of this tool, because it has reversed the momentum of adoption. The tool is not yet ready to aid with the metrics in the way that this proposal is intending. Requiring its use before the tool has addressed organizer's concerns weakens the adoption process.

• The tool still has a long way to go. There are things that the tool can't do currently, that have been pointed out by @Daria Cybulska (WMUK), but there are still several others. Some are tool problems and some are problems that live within the Program Officers at the Grants team. For example, for organizers that are running regional campaigns, you still can't add several grantees. That's a tool limitation. But on the other hand, do regional PO know how to evaluate, in a regional campaign, which edit & editor gets attributed to which affiliate? They don't, the same way we don't know, because even when affiliates might be working on a given geography, they are also working on specific languages -- we, in Wikimedistas de Uruguay, get editors from all over the region when we do some of our activities. This points to a broader problem, where the question becomes "is it even relevant to try to count this?". We can have some metrics, but that doesn't mean they are all useful or even worth the amount of effort to require to count them. The tool can't interact very well with other tools -- for example, we just did an activity where we asked people to use another on-wiki tool developed by another MediaWiki developer, and people did over +100 edits with it, but the ERT didn't count it because it was using another tool. This mandate is trying to standardize against the lowest common denominator of organizing, rather than leaning into the strenght of affiliates, which is innovating around recruitment and retention strategies.

• What do affiliates actually do with the ERT, and what portion of their work is actually representing? This is the most important question. Affiliates are not only event organizers; this tool represents a fraction of our work. It does not represent other work we do were we are actually working with people's perceptions of Wikipedia, where we're teaching them how to critically engage with our content, among other work we do that does not fit into the ERT. In this context, making this tool mandatory sends a strong signal around the perception of the work we do. It's almost as if by design, this is trying to say "affiliates only run edit-a-thons", when affiliates are very much aware that edit-a-thons are the least effective tactic to recruit and retain editors; it will just create a negative feedback cycle. Moreover, we don't even know what data the WMF has collected so far about the usage of the tool to see whether this is effective or not. If we had this data, we could grab the 10 most successful events in terms of participation & retention and have a meaningful conversation among affiliates around what we can learn from them.

• The tool still does pretty cool stuff, the team behind it are rockstars who are very open to feedback and solving issues and deserve all of our love. The tool solves a lot of problems that the P&E does not solve. The first one and most important to me is that's actually on-wiki. I've had long and deep conversations with MediaWiki developers around some of the problems with our tooling ecosystem for microcontributions, and we always end up landing into the same conclusion: these tools are neat, but they work outside of the Wikimedia ecosystem. If you want to teach someone to use a platform like Wikimedia, the most relevant thing that you need to teach them is navigating the platform. We've had a similar problem with WikiLearn (as useful as it is), and our affiliate in particular is constantly thinking on how we can experiment with different tools for doing microcontributions and lower the barriers for participation, while allowing people to make meaningful first, unreverted edits. The ERT is on the right path on that: it works on-wiki and allows to handle several things on-wiki; it still needs a bridge to some other parts of the tooling ecosystem, but those bridges need to come out of conversation, not of imposition. Which takes me to my last point.

• We should 100% have more conversations around how we can have more useful tools for measuring our work. This is not a conversation about improving tools. These conversations need to happen with people that understand the problems that affiliates face with inviting new people, training them, and retaining them. That's what the ERT team does: it talks directly with organizers, improves based on their feedback, and is willing to be embedded in that complex, sometimes messy conversation. I'm under the impression that this proposal stems from a fundamental disconnect with ground-level organizing and foundation attempts at measuring-- where there seems to be little understanding of the complexity of the work we do (and the innovations we introduce), and so far, little willingness to learn about it. This significantly moves away from the work that Ben Vershbow put into the Ecosystem white paper -- he did that after spending almost a decade in conversation with affiliates. Speaking from Wikimedistas de Uruguay perspective: I want more tools; we all need more tools to measure our work, and I don't think anyone serious would oppose to a tooling ecosystem that allows us to obtain good data on our work. Affiliates have been complaining for decades about the lack of good tooling for doing some of this work -- most affiliates are hacking the P&E Dashboard and a lot of money and resources have gone into a tool that still does not 100% does the job it should be doing, just exactly the same way that the ERT does not solve all of our problems. That's because this work is incredibly complex, but the way to solve it is not with top-down approaches or making things mandatory into a proposal that ignores the context of our broader work.

Scann (WDU) (talk) 15:20, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Excellent summary Scann. I agree with the above. That's it.

The examples I would provide myself would be

The tool does not allow pooling together several events, as part of a larger campaign. Large thematic competitions, which involve dozen of affiliates + individuals without affiliation. For example Wiki Loves Africa. It is easy to know how much is produced (eg, number of pictures), and even collect information from editors (using queries). The Event tool add very interesting additional elements when it comes to activities organized, which are not captured by raw output numbers. But technically, since it does not allow us to associate events together... having it a mandatory tool for the reporting of the global event... will in practice be a nightmare. The features are not there.

The requirement would confuse participants, leading to more complex tracking. A typical example of unresolved and complex tracking, is the tracking of participation to SheSaid. It has been complex since Year 1 and we have given up trying to collate all figures. We only do an under estimate. We would welcome a new tool making the whole process easier and quicker. We can currently compile figures of participation in one of those 3 ways. 1) Individuals list the articles produced on a single page in their language (which we do not speak). Or 2) Groups create a Dashboard and we collate the figures from there. Groups have to make sure to record their participants obviously. 3) Participants use at least once, a hashtag, which we can track with queries. We chose to communicate mostly on the hashtag. But some folks only go the dashboard route. And yet other folks simply list their production on a wiki page. And some just do not bother. SheSaid is a drive meant primarily for newcomers, so flexibility is key. Making it mandatory for us to use the Event tool would require for all those to change their habits, for the Event tool page to be translated in "potential languages of participation", and when groups create their own Event page for their own tracking... we would have to track their event pages and compile and still motivate totally new users to register to our page... This would increase in complexity a current process which is already overly complex. And the more complexity, the less buy-in. They want to create a woman entry. Not to fill up administrative form.

We need more tools and the Event is really helping. Let's push for its adoption and let's improve it together. Not turn it into a focus of stress and resentment. Anthere (talk) 21:48, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Feedback from Whose Knowledge?

Whose Knowledge? has been active in different collective discussions about this proposal in the last couple of months., We're choosing now to respond here on Meta because we want to make sure the impact of the proposal, as we see it, is both understood and addressed by any changes in the redistribution process.

We acknowledge that recognition and funding are essential aspects of the Wikimedia Movement ecosystem, for affiliates, community organizers and the Wikimedia Foundation. The way in which these aspects have evolved deserves a collective review and a healthy refresh to help all of us to be more effective and resilient in the current times. However, we are concerned by this particular proposal, because it appears to move in exactly the opposite direction that our movement needs right now: infusions at scale of fresh energy and initiative through the support of emerging and evolving Wikimedia communities across the world, that fulfill our strategic priorities of knowledge equity and service, as well maintain our relevance in a fast changing context. In fact, it was in order to expand the Wikimedia affiliate ecosystem - particularly in Global Majority worlds - that the user group system was first introduced. To now link affiliate status and funding so rigidly that we may lose innovation and expansion in the ecosystem, seems counter-productive.

