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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
[5] https://forms.gle/gzqRH7yMFEGgZb4e6
Thank you Lisa, Janeen, Tony and the Equity Fund Committee for working on this pilot project.
Some of the major barriers preventing more people from joining our movement are barriers of power and privilege. In many parts of the world, that correlates with histories of racial discrimination and inequality. The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation supported this idea as a way for us as a Movement, not only an organisation, to directly address these obstacles and hopefully bring new partners and newcomers into our movement.
As a Wikipedian I know that having good reliable sources is crucial. As a Ukrainian Wikipedia volunteer I know that sometimes these good reliable sources are just manuscripts collecting dust in some drawers, as people who do research do not always get the support they need, so they do not publish. And thus we editors cannot use those sources. And I am positive my experience is not unique. I imagine that in some countries and communities this can be even harder because of the obstacles mentioned above.
I hope that through this pilot program, Wikimedia can support work to improve access to knowledge where the need is great. And I am sure we (collectively) will learn a lot while trying something new, and that would influence how we pursue these issues in the future. I would like to think that our efforts would not be futile and that we could change things and (at some point) all people would be able to share in the sum of all knowledge, not just privileged ones.
Best regards, antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv Acting Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
*NOTICE: You may have received this message outside of your normal working hours/days, as I usually can work more as a volunteer during weekend. You should not feel obligated to answer it during your days off. Thank you in advance!*
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 8:15 PM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 at 18:15, Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
For those who want to jump straight to what the foundation plans to spend the money on:
1. Supporting scholarship & advocacy focused on free knowledge and racial equity 2. Supporting media and journalism efforts focused on people of color around the world, in order to expand reliable media sources covering these communities 3. Addressing unequal internet access 4. Improving digital literacy skills that impede access to knowledge 5. Investing in non-traditional records of knowledge (i.e. oral histories)
1 is vauge and a lot depends on the balance between the two. As far as 2 goes funding journalism is bit of a departure from our standard pratices and contains significant risks. 3 isn't really viable at our kind of funding levels and has significant enviromental concerns. 4 Again not really viable at our funding levels (also english language lessions would have more impact). 5 runs into the issue that the community has not historicaly proven accepting of attempts to lower RS and notability standards for non western areas.
Lisa + all -- Excellent to see this take shape. It pairs well with a vintage CSB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias ...
Thank you for putting out a call for potential projects to support. I'll think more on it before filling out the form https://forms.gle/gzqRH7yMFEGgZb4e6; some categories that come to mind that can't happen on-wiki projects today: * Reliable secondary sources that write prolifically about under-documented people and projects * Reliable interlocutors that record and index oral and other histories, and under-documented languages (cf Rosetta and PanLex) * Making representative subsets of essential collections available digitally (ex. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hundreds-native-american-treaties-digitized-and-online-first-time-180976056/) + under a free license. (ex. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/getty-wins-jet-ebony-archives-auction-1606687 )
Sam.
PS - some thoughts on your comments, Geni:
Geni writes:
3 [internet access] isn't really viable at our kind of funding levels and
has significant enviromental concerns.
Efforts to get libraries online, in regions whose lit + historical + public records are underrepresented on the searchable web, is quite impactful as part of digitization + mirroring efforts. Many regional groups work in collab w existing infrastructure-efforts providing the bandwidth [such as Giga https://www.unicef.org/innovation/giga]
4 [digital literacy] Again not really viable at our funding levels
Not my experience; especially as knowledge propagates like a taper flame.
(also english language lessions would have more impact).
I imagine this is not meant to be limited to the english-speaking world and projects.
5 [non-traditional records of knowledge] runs into the issue that the
community has not historicaly proven accepting of attempts to lower RS and notability standards for non western areas.
This comment seems a bit off-topic. These grants as described are not constrained by what is accepted by current wiki projects; archiving and indexing non-traditional records allows them to be cited and allows the archives to become recognized as reliable sources; only a few project-language-editions to my knowledge have been prickly about engaging with oral histories, and such records exist in every culture and part of the world. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/getty-wins-jet-ebony-archives-auction-1606687
🌍🌏🌎🌑
On Wed., Jun. 9, 2021, 1:15 p.m. Lisa Gruwell, lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
-
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg -
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- *Nadee Gunasena* Executive Communications Manager 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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Thank you to those who attended our Equity Fund Office Hours. We had a small turnout with about three people attending the second session (evening UTC) earlier today to speak with the Equity Fund Committee and learn more about the fund. It was a constructive conversation and we learned of some particular challenges in India that are barriers for participation in our projects. We are adding the questions that were asked and the answers in the Knowledge Equity Fund FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_questions. Thank you to those who attended.
