Sharing more details about the Equity Fund - Wikimedia-l

9 Jun 2021

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to share more information about the Wikimedia Foundation’s
Knowledge Equity Fund.

The Equity Fund is a pilot initiative that came out of the commitment the
Foundation’s leadership team made in June 2020 [1] in the wake of global
protests against racial injustice. Our goal was to create a grant-making
fund with an explicit focus on addressing barriers to free knowledge
experienced by Black, indigenous and communities of color around the world.

This is a $4.5 million USD fund to address racial inequities that impact
the work of free knowledge. It was created to provide focused grants to
organizations that are advancing knowledge equity, one of two key pillars
of our 2030 strategic direction of becoming the essential infrastructure of
free knowledge. Specifically, the fund is meant to support organizations
working to address the racial injustices and barriers that prevent
participation in free knowledge.

We allocated funds for the Equity Fund at the end of the Foundation’s
fiscal year last June. [2] It took more time than we expected to share our
plans for this pilot program, as we’ve been navigating the operational and
logistical issues of creating a new type of fund. Over the past several
months since the Equity Fund was first announced, Foundation staff and
volunteers have been meeting to discuss the goals and the details of the
Equity Fund, and we finally have more to share.

The Equity Fund will be used to support local and international
organizations that don’t currently qualify for grants funding from the
Foundation, such as external organizations that can help advance our
mission and are not working directly on wikiprojects. We recognize that the
work of knowledge equity is work that we as a movement cannot do alone. Our
projects can only do so much when, for example, academic and mass media
representation of marginalized communities remains insufficient, which in
turn limits citations and primary sources for us to build from.  Through
Equity Fund investments, we wish to create an ecosystem of partners,
collaborators, and grantees working on knowledge equity that will benefit
the movement. This could include journalism projects to increase content
about underrepresented regions of the world, or scholarship and research
initiatives that are focused on expanding academic understanding of
structural barriers to knowledge and potential solutions.

The Equity Fund is separate from the grants that are available for
community groups and the ongoing Grants Relaunch [3]. It is a new pool of
funds that we can use to directly impact knowledge equity, and specifically
barriers due to race that prevent access and participation in free
knowledge.

We are currently working to identify the first grant recipients for the
Equity Fund.  The Meta page for the Equity Fund [4] includes more
information (the members of the Equity Fund Committee, the five specific
focus areas we will be investing in) and next steps. We are also currently
looking for recommendations on organizations for grants - you can visit
Meta or fill out this survey [5] if you have organizations that are already
doing this work and would be a good fit.

Lastly, we do want to emphasize that this is a pilot. There are a lot of
open questions that have been raised by community members that we are still
figuring out, on topics such as ensuring investment in global organizations
and inclusive definitions of racial equity. We welcome additional questions
as the project evolves from this early stage. We’re answering questions on
Meta, so please join us there. We will also be hosting Office Hours in the
coming week:

   -

   Monday, June 13 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
   -

   Monday, June 13 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva

This is an active step towards addressing the barriers that perpetuate
knowledge gaps on our projects and prevent participation in free knowledge.
We’re excited to try this new pilot and share our progress.

Thank you,

Lisa Gruwell, Janeen Uzzell, Tony Sebro and the Equity Fund Committee

[1]
https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-rac…

[2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html

[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

[5] https://forms.gle/gzqRH7yMFEGgZb4e6

-- 

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>