Specific drawbacks that we would like to point out:

1. This proposal doesn’t respond to the challenges we are facing directly because of the rise of AI (declining in readership, low contributors retention, and concerns about fundraising). The implementation of the new bureaucratic requirements that affiliates would need to meet, are likely to divert valuable energy, time and resources toward non-essential changes that neither address the challenges we are facing nor allow us to demonstrate the impact of affiliates in response to those challenges.
2. The evidence that supports the assumptions in which this proposal is based is not clear, especially regarding the “confusion and frustration across the movement” with affiliates and the way they use grant resources and create impact. It would be helpful to unpack, specifically, what the concrete problems are, putting them not in terms of sentiments and perceptions, but in terms of evidence and analysis.
3. Finally, this proposal may impact small and emerging communities that are carrying out high-quality, impactful work, but that might not be able to meet the new criteria without a considerable effort. These communities are not directly included in the plans; there is no clear path for their inclusion and evolution within the system. This concerns us particularly because many of these communities are our partners, and they are doing important work to promote knowledge equity and to reduce the gender gap.

In terms of process, much more time is needed in order to create a democratic and truly participatory process that should go step by step, taking care of the full ecosystem, including small and emerging communities. We acknowledge that there have been movements in the right direction, allowing for more time and more opportunities to provide feedback and receive responses. However, we believe that further efforts are needed to decentralize these discussions so that they do not occur mainly along a vertical affiliate-foundation feedback pathway, but rather throughout the whole movement in a more horizontal and decentralized manner, as was the case with the 2030 strategy, for example.

In terms of content, here we have some concrete recommendations to this proposal:

1. Decouple funding levels from affiliate status. Affiliation is a political status which may or may not lead to receiving funding; affiliation should be open to everyone looking for a collective voice and a place in the decision making process in equal conditions. Funding meets a different need –capacity and stability to develop projects and programs– and its requirements probably should evolve with the amount of funding requested. But funding shouldn't be blocked by heavy bureaucratic conditions that many collectives face in their local context in order to become NGOs.
2. Allow small and emergent communities with clear impact, to access project grants up to the upper limit. These projects can be perfectly handled via fiscal sponsorship, freeing valuable resources that these communities could invest in impact and growing. There should be an intentional and complementary program to support the recognition process –offered by the WMF– in order to accompany communities that are interested in becoming affiliates on that journey.
3. Allow for more flexibility in the rule that two or more groups cannot claim the same thematic, linguistic, or geographic focus. While this may seem reasonable in terms of the efficiency of resource allocation, it undermines the emergence of diverse perspectives and ways of working that various affiliates with shared interests can offer. Our movement is not a franchise intended to have exclusive representatives within a particular territory or specific issue. It is a plurality of voices, languages, and ways of knowing that we should not try to force into a rigid matrix.

On behalf of Whose Knowledge? Mariana Fossatti (WK?) (talk) 14:17, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Recognition and Funding from Africa angle

In Africa, I believe we need greater transparency in the funding process rather than simply more funding opportunities. The process of accessing funding can sometimes feel like it has been influenced by individuals who consider themselves “elite Wikimedians” or more established than others. There are concerns about gatekeeping, where being outside certain networks or circles can affect how a funding application is perceived or processed.

Funding also appears to be concentrated among a specific circle of affiliates and user groups, which can make it difficult for newer applicants and emerging initiatives to enter the system. I recognise that this is a personal reflection, but it is based on my experience and, I believe, concerns shared by some other community members.

There have been instances where our initiative has been affected by these bottlenecks, including situations where our applications were unsuccessful despite our experience and track record of organising effective community programmes. These experiences have created uncertainty around funding and, in turn, affected our ability to plan and sustain community programming.

To provide some background on the position from which I write: I have been contributing to the Wikimedia movement since 2019 and have organised numerous projects and programmes. However, each time we apply for funding, we continue to face uncertainties that affect our ability to plan effectively and sustain our activities.

I believe we need stronger transparency and accountability mechanisms that can reduce the influence of gatekeeping and ensure that funding decisions are based on clear, consistent and publicly understood criteria.

Two areas I believe deserve particular attention are:

• Greater transparency in funding decisions and processes, including clearer criteria, timelines and feedback for applicants.
• Clear and consistent criteria for the recognition of affiliates, so that emerging communities and initiatives understand what is required to participate and grow within the movement.

Chukydyk (talk) 01:57, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

ESEAP Hub response to Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations

The ESEAP Hub supports the goal of bringing greater clarity to the roles and purposes of different movement organisations.

Our overarching concern is that this proposal could inadvertently create a more formalised hierarchy, where organisational status increasingly determines access to resources, influence and legitimacy. There is a risk that this could reduce diversity and that equity could be sidelined in favour of administrative simplicity in funding. For a diverse and emerging region such as ESEAP, flexibility and multiple pathways for participation remain essential. There must be capacity to accommodate different legal, cultural, political and organisational contexts, rather than creating a single linear or strictly tiered model.

1. Recognition should not create a more hierarchical movement

The proposal makes the movement structure more hierarchical, with recognition status increasingly tied to funding eligibility. Our region includes established chapters, affiliates and User groups, alongside small and emerging communities, language-based communities, informal groups and cross-border collaborations. Some communities operate in environments where incorporation or formal government recognition may be difficult or undesirable. Others have limited organisational infrastructure, most rely entirely on volunteers, and face language, political or regulatory barriers.

A funding model designed around organisational maturity and formal recognition may unintentionally favour organisations that already have infrastructure, governance capacity and staff, while making it harder for small and emerging communities to grow and create significant additional ‘administrative hoops’ to jump through. The concern for ESEAP is whether the proposed model reflects the realities and challenges in countries/regions where Wikimedia communities are still developing. This model seems to favour a linear progression toward formal organisation structures and not all communities or groups will be able to do this. We are not against groups needing to meet specific requirements. However the criteria need to be carefully considered with an awareness of regional and local complexities in governance and legal requirements, alongside cultural practices and community capacity.

2. Recognition should support diverse community structures, not consolidate them

There is a concern that a move towards one recognised group per country or geographic area could unintentionally pressure existing communities to merge, restructure or cease operating altogether. This is particularly relevant for countries in our ESEAP region, such as the Philippines and Taiwan, where multiple active Wikimedia communities and affiliates have developed independently around different languages, geographies, interests and community identities. While greater coordination may be beneficial, consolidation must not come at the cost of community diversity, autonomy or well established local relationships and communities. Across ESEAP there are other contexts and countries where multiple groups operate successfully within the same area. A recognition model should avoid assuming that a single organisation is inherently more effective or representative than a diverse ecosystem of communities. The question should not be how to reduce multiple communities into a single recognised structure for ease of funding administration, but how to support collaboration and coordination while preserving the rich diversity and autonomy that already exists.

One recognised organisation per country or geographic area could also draw the Wikimedia movement into unnecessary political questions. This would require the movement to take positions, explicitly or implicitly, on which countries are considered independent, and which territories are sufficiently distinct to warrant recognition separately from the country in which they are located. This could create unnecessary risks for the movement’s neutrality and place Wikimedia in political questions that are beyond its intended role.

