Hi Lisa,

Thanks, I didn't spot that page (I was looking on diff and meta). These are big grants (>$150k/ea - total is $1.36 million), so I think it's really important that a decent amount of information about their application and plans is posted on meta, as per the internal Wikimedia movement grants processes. Ideally that would also involve some level of public commenting process by the community.

Thanks, Mike

On 8/9/21 16:41:38, Lisa Gruwell wrote:

Hi Mike-

Thanks for the questions.  The amounts of the grants and descriptions of them are in the press release: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-announc... https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-announces-first-grant-recipients-of-new-4-5-million-equity-fund/

We will be sure to add that information to Meta as well.

Best, Lisa

On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 8:06 AM Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.net mailto:email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the info, and congratulations to the grantees! I'm trying to
find out more information about the grants (US$ amount, details of what
the money will be spent on, and expected impact), but I can't see the
applications or further information on meta - could you point
towards it
please?

Thanks,
Mike

On 8/9/21 15:09:15, Lisa Gruwell wrote:
 > Hi everyone,
 >
 >
 > We are excited to share that we have chosen the first round of
grantees
 > for the Knowledge Equity Fund pilot. The Equity Fund Committee
selected
 > six grantees across the Middle East, Africa, and North and South
America
 > who focus on issues of access, education and equity within the
regions
 > they support. You can read an overview of the six grantees and their
 > work on Diff[1]. We’ve also added information about the grantees and
 > what’s next for this pilot program to our Meta page[2].
 >
 >
 > We are happy to welcome these new grantees, and look forward to
their
 > work as movement partners to support the free knowledge
ecosystem. Let
 > us know if you have questions on the Talk Page[3].
 >
 >
 > Thank you,
 >
 > Lisa Gruwell and the Equity Fund Committee
 >
 >
 > [1]
 >
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-knowledge-equity-fund/
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-knowledge-equity-fund/>

 >
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-knowledge-equity-fund/
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-knowledge-equity-fund/>>
 >
 > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund>
 > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund>>
 >
 > [3]
 >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1>

 >
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1>>
 >
 > --
 >
 >
 >
 > Lisa Seitz Gruwell
 >
 > Chief Advancement Officer
 >
 > Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>>
 >
 >
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l>
 > Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IQOLEVBEAE65IM6TSK3MLYRTMFUSANZE/
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IQOLEVBEAE65IM6TSK3MLYRTMFUSANZE/>
 > To unsubscribe send an email to
wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org>
 >

--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/

Adding to Andys observation of distribution being majority US centric projects. How we can learn if there isnt diverse cultural experiences, is there any information as to why the equity fund wasn't distributed across all regions?

On Thu, 9 Sept 2021 at 00:12, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

On Wed, 8 Sept 2021 at 15:09, Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

We are excited to share that we have chosen the first round of grantees

for

...

the Knowledge Equity Fund pilot. The Equity Fund Committee selected six grantees across the Middle East, Africa, and North and South America who focus on issues of access, education and equity within the regions they support.

The press release [1] mentioned further down the thread lists:

• Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), Jordan ($250,000):
• Borealis Philanthropy’s Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, United

States ($250,000)

• Howard University School of Law and the Institute for Intellectual

Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ), United States ($260,000):

• InternetLab, Brazil ($200,000)
• Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Ghana ($150,000)
• STEM en Route to Change (SeRCH) Foundation, United States ($250,000)

so three of the six recipients - receiving $760,000 of $1,360,000; or more than half - are in the United States.

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-announc...

-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 11:16 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:

Gnangarra, the first round of grantees with this pilot fund was based on suggestions from the Equity Fund Committee itself, as the Equity Fund was being created. However, we recognize that, for example, this round *does not include any grantees based in Asia*, and our goal is to concentrate in those regions in our next round of funding. [...]

Thanks, Nadee Gunasena Communications Wikimedia Foundation

For reference, Nadee, according to Wikipedia,

*Jordan ...*, officially the *Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan*,[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan#cite_note-8 is a country in Western Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Asia.

:)

Andreas

I find it hard to disagree with any of Yair's points.

Equally puzzling is why the 2019/2020 surplus was passed to Tides Advocacy in the first place, rather than, say, being added to the Wikimedia Endowment, or simply retained by the WMF, along with the rest of the year's substantial surplus.