My 2 cents on some of the points in this thread:
1.
Definitely complete the form, Sam! Those projects seem very interesting and definitely worthy of exploration for this. Thank you for sharing them. 2.
We want to be clear: This fund is insufficient to solve the problems with Knowledge Inequity as it relates to race. We are aiming to make progress and work with others who also advance this work. 3.
Knowledge Equity is a central part of the 2030 Strategic Direction and our donors were included in the conversations that got us there. They very much want equity to guide our work. Last year, Katherine and Janeen published a very clear stand on racial justice https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca that led to this fund. While we can’t mention every WMF program in the space of a banner, we do include more information about WMF programs in the donor FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikipedia? which is linked on every banner with more links to our plans, annual reports, announcements and more detail regarding our programs. In terms of the Knowledge Equity Fund, we announced it in the press release https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-years/ that we posted for Wikipedia’s 20th birthday in January in seven languages. It is also in our 2019-2020 fiscal year Audit Report https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. More information on the Knowledge Equity Fund https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund is now on meta. We look forward to sharing more information about the Fund’s progress with the community and donors alike later this summer. 4.
To clarify, this is not a $4.5 million grant to Tides Advocacy for their programs around racial inequity. Instead, the Equity Fund Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#The_Equity_Fund_Committee sets the direction of the fund, identifies grantees and submits them to Tides for review and administration. The Equity Fund Committee is identifying grantees that fit in the five focus areas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Areas_of_Funding to address racial inequity and free knowledge, and will benefit the Wikimedia movement.
Thanks again for the questions and suggestions. We welcome any follow-up or additional questions on the Talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1 .
Best,
Lisa
On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:17 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- *Nadee Gunasena* Executive Communications Manager 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 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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Thanks for those links, Lisa. I note that the January press release[1] merely said,
*"In addition, the Foundation recently developed a $4.5 million Equity Fund that will offer grants to advance more equitable, inclusive representation in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia."*
This tells the reader very little. In particular, it does not make clear that these are grants for recipients that would be ineligible for Wikimedia's traditional community grants.
The 2019/2020 audit report[2] said, in the notes on page 14,
*During the year ended June 30, 2020, the Foundation provided an unconditional grant to Tides Advocacy in the amount of of $8.723 million for the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This fund will be used to invest in grant-making opportunities to increase the availability of free knowledge and counteract structural inequalities to foster a just and equitable representation of knowledge and people in the Wikimedia movement, and to fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia chapter organizations in service of our mission of free knowledge. The Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund is managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy. For the year ended June 30, 2020, the amount funded is recorded in awards and grants expense.*
Neither of these really provided enough detail to give the reader an adequate sense of these plans, or explained how the funds will be disbursed.
$4.5 million is a substantial amount of money. It represents no less than 4% of total 2019/2020 expenses. In my view, this warrants more visible communication than a single sentence buried in a 1,000-word blog post that was about a different topic altogether, and an unpublicised page on Meta that no one but an insider is likely to find.
Lastly, you say that every banner includes a link to the donor FAQ. When the Latin American fundraising campaign was announced on Spanish Wikipedia, Camille posted[3] the following to show the community what the banners would look like:
Lo siento, envié URL obsoletas. Aquí están los actualizados. Desktop Large https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Desktop Small https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Large https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Small https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL --CDenes (WMF) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:CDenes_(WMF) ( discusión https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usuario_discusi%C3%B3n:CDenes_(WMF)&action=edit&redlink=1) 19:30 30 abr 2021 (UTC)
Clicking on her links on my desktop, I find that only one of the four banners (Desktop Large), as displayed on the Wikipedia page that comes up, includes a link, in small print, to the FAQ ("Preguntas frecuentes"). None of the others do. Can anyone else see such links on the pages that come up when you click on Camille's links?
The recent Brazilian press screenshot available at https://img.olhardigital.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Doacao-Wikipedia.... lacks such a link as well, does it not? While it is in Portuguese rather than Spanish, it matches the layout of what Camille posted precisely (with the wording as adjusted following the recent community complaints at the Portuguese Village Pump).[4]
As far as I can see, the user will only ever be shown a small FAQ link if and after they initiate the payment process. At that point, their attention is distracted, because they have to select a money amount or mode of payment, email option etc. This seems designed to minimise the likelihood that a user will actually go and read the FAQ.
Best, Andreas
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-year... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_... [3] https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9/Archivo/Misce... [4] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Banner_solicita...)