3. Global criteria need to account for ESEAP's diversity and local context

ESEAP is an extremely diverse region geographically, culturally, politically and economically. While this is a strength and provides us with many opportunities to learn from each other, it also requires nuance and understanding. A single organisational model may not work well across this region. There are concerns that ‘global criteria’ around organisational maturity, structure, impact and recognition could result in an overly standardised format. Our region has communities that:

• Lack legal incorporation
• Operate solely through volunteers
• Work across multiple jurisdictions and regions
• Have limited English-language proficiency
• Face political or regulatory barriers

Any new model should avoid directly equating formal organisational capacity with community value or impact.

4. Recognition and funding need to be better aligned with equitable access to funding

The Movement Organisation proposal appears to start from a position of organisational eligibility. Whereas the GRDC draft Grantmaking Strategy starts with equity of access to funding. The GRDC places significant emphasis on reducing barriers to funding, supporting emerging communities, prioritising equity of access, maintaining Regional Funds Committees (RFC), and strengthening pathways for newcomers and informal groups. The GRDC approach is to look at how we can make funding more accessible and equitable for different groups and communities facing different challenges - including overcoming systemic barriers while supporting local contextual needs. The Movement Organisation proposal asks groups to meet certain obligations to be the kind of organisation that qualifies for particular levels of funding. The GRDC approaches are not necessarily incompatible with the Movement Organisation proposal, but there is currently some confusion and tension between them.

The proposed Movement Organisation model limits General Support Funding primarily to recognised chapters and thematic organisations, while maintaining Rapid Funds as an ‘accessible’ pathway. Until the tensions are resolved between these two approaches there could be the unintentional development of a two-tiered and more segmented system. So for example, well established chapters would continue to receive long-term General Support funding, while emerging communities must rely predominantly on short term, lower amounts of Rapid Grant Funds. Organisational recognition becomes a significant gateway or obligation to sustainable funding.

5. Regional decision-making

The GRDC strongly reinforces the Regional Funds Committees (RFC) and regional decision making. It proposes strengthening RFC capacity, transparency, training and strengthening decision-making processes. The Movement Organisation proposal, however, potentially determines eligibility before an application even reaches the regional funding process. This raises important questions for our ESEAP region: Who will determine whether a community is eligible to access sustainable or long-term funding? Will it be the proposed global affiliation recognition framework, or will it be the regional grantmaking committee who understand the local context? For ESEAP, we have some concerns that a globally defined recognition framework could override many of the contextual understandings and nuances that regional grantmaking was specifically designed to provide.

6. The ESEAP Hub should remain a support and service organisation

We have purposely designed and positioned our ESEAP Hub so that, as far as reasonably possible, it does not replicate or duplicate the services provided by affiliates and user groups. We collaborate with and support communities in response to their requests and needs. We coordinate services that assist with their work, address cross-country needs, or relieve them of time-consuming but essential functions, to focus on growing their communities and skills, for eg, the Hub provides translation and interpretation services, regular community calls and newsletters, coordination of conferences and support for the regional Summit/conference, etc.

The concern for the ESEAP Hub is that we may become an intermediary layer between our community and the WMF. The Hub has always been envisioned as a service provider within our community, and as an enabler and support, but never to assess or control their recognition or access to funds/resources. The ESEAP Hub is based on principles of support and does not see a role for itself in the following (particularly in this early stage of our own pilot and development):

• Determining which communities are ready for funding, or to advance through a tiered funding model
• Selecting or prioritising organisations in our region
• Acting as an intermediary for WMF funding
• Taking on grant assessment responsibilities
• Becoming responsible for resolving complexities or potential disputes around funding or recognition between organisations and/or affiliates

7. Hub recognition must include clarity and sustainable funding

Hub recognition and Hub funding needs further clarification. A question that has arisen is how Hubs would be recognised in practice, particularly without a clear understanding of long-term funding or guaranteed resources. If Hubs are to play key roles in ongoing capacity building, regional coordination, supporting emerging communities, translation and communication, connecting regional perspectives to the global movement, then sustainable Hub funding is critical. While the proposed cap of US$200,000 does not currently impact the ESEAP Hub, it is very likely to become a concern in the future. If WMF (or indeed the movement) expects Hubs to perform specific functions to grow to meet demand, there needs to be a clear and sustainable funding pathway, including clarity around long term funding and growth.

8. Consultation needs sufficient time and equitable participation

While we recognise how crucial these two proposals are, the Movement Organisation proposal, GRDC proposal, movement governance discussions and other movement consultations are occurring within overlapping and relatively short timeframes. For small volunteer communities, meaningful participation requires considerable time, confidence and understanding of complex governance structures and opportunity to reflect on the appropriate ways to respond. For our ESEAP region we also need time for translation and interpretation, and for communities to reach a consensus or decision. There is a real risk that the same group of experienced participants dominates consultations simply because they have the capacity and time to engage, have English as a first or fluent language, and are viewed as experts in a specific style of governance. This is particularly problematic when consultation documents are complex, lengthy or primarily conducted in English. Space for cultural context and differences is removed and equity is pushed further from the centre of the process. A consultation being technically open does not necessarily mean participation is equitable.

9. The power imbalance in consultation needs to be recognised

Another key concern that has been raised is how difficult it can be for newly emerging communities or small groups to openly criticise or suggest systemic or structural changes to the very international funding body responsible for their recognition, progression and access to funding in the movement. The ESEAP Hub is therefore taking on the role of ‘critical friend' in this community consultation to provide honest and constructive feedback to the WMF. In doing so, we are conscious that we represent and are advocating for many small groups and emerging communities across our ESEAP region that already face significant challenges in maintaining funding and growing their communities. Many may not feel comfortable speaking openly about concerns that could be perceived as criticism of the WMF. This reluctance can arise from cultural differences and communication norms, but also from a genuine perception that publicly challenging the structures or policies of a major funder may create risks for future recognition or funding opportunities. Whether or not such a risk actually exists, the perception itself can discourage open and honest participation. We believe meaningful consultation requires recognising and actively addressing this inherent power imbalance.

On behalf of the ESEAP Hub - Belinda Spry, Chair of the Steering Committee BindiS (talk) 09:13, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Comentarios de Wikimedistas de Bolivia, WikiAcción Perú y Wikimedistas de Uruguay

(English version below, translated using DeepL)

Antes que nada, queremos agradecer la oportunidad de enviar estos comentarios; este es un comentario conjunto entre tres organizaciones. Wikimedistas de Bolivia y Wikimedistas de Uruguay son dos grupos de usuarios, operando desde los respectivos territorios geográficos, bajo el patrocinio fiscal de otras organizaciones. WikiAcción Perú es una organización legal independiente que solicitó su afiliación al ecosistema Wikimedia en el año 2025 y que viene trabajando en promover los proyectos Wikimedia en Perú desde el año 2021. Esta respuesta ha sido elaborada en conjunto entre nuestras organizaciones, en diálogo con nuestros respectivos órganos de gobernanza y asesoramiento.

Nuestras tres organizaciones han construido y sostenido comunidades Wikimedia en articulación con aliados dentro y fuera del movimiento Wikimedia. Pueden encontrar más sobre nuestro trabajo e impacto en nuestros respectivos reportes en Meta: reportes de Wikimedistas de Uruguay, reportes de Wikimedistas de Bolivia, reportes de WikiAcción Perú. También hemos organizado Conferencias del movimiento (como la GLAM Wiki en 2023 en Uruguay, la Conferencia sobre Justicia Climática, Voces Indígenas y Proyectos Wikimedia en 2024 en Perú, o la Conferencia de América Latina en Bolivia en 2026, la primera de su tipo). Trabajamos sobre temas de impacto como educación, equidad de género, cambio climático, sostenibilidad, autorrepresentación y desarrollo de habilidades en internet, articulando con actores nacionales e internacionales, incluyendo instituciones públicas como universidades, bibliotecas, archivos y organizaciones multilaterales. También hemos sido parte e impulsado iniciativas subregionales como el Grupo de Trabajo sobre Justicia Climática y Proyectos Wikimedia, que nos ha permitido recaudar más de 70 mil dólares en financiamiento independiente y ha desarrollado, entre otros proyectos, iniciativas de alcance internacional en temas de interés público urgente premiadas por UNESCO, la Secretaría de la ONU y el Gobierno de Brasil.

En conjunto, nuestras tres organizaciones se verían severamente afectadas si estos cambios tuvieran lugar, tal como ha sido advertido en el Impact Analysis, realizado por una persona voluntaria. Nuestras organizaciones se verían limitadas en el acceso al financiamiento, la disponibilidad presupuestaria, y en la posibilidad de presentarnos a financiamiento multianuales. En última instancia, todo esto redundaría en peores resultados y desempeño.

Nuestros comentarios a esta propuesta, sin embargo, no se reducen a la manera puntual en que afecta a nuestras organizaciones. En primer lugar, adherimos a los puntos mencionados por WhoseKnowledge?, el Hub ESEAP, y Wikimedia Brasil, en diferentes estadios de esta propuesta; queremos añadir otros puntos propositivos que no han sido mencionados en esos comentarios. Coincidimos en líneas generales con la necesidad de tener marcos de acción comunes, definiciones compartidas de impacto, y claridad respecto de las expectativas, los roles y las responsabilidades de todas las organizaciones que dan apoyo al movimiento, incluyendo a la Fundación Wikimedia, y a sus organizaciones afiliadas. También coincidimos en la necesidad de que los grupos de usuarios den pasos hacia mejorar sus mecanismos de gobernanza, algo en lo que todas nuestras organizaciones están trabajando activamente.

Sin embargo, creemos que esta propuesta no resuelve los problemas de fondo respecto del tamaño y organización del ecosistema y no define expectativas de impacto, sino que se centra fundamentalmente en cuestiones procedimentales y burocráticas. Por esta razón, la propuesta refuerza inequidades estructurales del movimiento y limita la capacidad de innovación de nuestras organizaciones. La propuesta no evalúa tampoco cómo se definen los temas de impacto ni de qué manera las organizaciones sirven a ciertas poblaciones geográficas o comunidades lingüísticas, dejando sin resolución algunos de los problemas de solapamiento de organizaciones o duplicación de funciones.

Reconocemos los esfuerzos de la Fundación por abrir espacios de comentarios; sin embargo, la complejidad de esta propuesta supera los canales y metodologías que se están utilizando. Es importante que exista un diálogo con los afiliados y un proceso de co-diseño; también, hay aprendizajes importantes para extraer de esta experiencia. La ausencia de traducción del contenido a diferentes idiomas crea una barrera real de participación de nuestras comunidades, aumenta la carga de trabajo sobre nuestras organizaciones, y entra en tensión con compromisos asumidos por la Fundación en materia de multilingüismo y diálogo intercultural. Nos preocupa también que la propuesta no proporciona evidencias de que las modificaciones planteadas se basan en métricas cuantitativas o cualitativas del estado actual e impacto de los afiliados y beneficiarios; hasta ahora, la evidencia presentada resulta fragmentaria, metodológicamente limitada o acotada en el tiempo. A esto se le suma la necesidad de contar con un plan de acción concreto para mitigar el impacto de la propuesta en los beneficiarios afectados que están realizando proyectos de alto impacto, que cumplen funciones de articulación regional, y que contribuyen a alcanzar los objetivos de equidad del conocimiento, como es el caso de nuestras tres organizaciones.

Más allá de las críticas específicas a la propuesta, queremos llamar la atención sobre algunos puntos importantes más propositivos. Estos son puntos que creemos relevantes desde América Latina, donde el desarrollo de nuestras organizaciones ha seguido trayectorias diferentes a las de otros países.

1. Priorizar la continuidad operativa de las organizaciones con impacto que se verían afectadas por esta propuesta. AffCom debería trabajar con las organizaciones que se verían afectadas por la propuesta para evitar que iniciativas que han demostrado capacidad de gestión y un buen registro de actividades vean reducida su capacidad de acción a largo plazo. Limitar esa capacidad técnica y territorial compromete el impacto a largo plazo. Por ello, cualquier modificación en el esquema de reconocimiento debe trabajarse junto con AffCom mediante un proceso gradual que garantice la continuidad de las iniciativas que han demostrado sostenibilidad y resultados.
2. Desarrollar, en conjunto con los afiliados, un framework de medición del impacto que permita incorporar múltiples indicadores específicos de las organizaciones. Desde nuestras organizaciones, queremos métricas rigurosas y hemos hecho esfuerzos significativos para reportar y ser transparentes frente a la comunidad. Sin embargo, la propuesta actual trata de establecer métricas de arriba hacia abajo, según definiciones estrechas respecto de las áreas de trabajo de los afiliados. El desafío de esta clase de propuestas es que finalmente las personas seguirán una tendencia muy común en el mundo de la filantropía, que es adaptar sus programas para alcanzar las métricas, en vez de generar programas exitosos y con impacto que respondan a las necesidades de sus contextos. El paper Towards a Healthy Ecosystem contenía preguntas sobre estos indicadores que ofrecían una buena estrategia para construir estos indicadores de manera conjunta con los afiliados. Los afiliados son los primeros en tener un interés en contar lo que hacen y cómo lo miden; a lo largo de todos estos años de trabajo, nuestras organizaciones han identificado muchos desafíos para la medición y el reporte de métricas, y son experiencias de las que vale la pena aprender. Necesitamos espacios estructurados y facilitados para poder dar respuesta a estas preguntas y co-diseñar sistemas de evaluación de impacto que tengan sentido en el contexto de nuestro movimiento.
3. Implementar programas de capacitación y mejora de procesos, a partir del monitoreo, el aprendizaje y la evaluación. La implementación de nuevos requisitos sin un acompañamiento a las organizaciones que reciben financiamiento limita la capacidad de cumplimiento de las organizaciones, pero también el margen de acción para la innovación estratégica. En el pasado, programas como ¡Leamos Wikipedia! o el Organizer Lab permitieron intercambiar aprendizajes, estructurar programas de los afiliados y evitar errores comunes de implementación de programas, haciendo que hubiera más propuestas innovadoras. Los sistemas de medición y evaluación de impacto deben ir orientados hacia procesos de aprendizaje y mejora continua, y no convertirse en métodos que pongan en riesgo los programas de los afiliados y amenacen su continuidad operativa. El rol de una organización que otorga financiamiento no es solamente generar relaciones transaccionales (financiamiento a cambio de cumplimiento o mera fiscalización administrativa), sino que un programa de grants debería estructurarse alrededor del cumplimiento de objetivos estratégicos. Ambas dimensiones (la medición de impacto y la mejora continua) están estrechamente relacionadas, ya que otras organizaciones de filantropía tienen entre sus buenas prácticas la implementación de procesos de aprendizaje entre pares, algo que en el movimiento Wikimedia es cada vez menos frecuente. Por lo general, no tenemos devolución cuando enviamos nuestros reportes; no contamos con mecanismos para solicitar y recibir datos hacia la Fundación que ayuden a mejorar nuestro trabajo y comprender nuestro impacto; hay poco diálogo con los Comités Regionales de Fondos; no hay procesos de aprendizaje entre pares, salvo que los coordinemos horizontalmente y de manera autónoma entre grantees; y hay poco reconocimiento a las iniciativas que buscan generar mecanismos de coordinación y colaboración que intentan replicar aprendizajes, coordinar funciones y evitar solapamientos.
4. Facilitar la construcción de acuerdos mediante metodologías modulares e iterativas. La propuesta fue presentada como un bloque monolítico que condensa múltiples puntos con implicancias de índole muy diversa y de diferente orden. Algo similar sucede con la propuesta del GRDC. Nuestra experiencia dentro del movimiento nos señala que las propuestas extensas, diseñadas de forma centralizada y con poco diálogo previo, dificultan la deliberación y bloquean el consenso. Para innovar en la gobernanza, una necesidad que ha sido reiterada por diversos sectores de la comunidad, la presentación de este tipo de iniciativas debería descomponerse en puntos concretos, simplificar sus enunciados y buscar acuerdos incrementales sobre aspectos más simples. Nuestras organizaciones tienen pleno interés en trabajar sobre los temas de fondo planteados, pero consideramos que la rigidez y extensión de la propuesta, el formato de presentación y los canales habilitados para la discusión (comentarios en Meta o en Google Docs, reuniones unidireccionales, etc.) terminan siendo un obstáculo para alcanzar consensos. Insistimos en la necesidad de incorporar procesos de facilitación bien diseñados y técnicamente acompañados, como talleres de trabajo participativos que permitan construir acuerdos reales de forma gradual, en lugar de reducir la participación a comentarios sobre documentos ya cerrados con límites temporales muy exigentes. Desde América Latina, hemos desarrollado e implementado un sinfín de metodologías dinámicas que nos han permitido destrabar debates complejos y mejorar la colaboración en diferentes ámbitos, desde la organización de campañas y conferencias, hasta la presentación a convocatorias internacionales, entre otras. Estamos a disposición para poner estas capacidades y herramientas al servicio de las discusiones globales, que permitan construir acuerdos reales, consensuados y duraderos.

