Matthew Hart and Ezra Berkley Nepon, The Lafayette Practice

“ At Wikimedia Foundation, a large percentage of total funds are raised from readers and contributors to Wikimedia projects, and therefore require a high level of community-wide accountability, transparency, and visibility - yielding a grantmaking process that is widely participatory from income to expense. Because Wikimedia is one of the top global websites, the Foundation is able to actualize the vision of a social justice movement funded and supported by its community. ”

“ Because participation by active community members - those impacted by the grantmaking areas - is a defining element of Participatory Grantmaking, it's clear that Conflict of Interest is an area of dynamic concern, requiring agile problem-solving and a commitment to transparency and integrity by all involved. In our ”Who Decides" Report, 100% of respondents reported having a written Conflict of Interest policy, and many funds reported, anecdotally, that they have moved through multiple policy versions as their peer review methods have evolved. ”

“ The Grantmaking team serves as an amplifier, facilitator, and connector of ideas, experimentation, and programs across the Wikimedia movement, and a critical entry point for the entire organization to learn from and serve multiple communities better. In 2013-2014, the Grantmaking team supported the growth of knowledge content and communities through more than 200 grants and other resources, in 66 countries, over 30 language Wikipedias and sister projects, working directly with over 300 community leaders and supporting over 4000 people across the global movement. ”

“ WMF Finances The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation is an "intermediary grantmaker" — a non-endowed organization that raises funds from foundations, individuals, and other sources and then gives funding to other organizations and individuals that work to advance the movement's mission. [20] The role of WMF Grantmaking is to invest a portion of the WMF's overall budget in a diverse constituency of stakeholders in the movement by finding and supporting projects and initiatives that further the WMF's mission and strategic vision. ”

“ We need capacity-building tools for the committee. We're now in a place where there's higher retention rates on committees, and more staff capacity to support committees, so we're getting into more proactive coaching. Capacity-building for committee members may also result in members moving from one committee to another. "We have started seeing a sort of pipeline of grant committee members from one program to another" as volunteers gain experience with the consensus-making process and other elements of their role, says Katy Love, Senior Program Officer of the Funds Dissemination Committee. ”

“ A Need for Comparative Review Participatory Grantmaking - also referred to as Peer Review Grantmaking, Community Funding, or Activist Funding - emerges from a practice of grassroots activism, with assumed belief that decision-making participation of people impacted by the fund's programs will guarantee that grants are allocated to those most deserving. ”

“ And, in order for the Foundation to fund programs in the Global South, there must be Wikipedia communities - individuals and organizations - to make proposals. "We're really being very careful about not going in and setting up our own programs and then hoping that the community will follow," says Love, "We're trying to fund indigenous efforts, but we must first find them and help seed their work, and then help to expand and grow it." ”

“ Respondents spoke about perceived fears that committee members would vote in their own interests, for example prioritizing groups in their own country above other applicants. Asaf Bartov shares that, "Unlike a lot of traditional grantmaking, there are significant ways in which the wider community has visibility, and therefore potentially accountability and oversight, on what gets done. We absolutely appreciate and depend on the fact that we have volunteers paying attention to what we fund." ”

“ In 2013-2014, the team was able to fund and facilitate experiments and established programs to individuals, small groups and organizations in over 60 countries around the world, focusing on at least 30 diverse Wikimedia language and issuebased communities. This culture of experimentation and innovation yields thoughtful risk-taking, a willingness to make mistakes, and meaningful learning. At the Wikimedia Foundation, all grant proposals, committee and staff assessments of proposals, and grant reports are public. ”

“ Wikimedia Foundation Grantmaking is also evolving to consciously challenge a perception that individuals will receive small grants, groups will receive medium grants, and the largest organizations will receive the largest grants. ”

“ As of June 2014, 54 community members were involved in the IEG, PEG, and APG committees. These committees are intentionally designed to be geographically and gender diverse, and include community members involved in different Wikimedia projects. In addition to committee members, grantmaking processes include open comment periods, and as of December 2014, over 1,500 unique Meta-wiki users have contributed by submitting requests, commenting, editing, etc. [6] Just as anyone can become a Wikipedia editor, anyone who edits Wikipedia can make a proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation. ”

“ Sengupta reflected that "Community change and cultural change are very, very difficult to do, and they happen on a different timeline than technological change." This point is illuminated by comments from Katy Love about the ways Wikimedia Foundation Grantmaking will need to adjust to engage with innovation coming out of the Global South. Love reports that Wikipedia use in the Global South tends to vary from other regions in terms of how people access Wikipedia, how the content is created, and the kind of communities being created. ”

“ With participation by a large number of people with diverse experiences, Participatory Grantmaking requires a shared understanding and clarity about all parts of the process, which in turn necessitates transparency, accessibility, and authenticity. ”

“ The Foundation seeks to support good ideas from anywhere in the movement including individuals, informal groups, and formal Wikimedia organizations. This flexibility and accessibility stands out as unique in our research. The opportunity to receive individual project or small group funding from an international Participatory Grantmaking Fund is unusual, and will likely generate attention, interest, and further research within the larger philanthropic field. ”

“ Since the FDC has a constantly shifting membership by design, gathering at Wikimania has created an opportunity for intensive orientation, building the committee's cohesion and their understanding of the FDC decision-making tools. "We've realized," says Katy Love, "that for this funding program, it is critical to invest money in bringing people face to face. It is often a challenge for grantmakers to justify such costs, because what you spend on bringing people together, you can't spend on grants. ”

