Funding the Movement: Key Takeaways, Trends, and Lessons from FY23/24 Community Fund Grants

Introduction

In alignment with our commitment to communicate our funding outcomes, this article provides an overview of the direct support provided by the Wikimedia Foundation through grantmaking towards the Movement in the fiscal year of 2023/24. Our focus will be on the Wikimedia Community Fund program, which includes the regional budgets for General Support Funds (unrestricted and multi-year funding) and Rapid Fund programs, as well as the Conference and Event Fund.

This link showcases the list of all funded grantees across all regions with the General Support Fund and Conference Funds.

We will highlight trends observed across all of our funding regions and share lessons learned from experimenting with various funding options offered to the communities. The regions discussed are East, Southeast Asia and Pacific [ ESEAP], South Asia [SA], Northern and Western European Region [NWE], North America [NA], Middle East and North Africa [ MENA], Sub-Saharan Africa [SSA] and Latin America and the Caribbean [ LAC].

Main Takeaways – Trends

Alignment with the Movement Strategy

The Regional Funds Committee members and the Thematic Experts evaluating the General Support Fund proposals found that 92% of all applications globally were in line with the 2030 Movement Strategy, and only 8% required clarifications on their contribution to the strategy. 

Newcomers Funded in the GSF [General Support Funding]

In this fiscal year, Regional Funding Committees approved a total of 20 first-time applications to the General Support Fund; 4 from the East, Southeast Asia and Pacific Regions, 4 from South Asia, 1 from the Northern and Western European Region, 2 from North America, 5 from the Middle East and North Africa, 4 from Sub-Saharan Africa. The rest of the grants were approved as returning annual and multi-year grants.

Trends in GSF [General Support Funding] 

• Increased Demand for Multi-Year Grant Funding: There’s increased uptake of multi-year grant funding in multiple regions: NWE, ESEAP, NA, MENA, LAC, CEE and slightly in SSA. Regional Funds Committees conducted a careful evaluation of each grantee’s strategic strength, organizational stability, reporting strength and previous impact, as well as budget restrictions before awarding multi-annual proposals in this fiscal year. 
• Programming: In most regions (SA, ESEAP, NWE, LAC, CEECA, NA) proposals showed more intentional and consistent programming, focusing on consolidating ongoing activities and deepening partnerships rather than innovating. An observed trend was a lack of new or innovative strategies. For some grantees, this was due to the practicality of aligning new strategies with multi-year grant applications, or a commitment to continuing successful programs from the previous year, as these efforts have proven to be reliable.
• Compared to last year, there was an increase in cases where Regional Funds Committees provided conditional funding to support strategic reviews of grantee partner programming and organizational or group structures, to enable the proposed work.
• Professionalization Efforts: In some regions (esp. NWE, ESEAP, SA, SSA) the grantee community showed increased effort in professionalization, including improved practices for financial management, robust and innovative governance structures, embarking on or improving fundraising initiatives and efforts, as well as working on becoming an autonomous registered entity in their country. 
• Addressing Volunteer Burnout: There is a global trend of addressing volunteer burnout by bringing on board-paid staff to hold roles typically held by volunteers. 
• Thematic Focus: Culture and heritage remain the main thematic focus in NWE and ESEAP, while education and climate change were leading in MENA and LAC. Grantees in these last regions are expanding to education, technology, and indigenous communities. Youth engagement remains a priority in the ESEAP region and is becoming a central focus in the CEE region through robust educational initiatives.
  
  Additionally, some regions are targeting niche audiences. In South Asia, there is a focus on documenting local fauna and indigenous languages and developing technical communities. Meanwhile, in North America, newly funded organizations are concentrating on language revitalization and providing access to high-quality medical information for practitioners and patients.
• Diversity and Inclusion: This fiscal year was a win for Diversity and Inclusion: across all regions, applications showed a deep reflection on equity and inclusion. All affiliates have identified content and representation gaps to actively work on bridging these gaps. We see a continued focus in grantees on bringing on board women as part of their efforts to diversify the participant and governance demographic, as well as bringing in rural and remote communities and minority groups (e.g. indigenous, neurodivergent, or gender-diverse groups). 
• Focus on communities beyond domestic borders: Many grantees in the NA and NWE regions extend their support to communities outside their regions. For example, Whose Knowledge’s outreach work with Dalit, queer, and indigenous communities in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. WM Sverige (Sweden) provides global support for GLAM initiatives, while WM France and Les sans PagEs focus on supporting francophone communities worldwide.
• Strengthened Regional Funding Committees: This financial year, Regional Funds Committees exercised greater agency in their decision-making, reflecting on their experiences and clearly articulating their support needs. In collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation’s DEI team, the Committee members enhanced their skills in diversity, inclusion and equity, and improved their use of language around neurodiversity. Additionally, opportunities were identified for their inclusion in the regional grants budgeting process, further empowering their role.
  

Identified areas of improvement 

• Enhancing the visibility of the work being done by grantee partners to multiple stakeholders for different purposes, utilizing existing tools and platforms such as the outreach dashboard, Diff, Meta, and social media.
• Fostering a Sense of Collaboration: Committees recommended grantees pursue opportunities for collaborative work amongst each other and with external partners. This includes working together on programs, campaigns, projects, communication efforts, and institutional learning.
• Focus on Sustainability: Financial and organizational/programming sustainability were key areas of focus in all regions. Committees often questioned the sustainability of certain approaches proposed by applicants, leading to recommendations on deepening existing efforts rather than scaling up. This included diversifying activities, developing necessary capacities (including on-wiki skills), leveraging volunteers to support organizational efforts, and utilizing leadership development tools.
• Capacity Building in Fundraising: A clearly defined area for capacity building was to support external fundraising for affiliates, including assessing grantee skills, capacity building and defining the appropriate level of WMF interventions in this area. There are current efforts by the Wikimedia Foundation to get a contractor to support affiliates directly in building this capacity. 

Trends in Rapid Funds

The SSA region continued to have the highest uptake of rapid funds, while the ESEAP, LAC, and SA regions saw a steady increase. In contrast, NA and MENA showed less interest, partly due to government restrictions in Egypt and Sudan and a lack of awareness about funding cycles. In NWE, applications were predominantly from high-income countries, prompting the Committee to prioritize applications from lower-income countries in the future. 

Trends in Conference Fund

About 36% of the grantee partners this year were first-time applicants to the Conference Fund program. We have funded 5 regional events; 5 Thematic; and 6 ‘Growth’ events. Many of them were new initiatives that were never organized before such as the WikiOutdoor Training; Climate Justice, Indigenous Voices and Open Knowledge, and the Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-up.

Building a better support system for community events organizers continues to be a priority, therefore, one of the most impactful changes that were piloted and will be fully implemented starting this fiscal year is that the Travel and Convening team will now handle communication and contracting for all travel and accommodation arrangements for all the regional events and some of the Thematic events as well. We expect this to not only maximize the budget allocated to community events but also take much of the organizing burden off the community Organizing teams so they can focus more on the core wiki- work and programming.

Within this link, you will find a detailed list of every funded grantee partner, including the level of funding requested and whether they are newcomers or returning grantees.

We trust that this review of our funding outcomes and lessons learned has been insightful. As we move into FY24/25, we remain committed to continue supporting the movement, informed by the insights we’ve gathered across the years. Next week, we will share another update on the FY24/25 budget, outlining the process used and lessons learned, particularly from involving regional funding committees and the executive director’s working group.

For any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected].