Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Whose Knowledge? 2022-2023

A few follow-up questions

@Aadele and Anasuyas:

Hello. Could you please answer the following clarification question to assist with review:

Thank you so much for these questions and our conversation by voice in which we could explain our work further to the Committee, Matthewvetter! We're leaving our responses by text here as well, for wider understanding and accountability to the community. Apologies for the delay as the team recovered from ill health and other crises of the zeitgeist.

• Could you provide a breakdown of how funds will be distributed outside the U.S., given the mission/focus of Whose Knowledge on centering non-western/Global South participation?

Other than 2 team members based in the United States, the Whose Knowledge? (WK?) team is based elsewhere in the world (in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, currently), and all of us are BIPOC women from or in the Global South. The communities we serve are also primarily in the Global South. Therefore, most of our funds get distributed outside the U.S. Any work within the United States also focuses on those who are marginalised within the U.S. as well, including BIPOC communities.

• Can you explain what emphasis will be given to engage and increase participation of users in non-wester/Global South regions as it relates to "key strategies" section in the proposal?

As mentioned above, most of our work focuses on non-Western/Global South communities and regions, including in all three key strategy areas mentioned in our proposal. From our individual advisors and community members, to the organisations and networks we work with, we serve Global South and other marginalized communities, including those who hold marginalized systems of knowledge in the Global North.

As an example, we recently held a Decolonizing the Internet's Structured Data event as a pre- WikidataCon event, and the participants were mostly female-identifying (71%), in/from the Global South (66%), and indigenous/black/people of color(s) (82%) in origin.

Thanks!

Matthewvetter (talk) 21:57, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your interest and thoughtfulness in reviewing our proposal. Please let us know if you have any further questions or clarifications. Anasuyas (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Scope and Budget details

Hi @Aadele and Anasuyas:, I'm reviewing your proposal and was hoping you could clarify the scope of what you're asking support for. You've labelled your proposal as "Decolonizing Wikipedia," so I'm not sure if you're only asking for support for the Decolonizing Wikipedia project. I can see that you have shared info about three different projects, one of which is Decolonizing Wikipedia. Related to this, I'm a little confused about how your metrics break down across those three projects, or if they're only for the Decolonizing Wikipedia project.

It also looks like you expect your budget to be supported by funding in addition to the Wikimedia Community Fund; could you share what other funding sources you expect and/or have confirmed?

Thanks so much for your help! Perimeander (talk) 18:42, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

As I said above, thank you so much for these questions and our conversation by voice in which we could explain our work further to the Committee, Perimeander! We're leaving our responses by text here as well, for wider understanding and accountability to the community. Apologies for the delay as the team recovered from ill health and other crises of the zeitgeist.

Thank you for catching our mistake at labelling the proposal "Decolonizing Wikipedia", when it should have been labelled "Whose Knowledge? 2022-23" (thank you too, to I_JethroBT_(WMF) for moving the page)! As a general support grant proposal, our proposal covers all three programmatic areas or key strategies. In terms of the metrics, we followed our past process of focusing on the metrics that are specifically Wikimedia-related (i.e. the Decolonizing Wikipedia strategy), since the metrics for the Archives and Languages work cannot be measured through Wikimedia projects. However, as our work in these areas expands, it's possible that they will have direct measurable impact on Wikimedia projects, so we take your comment seriously, and will update the metrics if it seems appropriate over the next year.

As we mentioned by voice, we are currently supported by the Mellon Foundation, as well the Open Society Foundations. We also mentioned a couple of potential new funding sources in our conversation, but it may be premature to mention them here before they're confirmed.

Gratitude again for your interest and thoughtfulness in reviewing our proposal! Anasuyas (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 168,878 USD

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of 168,878 USD for your first year, with a grant term starting 1 January 2022 and ending 31 December 2023.

The committee is pleased to continue supporting the work Whose Knowledge? over the next two years. The organization’s myriad efforts to support more peoples and forms of cultural knowledge not yet integrated in and structurally pushed out of the Wikimedia movement demonstrates the organization’s values in service of communities that have been historically marginalized. As the organization aptly describes, these very communities make up the majority of the world, and yet we have scarcely begun to embrace them in this open movement. Whose Knowledge is well-positioned to lead this work, and the committee is excited to support the movement transformations that could enable marginalized communities to share their knowledge and stories.

The committee sees a number of strengths in the organizational work of Whose Knowledge? The proposed work to decolonize digital archive spaces to enable participation by communities who have been marginalized from these projects and institutions is innovative and has clear connections with your mission and Movement Strategy principles. The committee also appreciate the degree to which the organization has worked to evaluate and secure several revenue sources to support their work.

In its future work, the committee recommends that Whose Knowledge? more clearly describe its distribution of spending within the U.S. where it is based, and outside of the U.S. to the communities it supports, especially given that the organzation’s scope of work is heavily invested in supporting communities outside of the region. The committee also appreciates the organization’s revisions to the proposal to better clarify distinctions between its programs, the overall mission of the organization, and how funding from the Foundation is supporting these different initiatives.

We appreciate your effort on the proposal and look forward to working with you in solidarity to support important and fundamental transformations in the Wikimedia movement. On behalf of the committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much I JethroBT (WMF)! Gratitude to you, the members of the committee, and the rest of the WMF team. We appreciate the thoughtfulness with which you have all held the review process, and the strengths you've seen in our work. We're also grateful for the suggestions on how to improve the way we describe our spending, and will make sure of it in the future. We're very much looking forward to the work ahead with all of you, and all our friends and partners in the Wikimedia movement and beyond! Anasuyas (talk) 16:15, 16 December 2021 (UTC)