Consideramos que elevar esta propuesta al Board of Trustees, dando por cerrada la discusión en base a los comentarios en Meta, sería un paso prematuro. Es indispensable abrir primero un ciclo de conversaciones debidamente facilitadas sobre los puntos clave de la propuesta.

El ecosistema Wikimedia –la Fundación Wikimedia (su liderazgo y su staff), los afiliados, los voluntarios de los proyectos online, los usuarios con derechos extendidos– son diferentes actores dentro del ecosistema, y todos cumplen funciones muy importantes, pero diferentes y complementarias. Fomentar la división interna del movimiento no beneficia a nadie, y limita nuestra capacidad de imaginación para pensar qué roles queremos cumplir dentro de este proyecto. La ausencia de espacios estructurados y debidamente facilitados para pensar hacia dónde queremos ir como movimiento, en particular en estos tiempos de inteligencia artificial, y la ausencia de una visión estratégica para el conjunto de los actores con intereses en este ecosistema, termina dañando severamente nuestra capacidad de innovar programáticamente. Esta propuesta prioriza proyectos organizativos ya consolidados, en vez de mirar de manera estratégica qué clase de organizaciones y qué clase de financiamiento son necesarios para el rol que queremos que ocupe Wikipedia en la Internet de los próximos 20 años.

En nombre de Wikimedistas de Bolivia, WikiAcción Perú y Wikimedistas de Uruguay, @Yhhue91, @Caleidoscopic y Scann (WDU) (talk) 18:23, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

English version

First and foremost, we would like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to submit these comments; this is a joint statement from three organizations. Wikimedians of Bolivia and Wikimedians of Uruguay are two user groups operating within their respective geographic territories under the fiscal sponsorship of other organizations. WikiAcción Perú is an independent legal entity that applied for affiliation with the Wikimedia ecosystem in 2025 and has been working to promote Wikimedia projects in Peru since 2021. This response was drafted jointly by our organizations, in consultation with our respective governance and advisory bodies.

Our three organizations have built and sustained Wikimedia communities in collaboration with partners both within and outside the Wikimedia movement. You can learn more about our work and impact in our respective reports on Meta: Wikimedistas de Uruguay reports, Wikimedistas de Bolivia reports, WikiAcción Perú reports. We have also organized movement conferences (such as GLAM Wiki in 2023 in Uruguay, the Conference on Climate Justice, Indigenous Voices, and Wikimedia Projects in 2024 in Peru, and the Latin American Conference in Bolivia in 2026, the first of its kind). We work on high-impact issues such as education, gender equity, climate change, sustainability, self-representation, and digital skills development, collaborating with national and international stakeholders, including public institutions such as universities, libraries, archives, and multilateral organizations. We have also participated in and promoted subregional initiatives such as the Working Group on Climate Justice and Wikimedia Projects, which has enabled us to raise over $70,000 in independent funding and has developed, among other projects, international initiatives on issues of urgent public interest recognized by UNESCO, the UN Secretariat, and the Government of Brazil.

Overall, our three organizations would be severely affected if these changes were to take place, as noted in the Impact Analysis conducted by a volunteer. Our organizations would face limitations in access to funding, budget availability, and the ability to apply for multi-year funding. Ultimately, all of this would result in poorer outcomes and performance.

Our comments on this proposal, however, are not limited to the specific ways in which it affects our organizations. First, we agree with the points raised by WhoseKnowledge?, the ESEAP Hub, and Wikimedia Brazil at various stages of this proposal; we would like to add other constructive points that have not been mentioned in those comments. We generally agree with the need for common frameworks for action, shared definitions of impact, and clarity regarding the expectations, roles, and responsibilities of all organizations that support the movement, including the Wikimedia Foundation and its affiliate organizations. We also agree on the need for user groups to take steps toward improving their governance mechanisms, something all of our organizations are actively working on.

However, we believe that this proposal does not address the underlying issues regarding the size and organization of the ecosystem and does not define expectations for impact; rather, it focuses primarily on procedural and bureaucratic matters. For this reason, the proposal reinforces structural inequities within the movement and limits our organizations’ capacity for innovation. Nor does the proposal assess how impact areas are defined or how organizations serve specific geographic populations or linguistic communities, leaving unresolved some of the issues related to organizational overlap or duplication of functions.

We recognize the Foundation’s efforts to create opportunities for feedback; however, the complexity of this proposal exceeds the channels and methodologies currently in use. It is important to foster a dialogue with affiliates and a co-design process; furthermore, there are important lessons to be learned from this experience. The lack of translation of the content into different languages creates a real barrier to participation for our communities, increases the workload on our organizations, and conflicts with the Foundation’s commitments to multilingualism and intercultural dialogue. We are also concerned that the proposal does not provide evidence that the proposed changes are based on quantitative or qualitative metrics regarding the current status and impact on affiliates and beneficiaries; so far, the evidence presented is fragmentary, methodologically limited, or time-bound. Added to this is the need for a concrete action plan to mitigate the proposal’s impact on the affected beneficiaries who are carrying out high-impact projects, serving as regional coordinators, and contributing to the achievement of knowledge equity objectives—as is the case with our three organizations.

