Zero-budget programs you could start tommorrow

What I Learned About 3 Zero-Funding Programs You Can Do. Link of session slides (Google slides)

I’m a volunteer with the Wikimedia Tanzania community, I contribute to Wikimedia Commons, Lingua Libre, Wikidata and Swahili Wikipedia. I attended Wikimania 2026 in Paris on a Tandem Scholarship funded by Wikimedia Deutschland. As someone engaging to grow our local community, I went into this workshop curious about what’s possible without a budget at all and left with more than I expected.

There are countless knowledge gaps out there that volunteers and communities can start closing today, with the knowledge we already have. And often, that work is exactly what opens doors to bigger platforms, partnerships, and more opportunities in the movement.

Asaf Bartov’s workshop had 3 parts but I will share about two first parts.  

1: A streamlined contribution campaign for complete newcomers.

The mechanic: recruit people with no editing background, and teach them the basics of contributing through structured data-entry on Wikidata, using tools like Cradle or Tabernacle. These tools enable rapid start, and real contributions a newcomer can make a genuine edit almost immediately, without first wading through wikitext syntax or policy pages. At the end of the campaign, you collect the names of everyone who’s interested in becoming an ongoing member of the community.

What shifted for me wasn’t the mechanics themselves. It was a message on one of the slides (FAQ)

Q: Are you saying we shouldn’t ask for grants?
A: No! By all means ask for grants! I am just reminding you there are always things you can do without any funding, too.

Q: Wouldn’t it hurt our chances to get a grant, if we are seen to do work without a budget?
A: No! On the contrary: a track record of effective work without funding would encourage a grant officer to empower you further with funding!

That reframed something, I’d been treating community growth as something that needs funding first, momentum second. This session flipped that order. The highest-leverage growth work often costs nothing but coordination — and doing it well can make the case for funding later, not the other way around.  

2: Documenting your government on Wikidata
the goal is to Improve your own country’s documentation of public contact points on Wikidata GovDirectory by network with government officials, encouraging them to keep the resources up-to-date.

If your government has a public commitment to accessibility, you can try contacting the people/agency specifically tasked with ensuring this accessibility, and suggest to them that GovDirectory is one good vehicle for achieving this accessibility.

You can start here: –

1. In Wikidata, go to [[WD:GD]]
2. Find your country
3. Run some queries, see if the information is current.
   For example, is the number and names of current ministries correct? Are there embassies missing? Social media accounts missing?
4. Fix all the things!