Grants:Impact

What happens when the sum of all human knowledge is freely available in the world?

The Wikimedia Foundation has been asking the question "What is the impact of grants?" for a long time. There have been a number of efforts to answer this question, focused primarily on short-term outputs. But these efforts miss the longer-term outcomes, the ripple effects of grantee work that are hard (and sometimes impossible) to measure in the short grant lifecycle.

But the impact of grants goes far beyond what we can count in the short-term.It goes beyond common metrics such as edits, page views, articles or editors. And it goes far beyond what we can even capture on-wiki or online in general.

It spans the online to offline, the tangible to intangible, the transactional to transformational. Community Resources aims to articulate some of these longer-term outcomes, in order to inform future funding decisions, expand the conversation around impact, and illuminate offline activities and programs as key components in achieving our vision.

Grants have played a role in...

Enabling Cultural Heritage

Enabling humanity to partake in our collective cultural heritage.

Building Community

Deepening the trust, connection, collaboration, belonging, and identity of communities around the world.

Improving Diversity & Inclusion

Bringing in those who were previously left out, creating a more diverse and globally representative movement.

Expanding the Free Knowledge Ecosystem

Convincing knowledge stewards to open their doors, thereby expanding the ecosystem that is working toward free and open knowledge.