Updating the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations/Future Affiliate Landscape

Proposal - Future Affiliate Landscape

This is a proposal from the pilot on the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations. Following the publication of the paper Towards a Healthy Ecosystem of Wikimedia Organizations, a focus group was formed in December 2025 to come up with a proposal for next steps. This proposal is the outcome of this work.

The purpose of the proposal is to provide a basis for future conversations around movement organizations and advance the process towards action and implementation of needed changes. The main goal is to achieve clarity regarding the structure of movement organizations, especially the purpose, role, rights, and expectations related to each organization type, as well as how different organization types are connected to each other.

Affiliate definition

A Wikimedia affiliate is an organization or organized group of people with its main purpose to work towards the Wikimedia vision, supporting people and institutions to contribute to the sum of all human knowledge in their context and locality.

Affiliate purpose - contextual and local

• Adhere to vision. Deliver the Wikimedia vision in context and at the local level. Make it tangible and culturally relevant.
• Outreach. Through their unique position, affiliates help the movement to reach more people and organizations. Connect to them and connect them to Wikimedia vision, expanding the movement. Be present in their context and locality.
• Support. Provide contextual and local support to people connected to Wikimedia. Create opportunities for participation and meaningful contribution.

Affiliate principles - equity, subsidiarity, and support

• People-centeredness. Focus on people who empower Wikimedia. Meet their needs in context. Reduce barriers to contribution and nurture community health.
• Equity through contextualization. Local and contextual approach helps to provide support and opportunities for people to participate at appropriate levels regarding their capacity and context. Equity considers that some people and communities start with a disadvantage, needing focus support in overcoming challenges.
• Subsidiarity in action. Affiliates are in a unique position to connect global and local levels in the movement. Affiliates increase the agency and participation of individuals, bringing decisions closer to people, and increasing the capacity for self-management.
• Anchoring support system. Affiliates are the guiding mechanism and support system for content-creating communities, creating a platform for community members to focus on quality contributions.

Affiliate recognition

• Recognition. Suggested criteria:
  • Alignment with Wikimedia vision. The main goal of the group or organization is well aligned with Wikimedia vision and common movement goals.
  • Clarity of scope. Clearly defined reach in terms of communities, geographies and themes supported. Clear outline of activity areas and proposed services.
  • Clear reason to be affiliated. It needs to be clear why and how the affiliation status will improve the quality and impact of the group.
• Derecognition. Affiliates need to be derecognized in occurrence of significant break of the affiliate agreement, deliberate malfeasance, not abiding by the conduct commitment, and continued inactivity.

Affiliate focus areas

• Enable impactful quality content. Support the communities to develop quality contextual content and maintain information integrity on challenging topics. Partner with expert organizations to be part of quality content creation.
• Organize. Organize content-creating communities. Recruit and welcome new members, promote the activities, provide governance support and structure for communities to thrive.
• Resource communities. Facilitate work on the content and create access to resources for content-creating community members. Resources include reference materials, capacity and leadership development, support for community health, tools and widgets, and financial means (incl fundraising).
• Foster the environment. Increase awareness about Wikimedia vision and ways of working by using common narratives in context. Advocate locally and regionally for better conditions for our projects and communities to flourish.
• Manage partnerships. Connect with organizations and governments. Leverage brand awareness and institutional legitimacy in specific context and on a local level. Facilitate delivery on Wikimedia vision through these connections.
• Connect the movement. Connect people within, across, and beyond the Wikimedia movement. Create and maintain peer learning spaces. Identify trends, movements, and influences around Wikimedia to take collective action. Expectation for established affiliates to support emerging ones.

Affiliate accountability

For each and every affiliate, there is an expectation to have a:

• Common goal. The primary goal of any Wikimedia affiliate is to advance the common Wikimedia vision and agreed upon common movement goals. This is the main difference between a Wikimedia affiliate and any other, even allied organization. Align affiliate purpose, focus, accountability, and funding to common movement goals
• Conduct commitment. Affiliates have a foundational role in shaping the culture of the movement. Every affiliate needs to have a code of ethics or abide by Universal Code of Conduct regulating relationships between members, with the community, and wider movement. As a good governance practice, a conflict of interest policy needs to be in place.
• Clear communication. Documentation, reporting, and sharing of stories makes the affiliate role visible and understandable. It is the foundation for sharing best practices and peer learning across the movement.
• Clear governance. Affiliates need to establish clarity regarding their basic governance model and how people can be involved in the affiliate overall and in its decision-making in particular.
• Impact assessment. Every affiliate needs to have a clear impact assessment model to create clarity on how their work contributes to achieving common movement goals, share the lessons learned for future improvement, and create opportunities for collective action around global trends. The level of reporting needs to correspond to the level of capacity of the affiliate and complexity of its work.

