Grants:Programs/Hub Fund/North American Hub 2025

statusUnder review

Wikimedia Hub Fund

North American Hub 2025

idR-HF-2503-18559

start date2025-06-01

end date2026-05-31

budget (local currency)100000 USD

fiscalyear2024-25

organization (if applicable)WikiConference North America

contact(s)econterms

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Applicant information

Organization or group name. (required): WikiConference North America

Provide your main Wikimedia Username. (required): econterms

Have you contacted the Wikimedia Foundation Hub team before applying? (required): Yes

Is your group legally registered in your country? (required)

Yes

Do you have a fiscal sponsor?: Yes

Fiscal organization name.: N/A

Main proposal

1. State the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required): North American Hub 2025

2. Proposed start date. (required): 2025-06-01

3. Proposed end date. (required): 2026-05-31

4. Where will this proposal be implemented? Provide the region or country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal. (required): US and Canada mainly, probably with partnerships in Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central America.

5. Does your group have a theory of change for your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (optional): Yes; Goal: We want to support and nurture Wikimedia activities in areas where there is no active chapter.

Grow useful knowledge: If we develop the practices of working across the region we will also develop practices that work, and common knowledge about what works. Demonstrate forward motion, and effectiveness: Apart from knowledge, if our hub is DOING something, and Wikimedians observe that it is effectively supporting diverse projects, it will be a reason to use the hub for publicity, to partner with it, and to feel good about it. Attempt a cost-effective approach: We cannot hire all the capabilities we need; we believe we must have both volunteer capability and energy and staff capability to sustain our capabilities. So we define authority and legitimacy as coming from the editors -- from the "community" -- from the user groups -- although this is not firmly defined. And we fund some staff, but not much; mainly the chapters will carry the ongoing load. We can imagine a more-funded and formalized Hub in the future, but right now we will try a decentralized hybrid version.

6. Why do you believe your group is best positioned to drive this hub initiative? (required)

We have a tentative agreement among several chapters and user groups in this region. For a list, see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:North_American_Wikimedians/Hub_founding

7. Do you have a strategic plan that can help us understand your proposal? If your proposal relates to piloting a hub, share your piloting plan. If your proposal relates to research, share your research plan. (required): Yes; https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North_American_Hub_Research_Project/Final_report

8. Describe the specific activities that will be carried out during this project. If your proposal is related to piloting a hub, describe the services you plan to offer and include how you are drawing on community consultation and needs assessments to define your activities. (required)

1. Offer small grants offered across the region, in amounts of $100-$1,000. Submissions will be evaluated by a team across the region, backed with participation by three chapters: WM Canada, WM NY, and WM DC. We expect these grants to support: editathons, meetups, salons, photography events, and other events, e.g. with location and food expenses; GLAM partnerships; small software development projects; education toward Internet literacy; and hopefully other creative proposals. We expect to have rolling applications, and rolling acceptance/rejections/revisions. We estimate these to be 60% of grant costs.

2. Development of improved tools to draft subnational CentralNotice banners, as well as demographic and interest targeting by WikiProject. The first will make it easier to target smaller areas of a region (e.g. Southern California, or a bounding box/circle centered on Vancouver), an approach that has shown great value recently, but that currently consumes many hours of volunteer time and requires some coding. The second has the transformative potential to target those interested in underrepresented topics at scale, e.g. readers of articles under WikiProjects like African diaspora and Visual arts, to reach new participants for Black Lunch Table virtual or in-person edit-a-thons. We are inspired by an example: Wiki Club Toronto was recently revived by publicity through a CentralNotice banner. We would like to hold more multi-events (or multi-local) in which multiple communities across North America host events in their local areas centred on a single theme or occasion, like Wikipedia Day. Estimated 20% of project costs.

3. Administrative support for these activities, which should help us get other things done that are not specifically funded (20% of cost) This will include open office hours for people proposing or executing on small grants projects or other Hub activites. We anticipate that Chelsea, Peter, and Ariel among others can host these. These funded joint activities and services will, we hope, help us sustain our network to run the WikiConference North America, which is fully funded separately, and our monthly NARWHAL meetings which are a direct mechanism to reach and include Wikimedians who are not members of anything and do not wish to join. There is more to do that is not costly and is not directly tied to grant funds. There is support for various task forces to, e.g., (a) pay attention to Native American issues and languages (which are thinly spread out across our countries, and (b) develop expertise in how to arrange US and Canadian visas for our common conferences and events, and (c) translate across languages and support Spanish editing and Hispanics in the US and Canada. And, the hub is somewhat too amorphous; we need to define membership a little more sharply, and to gather more user groups if possible. User groups do not easily make formal decisions in our context. Do they need to? We will work it out by experience.

9. Did you involve communities during the drafting of this proposal? Share which specific communities you involved, the process you used to involve them, and how they will participate in this proposal. (required)

The proposal is simplified from the implementation plan from the research cited above, and from ongoing North American Wikimedian meetings, Derives from research project (link) and online conversations, e.g. on Telegram.

The most important recommendation, throughout, from interviews and focus groups, was to offer small/rapid grants to Wikimedian mainly to improve online content and to enable events to be held away from the active chapter people. We have taken too long to start this. The "jury" (or team or committee) which judges proposals will include joint chapter participation and presumably volunteers across the continent.

