Grants:Start/Goals

We encourage projects that provide opportunities to reach the Wikimedia movement's goal of spreading participation in free culture across boundaries of language, gender, and geography. We seek out opportunities for growth in under-represented demographics, smaller and newer Wikimedia projects, and communities in the global south. We focus on providing individuals within these communities with information and tools to help them succeed.

Support diversity

We believe that a diversity of perspectives is crucial to increasing the quality of the free knowledge resources that our movement provides. Grants can be a powerful tool for encouraging the growth of new projects, supporting the participation of new Wikimedians from more countries and cultures, and for increasing the diversity of contributions within mature projects and in geographies with established communities of contributors.

Our focus in 2014 is to develop and execute an innovative grantmaking strategy that promotes growth among under-resourced and emerging regions, languages, and communities in our movement, particularly in the Global South. We will also facilitate the creation of a strategy for narrowing the gender gap that will encourage the increased participation of female contributors, including through grants.

Empower individuals

Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement have shown the world what individuals can achieve. Grantmaking at WMF follows the paradigm of our free culture projects of empowering individuals to work collaboratively to make positive change in their own communities. We entrust our grantees with the responsibility to design and lead their own projects, while providing them with resources to help those projects succeed.

Individual Engagement grants provide individual Wikimedians with funds and mentorship to try out bold ideas for engaging new contributors and promoting new ways to contribute. Project and Event grants fund volunteer-led events and initiatives that strengthen local communities and extend the reach of free content and free culture values into new corners of the globe. Travel and Participation Support grants allow community members to spread awareness and seek new knowledge at mission-aligned events outside of the Wikimedia Movement. Annual Planning grants fund initiatives that promote individual leadership and support volunteerism in the Wikimedia Foundation's affiliate organizations.