Money was collected from donors who were told funds were urgently needed "to defend Wikipedia's independence". A substantial part of this money has now been dispensed to non-Wikimedia-affiliated organisations by a small, unelected group, via an opaque process that takes place behind closed doors.

Is this a fair summary?

Andreas

On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 6:21 AM Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:

I haven't yet had time to look over the grantee organizations, and the general issue of funding non-Wikimedia efforts has been fairly well-covered by statements from all four recently-elected trustees, so I'm just going to take a moment to bring up some points about the specific process used here:

• This was not participatory. Neither the community nor any

community-elected group were invited to look these over even to give advance feedback, much less make a decision.

• This was not transparent. Even after the fact, no notes were given on

what the WMF used to judge the options; no metrics, no pros-and-cons analysis of each, no general review. Nor was a list of rejected applicants made public, as far as I can see.

• COI concerns: Given the lack of any mentioned standards about this (I

haven't seen anything resembling the FDC's COI rules, and the WMF's general COI policy seems quite lacking for something like this), and given the problematic history this Fund in particular has in this area, I must ask: Did any staff, trustees, or committee members involved in this process have any personal associations to any of the grantee organizations, and if so, were they (/would they have been) required to recuse themselves from the relevant decisions?

• The Committee appears to have committed to sharing "terms of each grant

and updates on their progress" on Meta, per the FAQ. I don't see any links to the grant terms. Should we still expect these things?

(A few excerpts from answers given by the recently elected, at the Q&A on the topic of funding non-Wikimedia efforts in general: "I don’t think WF has any money to spare for any other causes irrespective of their worth. There’s an NGO or 100 for any cause, and WF cause is exclusively Wikimedia movement support." - Victoria "At this time, I'd be reluctant to start funding projects entirely unrelated to Wikimedia projects." - Pundit "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to support and empower the communities of the Wikimedia projects and the projects themselves. Among the many worthy goals that one can set, we choose to pursue this one. [...] The Wikimedia Foundation looks relatively big and well-resourced (in terms of money, people, etc.), and it is tempting to use some of them for other purposes. However, the truth is that the Wikimedia Foundation is not so big, and the resources are very limited. If we scatter them in too many different places, we will end up achieving nothing - and the Wikimedia projects will be the first to pay the price." - Laurentius I'm not going to try to clip Rosiestep's answer because I feel like a clipped version would risk being misrepresentative of her position. I recommend reading the full versions of all four (quite interesting and nuanced) answers at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidat... )

(There are, of course, more fundamental problems with the Fund, but let's leave that for another time.)

Thank you.

-- Yair Rand

‫בתאריך יום ד׳, 8 בספט׳ 2021 ב-10:09 מאת ‪Lisa Gruwell‬‏ <‪ lgruwell@wikimedia.org‬‏>:‬

...

Hi everyone,

We are excited to share that we have chosen the first round of grantees for the Knowledge Equity Fund pilot. The Equity Fund Committee selected six grantees across the Middle East, Africa, and North and South America who focus on issues of access, education and equity within the regions they support. You can read an overview of the six grantees and their work on Diff[1]. We’ve also added information about the grantees and what’s next for this pilot program to our Meta page[2].

We are happy to welcome these new grantees, and look forward to their work as movement partners to support the free knowledge ecosystem. Let us know if you have questions on the Talk Page[3].

Thank you,

Lisa Gruwell and the Equity Fund Committee

[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-k...

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&...

--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/

---

Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

---

Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Broadly agreeing with Gergő — our central challenge in this arena is that the Foundation's total investment in things outside of staffing its own growing org has historically been quite small — even though we recognize that WP itself needed well under $1M to take off, and that we need a wide range of innovative ideas - and recognition for the most creative community efforts - to have a chance of repeating that in other arenas. The amount we invest in new outside projects and regional affiliates was modest a decade ago, and since then has grown more slowly the internal budget.

So I was glad to see these funds earmarked last year, and the results seem healthy; at the same time the Foundation seems to be increasing community-overseen grantmaking, which is essential. The two are not mutually exclusive.

S.