Beyond the specific criticisms of the proposal, we would like to draw attention to some important points that are more constructive. These are points that we believe are relevant from a Latin American perspective, where the development of our organizations has followed different paths than those of other countries.

1. Prioritize the operational continuity of impactful organizations that would be affected by this proposal. AffCom should work with the organizations that would be affected by the proposal to ensure that initiatives which have demonstrated management capacity and a strong track record of activities do not see their long-term capacity for action reduced. Limiting that technical and territorial capacity jeopardizes long-term impact. Therefore, any changes to the recognition framework must be developed in collaboration with AffCom through a gradual process that ensures the continuity of initiatives that have demonstrated sustainability and results.

1. Develop, in collaboration with affiliates, an impact measurement framework that allows for the incorporation of multiple indicators specific to each organization. Our organizations want rigorous metrics, and we have made significant efforts to report and be transparent with the community. However, the current proposal seeks to establish top-down metrics based on narrow definitions of the affiliates’ areas of work. The challenge with this type of proposal is that, ultimately, people will follow a very common trend in the world of philanthropy: adapting their programs to meet the metrics, rather than creating successful, impactful programs that respond to the needs of their specific contexts. The paper “Towards a Healthy Ecosystem” raised questions about these indicators that offered a sound strategy for developing them collaboratively with affiliates. Affiliates are the first to have a stake in explaining what they do and how they measure it; throughout all these years of work, our organizations have identified many challenges in measuring and reporting metrics, and these are experiences worth learning from. We need structured, facilitated spaces to address these questions and co-design impact assessment systems that make sense in the context of our movement.

1. Implement training and process improvement programs based on monitoring, learning, and evaluation. Implementing new requirements without providing support to the organizations that receive funding limits not only their ability to comply but also their scope for strategic innovation. In the past, programs such as “Reading Wikipedia” or the Organizer Lab enabled the exchange of lessons learned, helped structure affiliate programs, and prevented common program implementation errors, leading to more innovative proposals. Impact measurement and evaluation systems should be geared toward learning and continuous improvement, rather than becoming methods that jeopardize affiliate programs and threaten their operational continuity. The role of a funding organization is not merely to establish transactional relationships (funding in exchange for compliance or mere administrative oversight); rather, a grant program should be structured around the achievement of strategic objectives. Both dimensions—impact measurement and continuous improvement—are closely related, as other philanthropic organizations include the implementation of peer-learning processes among their best practices, something that is becoming increasingly rare in the Wikimedia movement. Generally, we do not receive feedback when we submit our reports; we lack mechanisms to request and receive data from the Foundation that would help us improve our work and understand our impact; there is little dialogue with the Regional Fund Committees; there are no peer-learning processes, unless we coordinate them horizontally and autonomously among grantees; and there is little recognition of initiatives that seek to create coordination and collaboration mechanisms aimed at replicating lessons learned, coordinating functions, and avoiding overlaps.

1. Facilitate the development of agreements through modular and iterative methodologies. The proposal was presented as a monolithic block that condenses multiple points with implications of a very diverse nature and of varying importance. Something similar occurs with the GRDC’s proposal. Our experience within the movement shows us that lengthy proposals, designed centrally and with little prior dialogue, hinder deliberation and block consensus. To innovate in governance—a need that has been reiterated by various sectors of the community—the presentation of such initiatives should be broken down into specific points, their wording simplified, and incremental agreements sought on simpler aspects. Our organizations are fully committed to working on the substantive issues raised, but we believe that the rigidity and length of the proposal, the presentation format, and the channels provided for discussion (comments on Meta or Google Docs, one-way meetings, etc.) ultimately hinder the achievement of consensus. We emphasize the need to incorporate well-designed facilitation processes with technical support—such as participatory workshops that allow for the gradual building of genuine agreements—rather than limiting participation to comments on documents that have already been finalized under very tight deadlines. In Latin America, we have developed and implemented a wide range of dynamic methodologies that have enabled us to break through complex impasses and improve collaboration in various areas, from organizing campaigns and conferences to submitting proposals for international calls for proposals, among others. We stand ready to put these capabilities and tools at the service of global discussions, enabling the building of genuine, consensus-based, and lasting agreements.

We believe that bringing this proposal to the Board of Trustees and considering the discussion closed based on the comments on Meta would be premature. It is essential to first initiate a series of properly facilitated discussions on the key points of the proposal.

The Wikimedia ecosystem—the Wikimedia Foundation (its leadership and staff), affiliates, volunteers on online projects, and users with extended rights—comprises different actors within the ecosystem, and all play very important, yet distinct and complementary, roles. Fostering internal division within the movement benefits no one and limits our ability to envision the roles we want to play within this project. The lack of structured and properly facilitated spaces to consider where we want to go as a movement—particularly in this era of artificial intelligence—and the absence of a strategic vision for all stakeholders in this ecosystem ultimately severely undermines our ability to innovate programmatically. This proposal prioritizes already established organizational projects, rather than taking a strategic look at what kinds of organizations and what kinds of funding are necessary for the role we want Wikipedia to play on the Internet over the next 20 years.

En nombre de Wikimedistas de Bolivia, WikiAcción Perú y Wikimedistas de Uruguay, @Yhhue91, @Caleidoscopic y Scann (WDU) (talk) 18:23, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Feedback from Wikimedia LGBT+

First of all, we would like to endorse the comments made by PatriHorrillo and Kiraface in the section Wikiesfera above, the comments by Anita Braga for Wiki Editoras Lx, by Mariana Fossatti for Whose Knowledge? and by Belinda Spry for the ESEAP Hub, especially point №9 about power imbalances.

We were very pleased to see the withdrawal of the funding proposal and timeline. As I have said before, it was profoundly disappointing — and frankly insulting — for the Foundation to pre-empt the GRDC with a contradictory proposal and an unrealistically short timeline that spanned across Wikimania and across the affiliate funding proposal period for every region other than N&W Europe. It calls into question the Board’s understanding of how the wider Movement engages with community engagement for an internal proposal on funding reorganisation to be drafted and released immediately before the GRDC were due to publish a proposal based on actual community engagement and co-design processes.

It is also disappointing to see that the proposal clearly overlooked Thematic Organisations and affiliates in the Global South, as well as only being published in English. In future, it would be useful for the Foundation to actively mitigate these structural disadvantages. The whole proposal seems to lack a good understanding of knowledge equity and systemic structural injustices, especially as it was first socialised only within the EDs group, omitting many of the smaller affiliates who would be most strongly affected.

Regarding the framing of the proposal, we do understand that there’s a perspective that overlap between affiliates is a problem, but are there any data to evidence that perception? One of the concerns we have heard mentioned is that there are 9 user groups in Nigeria. It’s worth considering that the United States has 2 Chapters and 10 User Groups serving a country that is largely monolingual and only around 40% larger by population, compared to 3 recognised national languages and over 520 regional languages in Nigeria.

Likewise, we understand that there’s a perception that some grantees lack strategic alignment, but isn’t that what our grant managers and the grant application process are for? Certainly we have found discussion with Chris Schilling, our GSF grant manager, to be extremely helpful in guiding us towards detailed funding proposals that are more likely to align with what our regional funding committee are seeking to fund. We also understand that there are capacity issues with AffCom, but these proposals do not seem to be an equitable way of addressing these capacity issues.

