Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Follow-up events/Cluster E

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This page contains raw minutes from the discussion of the initiative cluster E: Funding for underrepresented communities, which took place on 29 January 2021. The minutes were cleaned up and merged from across different documents by the Strategy Support Team, and a summary of them can be found in the follow-up events report. The discussion followed a structured template (as shown below), which was also created by the Support Team.

Video summaries from the follow-up event discussions

Summary of room 1: Resources generation and allocation

Summary of room 2: Fundraising policy

Summary of room 3: Outreach and definition

Key indicator and objectives (WHAT)

What are the objectives of this initiative for the next 18 months?

• Define what is an “underrepresented” and “unrepresented” community
• Achieve equity, transparency and accountability in the financial structures of the movement.
• Provide capacities, supporting and communication (e.g. people in the).
• Allow smaller communities a better access to funds.
• Better understanding of the distribution of funds in different parts of the world.
• Identify local needs within the different structures or communities.

Fundraising policy

• Mapped out revenue generation potential.
  • Explore other groups in the Wikimedia movement to fundraise.
  • Analyze the legal perspectives.
  • Pilot couple of places as new fundraising locations
  • Make additional resourcing for fundraising a priority.
  • Include external expertise, because it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel
  • Comment: It would be good to have some pilots before writing the actual policy
• Mapping the needs of the communities
  • E.g. building capacity for fundraising
  • Making clear how much funding is available and what is necessary needs to be made clear

Outreach

• Collaboration with NGOs
• Connecting with other parts of Movement Strategy - skill development, hubs
• Skill development - new editors, new communities, newcomers

What are some anticipated obstacles or barriers to a successful implementation?

• Lack of infrastructure to assure the participation of new or currently underrepresented communities.
• Bureaucratic barriers.
• Bank transfers remain a barrier
• Technological marginalization / underrepresentation is a big barrier
  • Outreach, contribution
• If safety nets are too strong, then it is tricky to do fundraising.
• It is difficult to remove external barriers, it is easier with internal ones - providing resources for building local capacities can grow to provide better support.
• Building fundraising capacities will take time
• Global perception of Wikimedia as a wealthy network and Wikimedia Foundation as a wealthy NGO can significantly limit the potential of local fundraising

Implementation steps (HOW)

• Documentation
  • Thoroughly document where the funds are and where the grants are going to better understand the global situation.
• Research
  • Map the needs of communities in terms of funding.
  • Identify the local needs and how they are particularly different from one community to another.
• Capacity and growth
  • Co-elaborate growth paths with less represented communities, to assure their development in time.
  • Develop mentorship programs for local affiliates.
    • Bigger affiliates in each region can help support emerging communities around them due to geographical/cultural/linguistic similarities.
    • Bigger affiliates could also provide human resources and capacity, which are often more important.
    • Support or sponsorship from more experienced affiliates to smaller other communities in accessing funds.
  • Mitigate barriers for funding
    • Provide capacity building and sponsorship for growth. Rapid grants are very useful to organize projects but they are not a path to grow.
    • Consider the differences in tax laws. Many countries have restrictions on receiving foreign funds.
• Support
  • Provide technical support, e.g. laptops and internet access.
  • Hire multilingual staff or contributors to ensure understanding between the communities and the funding institution.
  • Provide human resources and capacities, which are also urgently needed.
  • Provide centralized staff assistance for smaller affiliates to help document and publicize their activities.
• Pilots
  • Build pilots/grants to support the needs of communities beyond quantitative results.
• Make affiliates conform to equal criteria.
  • Many people are part of so many affiliates at the same time, and they find it equally possible to ask for funds through any affiliate.
  • The field is not level in terms of accountability and requirements for everyone in the movement. Rules should be the same for everyone.
• Highlight what the Wikimedia communities are doing, in order to attract funds later.
  • One metric does not fit all. For example, in some countries a content donation is counted in the millions, in others perhaps a set of 10 photos that becomes free knowledge is a great achievement due to the more rigid copyright laws.
• Define what can be funding, and make sure not to overspend funds unnecessarily.
  • Keep in mind that chapters with relatively “big” funding may still need a lot of funds to accommodate their underprivileged/underserved communities.
• Simplify the grant application and reporting to make it easy for volunteers from underrepresented communities to apply for funding

Define what is an “underrepresented” and “unrepresented”.

• A toolkit that understand the intersectionality of “underrepresented” with qualitative and quantitative approaches to distributing resources
• Should be an open and fluid definition that can be updated.
• Potential meaning
  • Does “underrepresented” mean participation in the wiki movement compared to the country's population?
  • Either places where there are no users / groups OR communities with many editors, but little representation.
  • Underrepresentation is relative to content creation in relation to population using the language
  • Should be about the lack of representation in different roles in the movement (e.g. newcomers).
  • Suggestion to categorize in terms of: region, language and global (e.g. women, disabilities).
  • Categorize in terms of having technological or other barriers to participation.
• Underrepresented can also include contribution and consumption
• Use METRICS to measure what is underrepresentation
• Find out about every unrepresented and underrepresented communities and hear from them

Fundraising

• Map out where local fundraising could happen and then create a policy to distribute the funds in a more equitable A fundraising policy seems to be an additional barrier instead of being of support.
  • Where does the policy sit? Would it sit under the Global Council or Wikimedia Foundation? Who writes it? Who signs off on it?
  • Creating a policy that outlines rules regarding the generation of revenue it will create more dispersed allocation of resources
  • The barrier for doing fundraising work is not in policy or the barrier is elsewhere, e.g. not being able to use online projects or lacking fundraising skills.
  • Instead, provide an implementation point who is capable of supporting individuals, user groups and other community members.
  • Pilot with smaller fundraising experiment in the next 6 months rather than holding up for a major policy
    • The pilots should be conducted in underrepresented communities to understand what is working in these locations
    • Another thought: pilots privilege certain communities who take part in the experiment. This is a too cautious approach.
  • Questions
    • Are there policies in place to guide the processes and procedures used by affiliates who are allowed to fund raise?
    • Are there any clauses regarding local fundraising in the Affiliates' agreement signed between WMF and chapters/user groups/thematic orgs?
• Capacity building for fundraising
  • Integrity is really important. We need to ensure that people who raise funds need to have the capacity to do fundraising
  • Capacity is not exclusive to sharing skills, but also creating conditions that allow people to be a part of the process.
  • There are parts of the world where it is really difficult to fundraise
• Role of affiliates in fundraising
  • Create spaces where organizations can fundraise (there is potential in regional hubs)
• Further investment from the established organizations to support underrepresented communities
• Map out legal barriers.
  • Legal and policy exclusion need appeals and reviews - e.g. anti-terrorim
• Conduct stakeholder Needs Analysis (both capacity and funding needs)
• Explore longer-term solutions that may affect the fundraising policy

People (WHO)

Sources

• Notes from room 1: Resources generation and allocation.
• Notes from room 2: Fundraising policy.
• Notes from room 3: Outreach and definition.