Grants:Start/People
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Grantees
Grantees are the prime movers of Wikimedia Grantmaking. They identify new opportunities and unmet needs within their local communities and wiki projects, and propose innovative projects, and see them through to completion. Grantees work with WMF staff, committee members, and other community volunteers to scope and plan their projects, put their ideas into practice, report project outcomes, measure impact, and share what they learned in the process.
Staff
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community Resources team supports four grantmaking streams and Wikimedia scholarships—Travel and Participation Support, Individual Engagement Grants, Project and Event Grants, and Annual Plan Grants. There are five grants program officers, a grants administrator, a conference organizer, and a community organizer. Led by Director Siko Bouterse, Community Resources staff work closely with WMF's Learning & Evaluation, Education, Wikipedia Library, Community Liaison, Community Advocacy, Analytics, Legal, Finance, and Executive teams.
Committees
Grantmaking committee members are the primary advisors and decision-makers within our grants programs. Our four committees—the participation support committee, individual engagement grant committee, grant advisor committee and the funds dissemination committee—are made up of contributors from different languages of Wikipedia and its sister projects, and include volunteer participants from around the world.
Committee members provide guidance and feedback to grant applicants, supporting prospective grantees throughout the proposal and review process. Grantmaking committees work with WMF Grantmaking staff to disburse over $8 million in annual funding to support community members in their work to spread free knowledge.
Community
Strong community participation is critical to our success. The broader Wikimedia community participates in grantmaking processes in important ways. Community members endorse and comment on grant proposals, brainstorm bold new initiatives in the IdeaLab, and share knowledge through Learning Patterns. They can often participate with specific projects by offering their expertise, such as evaluation support or design help.
Multilingual Wikimedians take the lead on translating and localizing grantmaking portals, instructional documentation, project reports, and blog posts, making the process and the outcomes of WMF grantmaking more accessible and engaging to non-English speakers.