We appreciate that WMF staffers made some time to have conversations with thematic affiliates, but I’ll repeat what I said then: with respect, it would have been useful had this conversation happened before publishing a super-contentious document that threatens to defund a bunch of affiliates in the Global South and in the knowledge equity space. This, along with a history of tension between the Foundation and the Movement exemplified by the decline to proceed with the Movement Charter, has exacerbated a perception of the Foundation being disconnected in an ivory tower, with a desire to centralise things, moving away from the wider Movement having a real stake in how the Movement operates. The proposals led to widespread anger across Affiliates and it was very surprising to see that this reaction was unexpected. We are very grateful to Zache for having put together an evaluation of the impact of the funding proposals and, frankly, it is very disappointing that the Foundation working group appears to have thought neither to create that impact analysis themselves nor to engage in specific discussions with the most heavily-impacted Affiliates before publication.

On the specifics of the proposal, while we can understand the concerns around organisational capacity, we believe the rigidity and over-detailed nature of the proposals are unhelpful, especially given they appear to rely on assumptions about the universality of Global North institutional structures. This further evidences the fundamental lack of understanding of knowledge equity and systemic structural injustices exhibited throughout this proposal.

A particular concern is that the funding model here is unworkable and will not only set Affiliate progress in aspic but forcibly disestablish some organisations doing vital work in knowledge equity — organisations that only exist because no organisation was doing that work before. It is great to see that many Chapters have been focussing more attention on knowledge equity over the last several years, but it should be borne in mind that Affiliates like Wikimedia LGBT+, les sans pagEs, Art+Feminism, Wikiesfera and Whose Knowledge? (for example) only exist because there was an unmet need. We are all Affiliates with a large, dedicated volunteer base performing the hard work to ensure that the Movement projects include under-represented knowledge and minoritised viewpoints — often in the face of heavy and hostile opposition from a small number of editors with entrenched viewpoints that run counter to knowledge equity.

The proposals around funding eligibility appear to lack a detailed understanding of the practicalities behind how Affiliates grow and mature. Tying non-project funding to operational conditions such as be[ing] a legally registered nonprofit or equivalent entity in its locality fails to understand that acquiring that status is exceptionally time- and labour-intensive even in Global North jurisdictions where that is widely understood. Wikimedia LGBT+ has invested many dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of volunteer and staff time and over 18 months of calendar time into our current incorporation process, with the benefit of pro bono legal advice from a firm with experience of establishing a Wikimedia-related non-profit, but I still could not give you a guarantee of which calendar quarter that might come to fruition. Doing that without having non-project paid staff — so funded from the GSF — would be virtually impossible. Please look again at the impact analysis and note that almost without exception the groups there are thematic organisations in the knowledge equity space, or geographic affiliates outside of the Global North. The affiliation framework and its tie to funding eligibility will impede Affiliates from establishing out of groups of interested users and being able to professionalise their work in order to increase their impact. There is a funding cliff between unorganised groups and User Groups, and another between User Groups and Chapters (with ThOrgs hastily categorised in with Chapters). This is not a ladder of progress, but more a series of buckets, between which movement will be all but impossible.

Ideally, this whole process should be restarted with true co-design, holding workshops with Affiliates and Movement contributors, as well as the Board and Foundation staff, where we can come to a shared consensus of the premises and problem statement, before coming to a shared decision on how to address those issues. The Wikimedia Summit 2024 had thousands of person-hours working to co-design improvements to a Movement Charter that had already seen massive quantities of volunteer time to get to that point. These proposals don’t appear to have had even a single Zoom call with affected stakeholders before the text was presented to the EDs group.

Given the fundamental problems with the proposal as drafted, sending something to the Board for approval in December, without at the very least a new draft being published for comment, taking account of the criticisms raised here and in conversation sessions more privately, would suggest that the Foundation and Board do not value consultation and are more interested in enacting something now rather than something good 6 months down the line.

We are all here because we believe in the Movement’s mission to create a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Let’s take the time to ensure we are doing that equitably and well, rather than exacerbating the systemic biases we know inevitably exist in the editing community and in easily-accessible sources. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk). I support Wiki Workers United 18:43, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Statement of the Commons Photographers User Group

Note: The first parts of the statement were already posted as a comment to the Grantmaking Strategy 2026.

We are the Commons Photographers User Group. We have over 300 members who contribute to Wikimedia Commons and the Wikiverse. A large fraction of the high quality, original content was created by members of the CPUG. Original photography content is important for the open and free knowledge ecosystem. Our members are also active in GLAM collaborations and campaigns for gaining new contributors, and sharing their skills to enhance the quality of the content on Wikimedia Commons.

We are a global group, with members from around 50 countries, with a huge diversity of native languages and cultural backgrounds. Our common topics are photography and the project of Wikimedia Commons.

We are a thematic user group at a global level. Such groups are an important part of the affiliate structure. These groups can share skills around the globe, enabling local communities to be able to contribute to the vision of the movement in a more powerful and sustainable way. Local groups of global thematic user groups should not be considered competitors to local user groups or chapters. They are partners when organizing events or doing advocacy work.

That there should not be more than one officially recognized affiliate per topic is a good idea. But this requires a more clear policy on what a topic is regarding this only one affiliate per topic rule. Can a Commons Photographers User Group and user groups for Wikimedia Commons, GLAM and Wiki Loves photo competitions exist next to each other or are they now required to be part of one large affiliate? This should be a decision of the community if they want to form separate affiliates for such topics or if they want to form one large affiliate with subgroups. The affiliate rules should not decide on this. There also needs to be a clear statement in the policy on what if regional affiliates have thematic subgroups about the same topic as the user group.

Global groups are not part of one funding region. There needs to be a good solution for such groups, to allow them to apply for grants. There should be a clear statement that fiscal sponsorship through chapters is always possible for user groups who need such a service.

The wording of the strategy is very ambiguous in many parts, especially on the affiliate tiers. This does not seem suitable for a binding policy that can be applied without supplemental guidelines. Such implementation guidelines also need to be developed with community and affiliate consultation.

Any funding by the WMF should not require paid staff at the affiliate. If the formalized organization is entirely run by unpaid volunteers, who are responsible for the organization per the local law of the region the organization is registered in, they should be treated as paid staff in any requirement for affiliate status or grant eligibility.

There need to be possibilities for exceptions to the funding limits. The project funding limit needs clarification on how the limit is calculated if a project is managed as a cooperation of multiple affiliates. In case of collaborations, the requirement for prior minor funding should be fulfilled if one of the collaboration partners fulfills the requirement, also if the main organizer does not fulfill this requirement.

The requirements for experienced Wikimedians should not be solely based on on-wiki activity. People with experience in governing organizations, advocacy work or organizing offline community events should also be eligible to be part of the affiliates governing body.

For Wikimedia Commons, the event registration tool is not suitable to track the outcome of photography events and campaigns like Wiki Loves. For such events, tracking the outcome through templates and categories is the common way. This needs to be possible in the future, too. We would appreciate development to link event registration functionalities and the UploadWizard.

On behalf of the Board of the Commons Photographers User Group GPSLeo (talk) 19:55, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Pan-Africa Hub Feedback on Recognition and Funding for Wikimedia Organizations

The Pan-African Hub collected feedback from African Wikimedia community members through community feedback and an open discussion with affiliate leaders. The feedback focused on the proposed changes to recognition and funding for Wikimedia communities, including Rapid Grants, General Support, User Group eligibility, recognition and accountability, and the 2026 Grantmaking Strategy.

