Content Partnerships Hub enters pilot phase and reopens its Helpdesk

The Content Partnerships Hub has now entered a new pilot phase and is pleased to announce the relaunching of its Helpdesk service. This new phase is made possible through the Wikimedia Foundation Hub Grant, which supports the Hub in consolidating its foundations, refining its scope, and strengthening its capacity to serve Wikimedia affiliates and partners across the movement.

Originally launched in 2022, the Helpdesk builds on several years of practical experience supporting complex content partnerships. The current pilot phase focuses on putting the basics in place: clarifying what the Helpdesk offers, how it works, and how affiliates and partners can most effectively engage with it. This phase emphasizes learning-by-doing, shared reflection, and gradual scaling based on real needs from the movement.

What is the Content Partnerships Hub?

The Content Partnerships Hub is a Wikimedia movement initiative designed to support affiliates and communities working with cultural, educational, scientific, and intergovernmental partners. Its purpose is to strengthen the movement’s ability to build, manage, and sustain content partnerships that contribute high-quality, open knowledge to Wikimedia projects.

Our main objective as a Hub is to be able to provide assistance and expertise in terms of coordination, documentation, and access to expertise across affiliates. It is not a centralized authority, but a collaborative space where knowledge, tools, and experience are pooled for collective benefit.

What is the Helpdesk?

The Helpdesk is the Hub’s hands-on support service. It serves as a first point of contact for affiliates, user groups, WikiProjects, and external organizations that are planning or navigating content partnerships.

The Helpdesk doesn’t take over projects or produce content for others. Instead, it works alongside requesters to:

• Clarify goals and challenges,
• Identify possible approaches and risks,
• Connect with relevant expertise across the movement,
• Explore tools, workflows, and precedents,
• Map out realistic next steps.

This support is especially valuable for projects that are experimental, cross-regional, or do not fit neatly into existing templates or programs.

What the Helpdesk can support

The Helpdesk can assist if you are:

• Planning a partnership with a GLAM, academic, scientific, or intergovernmental organization,
• Developing new data-driven or multimedia workflows for Wikimedia projects,
• Exploring innovative collaboration models or governance questions,
• Facing administrative, technical, or organizational uncertainty in a partnership context.

The technical support offered by the Helpdesk is provided through guidance and collaboration, backed by the Hub network’s experience and tools.

What we have done so far

Active since 2022, the Helpdesk has supported a range of initiatives across regions and thematic areas. In recent years, it has facilitated connections between Wikimedia groups and external partner organizations, supported the co-creation of open knowledge content, and contributed to the development of data management systems and multimedia workflows for projects such as Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.¹

And, as we move into this pilot phase, we are bringing together what we’ve learned so far and turning it into clearer processes, better documentation, and shared ways of working, so the support we offer is more easier to reuse in case of potential future projects.

What’s next: the pilot phase

During this pilot phase, the Helpdesk aims to establish itself as a reliable, movement-wide reference point for content partnerships. The focus is on three core pillars:

• Providing tailored guidance for complex or experimental projects,
• Building communities of practice through documentation and capacity-building,
• Capturing and sharing collective knowledge across affiliates.

The goal is to enable affiliates, user groups, and partners to act with greater confidence and autonomy when developing partnerships.

Monthly Helpdesk drop-in hour

To make the Helpdesk more accessible, we host a monthly one-hour drop-in session on the last Thursday of each month. Affiliates and external partners can book a slot via the following link: https://calendar.app.google/egrx9uUvjtrqLEdu5

These sessions are open to early-stage ideas as well as ongoing projects that have encountered a challenge or crossroads.

Why this matters

Due to our own nature, the Wikimedia movement thrives when communities collaborate, experiment, and share lessons learned. And is in these moments when the Helpdesk aims to strengthen this capacity by offering a single, accessible gateway to support, helping clarify processes, bridge expertise, and coach partners through unfamiliar or novel scenarios.

We invite all Wikimedia affiliates, user groups, WikiProjects, and external organizations interested in collaborating with the movement to make use of this service during its pilot phase, whether by submitting support requests or by reaching out to explore how you can collaborate with the Hub.

Governance and collaboration

The Content Partnerships Hub is coordinated by Wikimedia Sverige as the lead affiliate. What makes the Hub work, though, is its collaborative model: it’s built and run together with a global network of Wikimedia affiliates and partners, including AvoinGLAM, Open Knowledge Initiatives IIIT Hyderabad (formerly A2K), Wiki In Africa, Wikimedia Brasil, Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia UK, and the Wikimedians of Singapore User Group.

This distributed model ensures that the Hub reflects diverse regional perspectives and experiences, and remains grounded in the needs of the wider movement.

We look forward to advancing free knowledge together.

For more information, please contact:

Luis Carrasco, General Secretary, Helpdesk, Content Partnerships Hub | luis[dot]carrasco[at]wikimedia[dot]se / helpdesk[at]wikimedia[dot]se

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1. For more information on requests received by the Helpdesk, visit https://lookerstudio.google.com/s/ooLo2QS2IrA ↩︎