Grants:Principles

The WMF is committed to a community-led Funds Dissemination Committee to make movement-wide decisions about how to allocate funds to major programs. It is also committed to a staff-led grants program to provide funds to individual projects.

Principles for prioritizing projects:

Protect the core

Core activities that ensure the continuity of the projects need to be funded first.

Assess impact

Funds should be distributed in ways that support mission work, agnostic with regard to where the money was raised.

Promote transparency and stability

Decisions about funds distribution must be made transparently, in accordance with published guidelines and processes. The model must enable each entity to carry out financial planning to support efforts to be sustainable.

Support decentralized activity

Funds must be distributed in ways that support decentralized programmatic activities for furthering our mission.

Promote responsibility and accountability

Funds must be distributed in ways that enable the Wikimedia movement to confidently assure donors that their donations will be safeguarded appropriately, and that spending will be in line with our mission and with the messages used to attract donors.

Be collaborative and open

Funds must be distributed in ways that are collaborative and open, and which respect the diverse and international nature of the Wikimedia movement.