The feedback reflected a mixed response. Faster access to funding and support for emerging communities was recognized as valuable, alongside concerns about funding continuity, User Group eligibility, competition for Rapid Grants, transparency, and recognition requirements.

Key feedback from African communities

Rapid Grants and access to funding

• Rapid Grants were identified as the most relevant area of the proposed strategy.
• Faster and more responsive grant decisions are important.
• Rapid Grant budgets should be adequate to support community activities.
• Practical support is needed when preparing grant applications.
• Increased eligibility could result in greater competition for limited Rapid Grant resources.
• Rapid funding is important for campaigns, training, capacity building, and emerging initiatives.

User Groups and General Support

• The proposed change making User Groups ineligible for General Support generated significant concern.
• The change could affect community programming.
• It could also affect coordination and employment opportunities connected to community activities.
• User Groups may face challenges in continuing training, campaigns, and capacity-building activities.
• Transition arrangements are needed for User Groups affected by the proposed change.
• Alternative funding pathways should be clarified for affected User Groups.

Recognition and accountability

Greater clarity is needed on:

• Recognition criteria.
• Derecognition criteria.
• Evidence requirements.
• Reporting requirements.
• Decision-making processes.
• Timelines.
• Review and appeal mechanisms.
• Expectations for organizations at different stages of development.

Transparency

The funding model should provide:

• Greater transparency around regional funding decisions.
• Clearer explanations of funding processes.
• More accessible information about funding changes.
• Clear information on reporting, KPIs, dashboards, and follow-up.
• Better communication about how decisions affecting African communities are made.

Smaller and emerging communities

• Small and emerging communities should be considered in funding decisions.
• Communities should not be disadvantaged because of their size or organizational maturity.
• Organizational and administrative requirements should reflect different levels of capacity.
• Emerging communities may need practical support to meet reporting and organizational expectations.
• Funding approaches should consider the different operating environments across African countries.

Funding priorities

Community growth and participation appeared most consistently among the priorities identified through the feedback.

Other priorities included:

• Leadership development.
• Organizational sustainability.
• Diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Language and content gaps.
• Education.
• Support for emerging communities.

Different volunteer realities in Africa

• African volunteers may face significant costs when participating in Wikimedia activities.
• Transportation and travel costs can affect meaningful participation.
• Funding approaches should consider different volunteer realities across African countries.
• Funding models should take local operating environments into account rather than applying the same approach across all communities.

African representation in decision-making

Meaningful African representation is important in:

Governance and funding committees.

• Structures such as AffCom.
• Decisions affecting the African region.
• Communication between regional representatives and the communities they represent.
• Accountability for representatives serving on global committees.

Coordination across African communities

• Communities operate in different ways and under different conditions.
• Funding and organizational approaches should account for these differences.
• Stronger coordination across African communities could help address regional challenges.

Questions requiring further clarification

The following areas require further clarification:

• How will Rapid Grant demand be managed if more individuals and User Groups become eligible?
• What transition or alternative funding pathways will be available to User Groups that are no longer eligible for General Support?
• How will impact be assessed across differences in community size, language, geography, organizational maturity, and local operating conditions?
• What are the specific recognition and derecognition criteria?
• How will small and emerging communities receive support to meet reporting and organizational expectations?

Areas for consideration

The following areas should be considered:

• Maintain accessible and responsive Rapid Grant pathways.
• Provide faster grant approval processes where possible.
• Ensure adequate funding for Rapid Grants.
• Ensure small and emerging communities are considered in funding decisions.
• Clarify recognition and derecognition criteria.
• Make regional funding decisions more transparent.
• Clarify funding pathways for User Groups affected by changes to General Support.
• Consider mechanisms that allow communities with demonstrated impact to sustain their work while maintaining accountability.

Follow-up

Continued consultation on the practical implementation of the proposed model is important.

Further information is needed on:

• Eligibility pathways.
• Transition arrangements for User Groups.
• Rapid Grant demand management.
• Support for emerging communities.
• Recognition and derecognition criteria.
• Transparency of regional funding decisions.

Ongoing communication with African communities.

On Behalf of the Pan-African Hub--Owula kpakpo (talk) 23:31, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Content Partnerships Hub Steering Committee feedback on the Recognition and Funding proposal

On behalf of the Content Partnerships Hub's Steering Committee, I would like to share the following feedback on the Recognition and Funding proposal:

• General support for formal recognition of Hubs. The proposal is seen as an opportunity to strengthen legitimacy, accountability and long-term stability, but the framework should remain flexible enough to reflect differences between regional, thematic and service-oriented Hubs.
• Hub services should be defined more broadly. From the experience of the Content Partnership Hub pilot, we have been delivering a range of services that do not currently appear to be included in the definition. The framework should explicitly recognize content partnership development, institutional relationship building, copyright and licensing support, digitization, capacity building of key groups and stakeholders (e.g. Wikimedian in Residence), specialized support services (e.g. a Helpdesk), innovation and technical/tool development. Hubs should be expected to address significant gaps or improve access, rather than prove that a service is completely unavailable elsewhere.
• Global thematic audiences require greater flexibility. A thematic Hub may have a global mandate while expanding gradually and prioritizing regions or communities with greater needs. Its audience should include not only affiliates, but also informal groups, individual organizers, expert groups (e.g. Wikimedians in Residence), contributors and external partners.
• The 70% endorsement threshold is difficult to implement. For a global thematic Hub, defining the full audience, denominator and treatment of non-responses may be impractical. A better approach would be evidence of meaningful, diverse and geographically representative support.
• Audience overlap should not be treated as duplication. Regional and thematic Hubs will inevitably serve some of the same communities. Recognition should focus on whether services are distinct, complementary and add value, while requiring coordination and avoidance of unnecessary duplication.
• Evaluation should reflect long-term and qualitative impact. Content partnership work may take years to produce visible results and often depends on external institutions. Reporting should therefore combine quantitative indicators with qualitative evidence, case studies, user feedback and evidence of institutional change.
• Governance and fiscal sponsorship need clearer definitions. The framework should clarify the respective roles of Steering Committees, staff and fiscal sponsors, while allowing operational decisions to remain with staff. Fiscal sponsorship agreements should clearly define responsibilities, decision-making authority, data and intellectual-property ownership, conflict resolution and transition arrangements.
• Funding rules should allow Hubs to scale. A fixed USD 200,000 annual cap is too restrictive for global or multi-service Hubs. Funding should better reflect multi-year strategy, community needs, scope of services, audience size and demonstrated impact, with mechanisms for justified exceptions and complementary funding.
• Professional capacity is essential. Service-oriented Hubs cannot realistically rely only on volunteers. The framework should recognize professional staffing, staff development, organizational continuity and succession planning as core elements of sustainability.
• The transition process needs more clarity. Existing Hubs need a clear timeline, transitional arrangements and continuity of funding while adapting their governance, strategy and reporting systems, without disrupting ongoing services.

Overall, our feedback is supportive of formal Hub recognition, but we emphasize that the final framework should better accommodate the realities of global, thematic and service-oriented Hubs, particularly regarding audience definition, endorsement, overlap, evaluation, governance, staffing and funding. John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 15:04, 1 October 2026 (UTC), member of the Content Partnerships Hub Steering Committee