🌍🌏🌎🌑

On Sat., Sep. 11, 2021, 3:14 p.m. Gergő Tisza, gtisza@gmail.com wrote:

One can argue about whether it was a good idea to give 15% of the Foundation's annual grant budget to largely-unrelated charities as a snap reaction to a wave of US political protests. But assuming it was - this happened in the middle of the pandemic, with the WMF operating on extremely restricted resources (with many staff working half-time, see [1]), and was trying to react to an unexpected event quickly, so I doubt it could have been done in a significantly more transparent or participatory manner. And the community was also stretched pretty thin, there were constant complaints of being consulted about too many things at the same time, with the movement strategy discussions, board election discussions, code of conduct discussions, branding discussions etc. going on, while people's personal lives were in disarray due to the lockdowns and other virus-related disruptions; some consultations had to be delayed, even the board elections had to be delayed. So I doubt the community would have had the capacity to practice oversight, had it been invited to.

That's not to say those we shouldn't ask for more transparency and participation *going forward*, as those circumstances are now largely behind us (at least in the Global North; not sure about community capacity in the countries which would be the most logical beneficiaries of an equity fund). But we should acknowledge the severe constraints the WMF was under a year ago.

(disclaimer: I work at the WMF, in a non-grantmaking-related position. All of the above is my personal opinion as a long-time community member.)

On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 10:21 PM Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:

...

I haven't yet had time to look over the grantee organizations, and the general issue of funding non-Wikimedia efforts has been fairly well-covered by statements from all four recently-elected trustees, so I'm just going to take a moment to bring up some points about the specific process used here:

• This was not participatory. Neither the community nor any

community-elected group were invited to look these over even to give advance feedback, much less make a decision.

• This was not transparent. Even after the fact, no notes were given on

what the WMF used to judge the options; no metrics, no pros-and-cons analysis of each, no general review. Nor was a list of rejected applicants made public, as far as I can see.

• COI concerns: Given the lack of any mentioned standards about this (I

haven't seen anything resembling the FDC's COI rules, and the WMF's general COI policy seems quite lacking for something like this), and given the problematic history this Fund in particular has in this area, I must ask: Did any staff, trustees, or committee members involved in this process have any personal associations to any of the grantee organizations, and if so, were they (/would they have been) required to recuse themselves from the relevant decisions?

• The Committee appears to have committed to sharing "terms of each grant

and updates on their progress" on Meta, per the FAQ. I don't see any links to the grant terms. Should we still expect these things?

(A few excerpts from answers given by the recently elected, at the Q&A on the topic of funding non-Wikimedia efforts in general: "I don’t think WF has any money to spare for any other causes irrespective of their worth. There’s an NGO or 100 for any cause, and WF cause is exclusively Wikimedia movement support." - Victoria "At this time, I'd be reluctant to start funding projects entirely unrelated to Wikimedia projects." - Pundit "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to support and empower the communities of the Wikimedia projects and the projects themselves. Among the many worthy goals that one can set, we choose to pursue this one. [...] The Wikimedia Foundation looks relatively big and well-resourced (in terms of money, people, etc.), and it is tempting to use some of them for other purposes. However, the truth is that the Wikimedia Foundation is not so big, and the resources are very limited. If we scatter them in too many different places, we will end up achieving nothing - and the Wikimedia projects will be the first to pay the price." - Laurentius I'm not going to try to clip Rosiestep's answer because I feel like a clipped version would risk being misrepresentative of her position. I recommend reading the full versions of all four (quite interesting and nuanced) answers at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidat... )

(There are, of course, more fundamental problems with the Fund, but let's leave that for another time.)

Thank you.

-- Yair Rand

‫בתאריך יום ד׳, 8 בספט׳ 2021 ב-10:09 מאת ‪Lisa Gruwell‬‏ <‪ lgruwell@wikimedia.org‬‏>:‬

...

Hi everyone,

We are excited to share that we have chosen the first round of grantees for the Knowledge Equity Fund pilot. The Equity Fund Committee selected six grantees across the Middle East, Africa, and North and South America who focus on issues of access, education and equity within the regions they support. You can read an overview of the six grantees and their work on Diff[1]. We’ve also added information about the grantees and what’s next for this pilot program to our Meta page[2].

We are happy to welcome these new grantees, and look forward to their work as movement partners to support the free knowledge ecosystem. Let us know if you have questions on the Talk Page[3].

Thank you,

Lisa Gruwell and the Equity Fund Committee

[1] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/08/welcome-to-the-first-grantees-of-the-k...

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&...

--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/

---

Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

---

Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

---

Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org