Launch of the Wikimedia Alliances Fund

The Wikimedia Foundation and the Community Resources team is excited to announce the launch of the Wikimedia Alliances Fund. The Fund is a new program focused on supporting organizations that share our values to amplify one another’s work on free knowledge in underrepresented regions. 

Our vision and movement strategic direction to support free knowledge work globally is ambitious and one that we will not achieve alone. We hope this new fund provides more opportunity for Wikimedian communities to connect with allies in the wider open movement to further our common goals. 

The overall funding approach of Wikimedia Foundation is to provide increased support and flexibility for Wikimedians with the new Wikimedia Community Fund . The Wikimedia Alliances Fund provides resources for mission-aligned organisations working with underrepresented communities and historically marginalized communities in the movement. This year the Wikimedia Alliances Fund is 6% of the total grants budget. 87% of the allocated resources goes to the Wikimedia Community Fund and 7% is for Wikimedia Research & Technology Fund.

These resources will play an important role in developing strategies from mission-aligned organizations and groups to build:

• communities of support
• increase the skills of contributors, and editors
• bring in more content
• increase awareness
• skill-building initiatives as per the local requirement
• advocacy efforts
• strategic planning
• developing stable partnerships

The Wikimedia Alliances Fund will offer: 

• Rapid funds for activities that are time bound and have a clear collaboration with the local Wikimedia communities. Eg: edit-a-thons, hack-a-thons, meet-ups, celebrations, campaigns. 
• Programmatic support can be towards furthering ongoing activities, programs, initiatives. It can also be used to ideate, incubate or build new systems of collaboration with the free knowledge ecosystem. Overhead expenses of up to 30% will be allowed to support the stability of partner organizations. 

Applications submitted to the Wikimedia Alliances Fund will be reviewed and approved by the Regional Fund Committees. The broader Wikimedia community will have a chance to review them too. Regional Fund Committee members will receive support from the Regional and Alliance Fund Program Officers during the review process. Program proposals will be awarded for one year. Fund recipients can renew their funding if they fulfill their objectives and upon recommendation of the Regional Fund Committees. 

Wikimedia Alliances Fund will be open during the following period: 

• Round 1: November – December 2021 
• Round 2: April – May 2022

It is recommended that organisations applying for the Wikimedia Alliances Fund have a local wiki community advisor who can support in the development and implementation of the proposal. The Community Resources Team will be offering the following support to applicants during the proposal development process:

• Provide background and context overview of local Wikimedia communities 
• Drafting and revision of application
• Support in using Wikimedia platforms and communication channels, e.g. Meta-Wiki, mailing lists for reporting, documentation and outreach
• Introductions to possible community contacts for collaboration

The Community Resources team will be organising two conversations with interested mission-aligned organisations, Wikimedia community members and other interested parties to discuss more about the Wikimedia Alliances Fund. 

Conversation 1: 27 October 2021 13:00 UTC

Conversation 2: 28 October 2021 04:00 UTC

For more details about the Wikimedia Alliances Fund check out Meta, FAQ and ask questions on our talk page. You can reach out to the Program Officer at alliances_fund@wikimedia.org, or for more general questions email communityresources@wikimedia.org.

We are so excited about this next phase of the Wikimedia Foundation Fund strategy implementation. Thank you to all of the people who have collaborated. 

Thank you,
Kassia Echavarri-Queen on behalf of the Community Resources Team