“ Most critically, only 20% of Wikimedian contributions and contributors currently come from the Global South or 80% of the world, and only 1 in 10 contributors worldwide is projected to be female. For the largest free knowledge platform in the world, this implies a significant set of knowledge gaps on Wikipedia and its sister sites that the Grantmaking team is trying to address, in partnership with Wikimedia communities. ”

“ The Foundation faces complicated dynamics regarding how to distribute funds across so many different currencies and varied economic scales, and a range of grantees including individuals and small groups or organizations that often do not have nonprofit status or other formal registration. "We have to push against a mythology - among many people who don't live and breathe and work within the international grantmaking space - that giving small amounts of money to individuals is easy to do," says Anasuya Sengupta, "It's the hardest thing to do, the most expensive." ”

“ You start with the beginning of an idea, an experiment, then you realize that experiment. It becomes a fairly well designed project. Then it can scale, and you want to put a whole lot more resources behind it? ”

“ The organization needs to understand we are shaping the movement over time, not through carrot and stick approach, but through negotiation. It's hard to document that you're trying to drive a super tanker when you're not at the helm. We're all bending and shaping towards a common direction, based on shared values and trust. ”

“ APG is the only grants program designed to support full time staff. This change yielded an increase in accountability for the large amounts of funding supporting organizations in the movement, and capacity to shift towards increased funding in the Global South. ”

“ Wikimedia Foundation staff and board, Wikimedia volunteers, and Wikimedia organizations work together to find and fund innovative and impactful projects, and to evaluate and share the impact and the learning of the work being done across the Wikimedia movement. ”

“ Coaching and mentoring our grantee partners Deepening our support of emerging and Global South communities, and greater female contribution Recognizing differences in contexts and approaches Innovating and Experimenting Balancing accountability with simplicity and ease Seeking good outcomes and high impact How do these well-matched core qualities and design principles play out in the actual operations of Wikimedia Foundation Grantmaking programs?
Innovation, Flexibility, and Experimentation
"Encourage Innovation" is one of Wikimedia's Five Strategic Plan/Movement Goals, established in 2010. ”

“ Beginning with the open review period for proposals, conversations about which organizations and what amounts to approve for funding are happening in public. Because the movement is relatively well-networked, this means that commenters are often giving feedback to people they know, interact, and work with - and in this way, transparency requires creates mutual accountability between applicants, commenters, and committee members. ”

“ All of the WMF materials, and all of our staff interviews, were clear: WMF prioritizes addressing gaps in participation by women and people in the Global South. However, TLP researchers were surprised to find that in our survey of committee members, those concerns ranked at the bottom of the priorities list in survey responses. In our survey, 25% of respondents ranked "|ncrease participation in the Global South" to be a 1 or 2 on the scale of 1-5 with 5 being most important. For "Decrease the gender gap," 32% chose a 1 or 2. ”

“ Other capacity building support includes training or knowledge-sharing facilitation through offering face-to-face learning workshops and trainings, hosting learning-focused video conferences, connecting grantees to resources, mentoring grantees in programmatic expertise areas, and providing support with project evaluation. ”

“ The first staff hires had backgrounds that mirror what we heard from the majority of the interviewees in our research for "Who Decides" - staff join an organization because of their commitment to the movement, and then find themselves in grantmaking roles. ”

“ At its core, the WMF grantmaking programs are designed to support various constituencies in the movement to create impact that aligns with the movement's mission. The resulting grant application experience is one of meaningful, engaged partnership, a model which stands out as exemplary within the larger field of grantmaking. ”

“ Peer review has a long-standing precedent in the sciences and humanities, dating back to the 18th century, but it was only relatively recently adopted as a methodology for making grants to disenfranchised communities. ”

“ Also, both the Project and Event Grants program and the Individual Engagement Grants program give in ranges that scale very low—it would be hard to justify flying so many people to meet in person to give out a relatively low amount of grant funding. Beyond the cost of travel, the logistics of bringing a group together become less manageable with larger groups, and staff expressed concerns that some committee members would feel excluded because of not being able to attend in person. ”

“ Another argument for private feedback mechanisms: IEG Head Siko Bouterse reports that through this, "everyone has a turn and a say, it gets women to participate in a different way." Katy Love also argues that there is a need for protected space - as the FDC does have - for committee members to make decisions without feeling that everything that they say is going to be made public. One unusual and important step in the process for the APG applicants is that the staff publicly review the proposal and annual plan in the "staff proposal assessment." ”

“ This means targeted grantmaking priorities to increase the community of editors, the content, and the readership in alignment with WMF goals. Staff know that meeting the strategic goals will require significant cultural and structural shifts at Wikimedia Foundation and throughout the movement. Meeting the organizational goals will require expanding the community to welcome new contributors who don't share same the technical or cultural backgrounds of those already present, says Anasuya Sengupta, "in a way that continues to keep our values, and does not get us co-opted." ”

“ This change in approach marks the point at which WMF became a Participatory Grantmaking Fund. Bartov's own experience with Wikimedia outside of the US informed his desire to broaden the scope of input about proposals:
I wanted [input from] a broader community voice, people with experience in Wikipedia, people experienced in more than one language. I made sure the inaugural Grant Advisory Committee included people who spoke several different languages, who actively contribute to different language editions of Wikipedia, with different geographical bases. ”