For established affiliates there is an expectation for:

• Peer mentorship. Experienced affiliates are best positioned to support young affiliates and emerging communities planning to organize. Peer mentorship needs to be their explicit commitment to make this a reality across the movement.
• Fiscal sponsorship. There needs to be a sustainable model for fiscal sponsorships, especially for emerging groups and groups that cannot have a formal structure due to safety concerns.

Advantages of affiliating

• Trademark use. Every affiliate has access to the use of the Wikimedia trademarks to advance the mission and increase awareness about Wikimedia in legally appropriate ways.
• Access to structured support. Affiliates have access to receive structured support to increase their capacity or overcome challenges. Support is provided by peer networks and the Wikimedia Foundation.
• Access to funds. Affiliates access Wikimedia grants. The funding will depend on the demonstrated capacity of the affiliate, its overall health and track record, and its growth trajectory. Every affiliate receiving funds has a responsibility to publicly report on the use of funds.
• Fundraising. Affiliates may fundraise. Every affiliate taking part in fundraising has a responsibility to coordinate its activities on the field with other organizations to avoid duplication of efforts.

Affiliate growth

• Affiliate health review. There needs to be a systemic approach to assess the health of affiliates. This can prompt support to affiliates as well as forecast their growth trajectories and future needs.
  • Build on impact assessment and reports from affiliates themselves.
  • Highlight the impact of affiliates and its connection to common goals of the movement.
  • Find ways to meaningfully assess the actual health of affiliates, considering its capacity, governance practices, people management, and finances.
  • Use the review to define areas of support and peer connections to improve the overall health of affiliates.

• Affiliate tiers. It makes sense to have different tiers of affiliates based on their capacity to deliver impact to achieve Wikimedia vision.

Category	Light	Versatile	Established
Formalization	Not formalized.	Formalized processes.	Formalized organizations.
Delivery	Project or a few	Different programs. 2-3 focus areas.	Wide range of programs. 4+ focus areas.
Partnerships	Project related partnerships.	1-2 sustained partnerships.	A number of sustained partnerships
Assessment	Basic impact assessment	Impact assessment system on focus areas	Established impact assessment.
Contribution	No expectations	Participate in peer learning	Drive peer mentorship and provide fiscal and HR sponsorship
Funding / staff	No or temporary funding / staff	Mostly project focused funding and staff	Operational and programmatic funding, may fundraise, have staff

• Flexibility. Suggestion for the tiered system should not to be one-directional and not only to be aimed towards growth.
  • Affiliates need to be able to move between tiers based on changing contextual and local needs and expectations or circumstances.
  • Any need for re-registration of affiliates that are legal entities needs to be avoided.

Hubs and partner organizations

• Hubs. Hubs are a coordination and service structure, a framework for collaboration between affiliates, communities, and individuals.
  • Hubs are created to reach overarching goals that are difficult to achieve on the scale of affiliates, communities or individuals.
  • Hubs are expected to provide support to communities and affiliates in their region or thematic area of work, where a clear need has been identified and their establishment has been endorsed by communities serviced.
  • No duplication. Hubs need to support a number of communities and affiliates within its scope. There should not be regional or thematic overlap between hubs. In case of potential overlap, coordination needs to happen between hubs.
  • Hubs are expected to have access to Wikimedia grants. The funding should not duplicate, rather complement or support stakeholder activities in their area of service or effect.
  • Hubs are not expected to be affiliates themselves, but a different layer of organizing the movement.
  • Hubs are not expected to be registered entities. However, hubs can be organizations if it benefits accomplishment of their goals.
  • Affiliate accountability criteria would also apply to the hubs.

• Partner organizations. Allies and partners in achieving Wikimedia vision need to be involved and recognized in a way for stronger impact, especially around public knowledge.
  • Have a formalized status of partner organizations or movement allies to create a clear connection with Wikimedia for organizations whose work aligns with Wikimedia vision.
  • Access to Wikimedia trademarks on a program or project basis can be granted to increase awareness in agreed upon ways.
  • Access to Wikimedia grants is dependent on the impact of Wikimedia-aligned activities.
  • It does not make sense to have them affiliated, as their mission probably aligns with Wikimedia's, but it is not solely focused on the Wikimedia projects.
  • Affiliate accountability criteria would also apply to partner organizations.

Affiliate funding

• Clarity. Ensure that there is clarity regarding the requirements of funding from entry level affiliates to established organizations.
• Impact. Funding needs to be clearly tied to potential and demonstrated capacity and impact level rather than the size of the affiliate.
• Innovation. Funding needs to accommodate flexibility, not only sustainability. There is potential for organizations to experiment and innovate. After proof of concept the innovation can be adopted at scale by other organizations.
• Stability. Multi-year funding should not be available only for established organizations and bigger budgets. To create core stability for flexibility of affiliates, multi-year support can also be provided to smaller organizations with smaller budgets with a good track record, clear impact model and development path.
• Collaboration. There need to be financial incentives for Wikimedia grant recipients to work together on common goals towards collective impact. Peer connections can be a responsibility included in the grant program, increasing the funds available.