The 3 chapters are well aligned on our proposed activities and have good working relations from the North American conference.

10. Are you in communication with other initiatives or groups that either support similar communities or offer similar services to the ones in your proposal? Provide information about any initiatives, affiliates, and/or hubs that have the potential to duplicate or overlap with your proposal. (required)

We are in communication with other such efforts by many means: the Movement Strategy process and meetings; the Berlin conferences, Hub meetings with Jessica Stephenson; the North American conference, the WikiFranca partnership, the joint meetings of Executive Directors of chapters, the joint meetings of chairpersons of chapters. As part of the research effort cited above, Wikimedia DC people interviewed Hub organizers around the world (CEE, ESEAP, East Africa) and large chapter managers (WMUK).

The ongoing North American conference overlaps with this proposal in that it addresses a similar audience. It may be helpful to merge these efforts into the conference user group or vice versa, but we did not find it to be practical to do so now.

11. Who is your primary audience(s)? List the communities, affiliates, and groups. (required)

North American Wikimedians and potential Wikimedians. The official participants at this point are three chapters (asking for these funds) and seven user groups. We expect that list to expand IF we show effective forward motion to achieving the free-knowledge mission.

For a list of the user groups, see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:North_American_Wikimedians/Hub_founding

12. If your proposal relates to piloting a hub, share the governance structure you plan to establish. If this governance structure is not yet in place, share how you are making decisions in the interim. (optional)

Interim decisions about this grant will be made by the three chapters together. Wikimedia DC as de facto fiscal sponsor will hold the money and has a part-time accountant and a separate account for Hub funds.Decisions about the hub more generally, e.g. its governance, its control over the name "North American hub", etc, will have to be made boldly by representative individuals and/or by "votes" of the user groups together; this is too amorphous and ill-defined for the long run probably, but we have difficulty doing better right now. If we start ,we believe there will be a lot of support overall.

The interim structure is for chapters and user groups to propose what they want to do and gain “hub” support by getting the affiliates in the hub to support it. For now, we don’t plan more governance for that. We want, but do not have, a formal agreement amongst the user groups, nor do we have specified roles for individuals who aren’t in chapters, or for large supportive groups which are not WMF affiliates, such as WikiEdu, WikiMed, MediaWiki Stakeholders, thematic user groups, Hacks/Hackers, or Equiis.
This hub grant would not focus on new governance but would be focused on content and practical developments. We anticipate volunteers and chapter staff working out some forward steps in governance.

13. Describe your team. (required)

Peter and Ariel from WMDC. Richard and Pacita from WMNYC. Louis and Chelsea from WMCA. We expect to have helpful organizers from user groups who have signed up with an interest in the Hub. And we requested funding for part time administrative support, probably from other people.

14. Upload a timeline of activities or provide a link to it. Timeline (operational calendar) is for your programs and activities. (required)

Please see attached spreadsheet in tab "Time line / Gantt chart"

NA Hub Grant Proposal 2025.xlsx

15. How do you intend to keep communities updated on the progress and outcomes of the project? Share your communication plans. (required)

Report at wikimania (in Aug) on Hub activities

Report on chapter web sites the ongoing progress of small grants given out

Report at the WikiConference North American (in Oct) and gather interest and critiques and suggestions.

Report in writing in the WCNA report which will be due in Jan 2026, presumably on the WCNA wiki site and in a grants report.

Report to WMF Grants staff after the conclusion of this year-long grant next summer.

16. If your activities include community discussions, what is your plan for ensuring that the conversations are productive, inclusive, and safe? Provide a link to a Friendly Space Policy or UCoC that will be implemented to support these discussions. (optional)

[1] -- intended for the conference, but applicable generally to our common activities

17. Are there any other details you would like to share? Consider providing rationale, research or community discussion outputs, and any other similar information that will give more context on your proposed project. You can also upload any additional documents in the section below. (optional)

Metrics

18. Share quantitative and/or qualitative metrics that you plan to measure in order to showcase the impact of your activities. (required)

Please see attached spreadsheet (or google link)in tab "Metrics"

Budget

19. Your local currency. (required): USD

20. What is the requested amount in your local currency? (required): 100000 USD

21. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required): Yes

21.1. How many paid staff members and contractors do you plan to cover through the Hub Fund? (required)

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period as well as their work status (full-time/part-time, indefinite/fixed). If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms (period of work).

1/2 of a full-time-employee, split among the software development effort, and the administrative work to manage and support small grants. The work will be done both by the chapters' existing staff, and by a software developer, presumably on contract.

22. Provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. (required)


Budget category	Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs	20000 USD
Operational costs	80000 USD
Programmatic costs	20000 USD

23. Upload your detailed budget or provide a link to it. (required)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kJfgl8vcvtUA2TNfLZVh-ho_l7m1pUtRfNa6Zwb_CQM/edit?pli=1&gid=593870225#gid=593870225

By submitting your proposal and funding request you agree with the Application Privacy Statement and Universal Code of Conduct

We/I have read and agree:

Yes

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