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Hi all,
In my most recent email
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Officer/Updates/February_2024_Update>
in late February, I shared themes from an initiative called Talking: 2024
in which Foundation leadership, staff, and Trustees spoke with many of you
in conversations intended to shape our planning process. Earlier today, the
Wikimedia Foundation published the draft Annual Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025>
for the upcoming 2024-2025 fiscal year.
This year’s Annual Plan comes at a time of growing uncertainty, volatility
and complexity for the world and for the Wikimedia movement. Globally, the
role of trusted information online is increasingly important and more under
threat than ever before. Organizations and online platforms must navigate a
changing internet that is more polarized and fragmented. New ways of
searching for information, including chat-based search, are gaining
traction. The ease of creating AI machine-generated content creates both
opportunity and risk for Wikimedia’s role as a human-led, tech-enabled
knowledge system, as well as for Wikimedia’s financial model.
A few observations about this year’s draft Annual Plan:
-
2030 Strategy: As we face into these headwinds, the Foundation’s annual
and multi-year planning continues to be guided by the movement’s 2030
Strategic Direction. Changes in the world around us make this direction
more relevant than ever. A call to become the essential infrastructure of
the ecosystem of free knowledge is more than just an inspirational
statement – it is a mandate to continually assess the sustainability of our
projects and organizations in response to the shifting landscape around us.
-
Multi-year to multigenerational planning: And we must plan even further
ahead. Looking beyond 2030 is vital to our mission, which requires the
Foundation to help “make and keep useful information … available on the
internet free of charge, in perpetuity.” The shift from a link-based
search architecture – which has served our projects and financial model
well up to this point – to a chat-based search architecture is in its
early days but is likely here to stay. We believe this is part of a
generational shift in how people create and consume information online.
What emerges is a strategic paradox: Wikimedia projects are becoming more
vital to the knowledge infrastructure of the internet while
simultaneously becoming less visible to internet users. To ensure the
success of the Wikimedia projects into the future, we must consider a
multigenerational approach across key areas of future planning.
-
Trends: As we did last year, the Foundation started planning by asking,
“What does the world need from us and the Wikimedia projects now?” We
conducted research into external trends that are impacting our work,
including a larger focus on immediate, bite-sized information; increasing
presence of incentives, financial and otherwise, to attract contributors to
some platforms; legal and regulatory threats, including platform
regulations that can be weaponized against us and our contributors, as well
as opportunities to positively advance the public interest; and issues of
content veracity and the effect of AI on the information ecosystem.
-
Technology support: This year’s plan also remains focused on the
central importance of technology, given the Foundation’s role as platform
provider for volunteers and readers around the world. The Foundation’s
Product & Technology department shared their objectives last month before
the full plan was ready, to signal how their priorities for the coming year
are developing and invite feedback and questions. At a high level, our work
for the coming year is focused on improving user experience on Wikimedia
projects, providing the ongoing maintenance needed to support a top 10
global website and making future-focused investments to meet a changing
internet.
-
Consistent goals, iterative work: The four overarching goals of this
year’s plan also remain consistent with last year’s (Infrastructure,
Equity, Safety & Integrity, and Effectiveness), while the work and
deliverables within each goal iterate on the progress made in the current
year. Together, the four goals are a blueprint to improve the
technology that makes Wikimedia projects possible, support and enable our
global communities, protect our values, and do so effectively and
efficiently over the coming year.
-
Finances and budget: The plan also includes details about the
Foundation’s financial model and our budget. The Foundation’s budget
reflects ongoing trade-offs, as we see a slowing rate of new revenue
growth. To meet this new reality, the Foundation has slowed its growth
significantly over the past two years and made reductions in staffing and
expenses last year. Since 2022, funding to other movement entities has
outpaced the Foundation's growth rate, which remains the case for this
year’s plan.
Finally, this draft plan arrives during community conversations about a
proposed Movement Charter, which will undergo a community vote in June
2024. In alignment with the principles of subsidiarity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Subsidiarity_&_Self-Management>
and efficiency
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Efficiency>,
the Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to sharing and transferring
responsibilities that other Wikimedia organizations are better equipped to
own.
The Foundation has benefited from regular and direct engagement with the
Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), and conversations with many
stakeholders worldwide to inform and shape its perspectives on future
responsibilities
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Movement_Charter&oldid=26310743#Wikimedia_Foundation_perspectives_on_the_Global_Council>.
The Board of Trustees and leadership also discussed different scenarios,
including with the MCDC, to assess the readiness of the Foundation to make
changes to the status quo from now – and independently of the ratification
results. We are already preparing these functions to be overseen jointly
with volunteers as sustained change takes time, and to do it well,
structural changes will need to begin with careful deliberation from now:
-
Participatory resource allocation: In 2020, we created the Regional
Funds Committees <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Committees> to
advise the Foundation on regional resource allocation and make funding
decisions about community grants. This year, we will ask the committees to
partner with the Foundation to advise on regional allocations, bringing us
closer to participatory resource allocation and ensuring greater equity in
grants decision making.
-
A pilot Product and Technology Advisory Council: This concept builds on
the existing Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Product_and_Technology_Committee>
and follows the Technology Council's movement strategy initiative. This
year, we will try out a pilot to review and advise the Wikimedia
Foundation's Product and technology work.
-
Improved Affiliate Strategy: In the previous year, the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustee liaisons worked with the Affiliations
Committee, affiliates, and Foundation staff to improve the Wikimedia
Foundation Affiliate Strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Affiliates_Strategy/Review>.
This year, we will take forward the learnings and answer some key questions
from the process.
The narrative long-form draft Annual Plan is a lengthy 23,000 words to
ensure that it can serve as a comprehensive overview and also source
material for other presentations and shorter summaries. We invite your
input and questions over the coming weeks in whatever form you prefer:
on-wiki on Meta, project village pumps, and by joining virtual community
calls hosted by communities worldwide.
Thank you,
Maryana
Maryana Iskander
Wikimedia Foundation CEO