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 1:56 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you to those who attended our Equity Fund Office Hours. We had a small turnout with about three people attending the second session (evening UTC) earlier today to speak with the Equity Fund Committee and learn more about the fund. It was a constructive conversation and we learned of some particular challenges in India that are barriers for participation in our projects. We are adding the questions that were asked and the answers in the Knowledge Equity Fund FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_questions. Thank you to those who attended.
My 2 cents on some of the points in this thread:
Definitely complete the form, Sam! Those projects seem very interesting and definitely worthy of exploration for this. Thank you for sharing them. 2.
We want to be clear: This fund is insufficient to solve the problems with Knowledge Inequity as it relates to race. We are aiming to make progress and work with others who also advance this work. 3.
Knowledge Equity is a central part of the 2030 Strategic Direction and our donors were included in the conversations that got us there. They very much want equity to guide our work. Last year, Katherine and Janeen published a very clear stand on racial justice https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca that led to this fund. While we can’t mention every WMF program in the space of a banner, we do include more information about WMF programs in the donor FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikipedia? which is linked on every banner with more links to our plans, annual reports, announcements and more detail regarding our programs. In terms of the Knowledge Equity Fund, we announced it in the press release https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-years/ that we posted for Wikipedia’s 20th birthday in January in seven languages. It is also in our 2019-2020 fiscal year Audit Report https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. More information on the Knowledge Equity Fund https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund is now on meta. We look forward to sharing more information about the Fund’s progress with the community and donors alike later this summer. 4.
To clarify, this is not a $4.5 million grant to Tides Advocacy for their programs around racial inequity. Instead, the Equity Fund Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#The_Equity_Fund_Committee sets the direction of the fund, identifies grantees and submits them to Tides for review and administration. The Equity Fund Committee is identifying grantees that fit in the five focus areas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Areas_of_Funding to address racial inequity and free knowledge, and will benefit the Wikimedia movement.
Thanks again for the questions and suggestions. We welcome any follow-up or additional questions on the Talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1 .
Best,
Lisa
On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:17 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- *Nadee Gunasena* Executive Communications Manager 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 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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
The links to the donor FAQ are there. The smaller banners expand when you click on a payment method.
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 3:06 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for those links, Lisa. I note that the January press release[1] merely said,
*"In addition, the Foundation recently developed a $4.5 million Equity Fund that will offer grants to advance more equitable, inclusive representation in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia."*
This tells the reader very little. In particular, it does not make clear that these are grants for recipients that would be ineligible for Wikimedia's traditional community grants.
The 2019/2020 audit report[2] said, in the notes on page 14,
*During the year ended June 30, 2020, the Foundation provided an unconditional grant to Tides Advocacy in the amount of of $8.723 million for the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This fund will be used to invest in grant-making opportunities to increase the availability of free knowledge and counteract structural inequalities to foster a just and equitable representation of knowledge and people in the Wikimedia movement, and to fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia chapter organizations in service of our mission of free knowledge. The Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund is managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy. For the year ended June 30, 2020, the amount funded is recorded in awards and grants expense.*
Neither of these really provided enough detail to give the reader an adequate sense of these plans, or explained how the funds will be disbursed.
$4.5 million is a substantial amount of money. It represents no less than 4% of total 2019/2020 expenses. In my view, this warrants more visible communication than a single sentence buried in a 1,000-word blog post that was about a different topic altogether, and an unpublicised page on Meta that no one but an insider is likely to find.
Lastly, you say that every banner includes a link to the donor FAQ. When the Latin American fundraising campaign was announced on Spanish Wikipedia, Camille posted[3] the following to show the community what the banners would look like:
Lo siento, envié URL obsoletas. Aquí están los actualizados. Desktop Large https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Desktop Small https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Large https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Small https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL --CDenes (WMF) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:CDenes_(WMF) ( discusión https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usuario_discusi%C3%B3n:CDenes_(WMF)&action=edit&redlink=1) 19:30 30 abr 2021 (UTC)
Clicking on her links on my desktop, I find that only one of the four banners (Desktop Large), as displayed on the Wikipedia page that comes up, includes a link, in small print, to the FAQ ("Preguntas frecuentes"). None of the others do. Can anyone else see such links on the pages that come up when you click on Camille's links?
The recent Brazilian press screenshot available at https://img.olhardigital.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Doacao-Wikipedia.... lacks such a link as well, does it not? While it is in Portuguese rather than Spanish, it matches the layout of what Camille posted precisely (with the wording as adjusted following the recent community complaints at the Portuguese Village Pump).[4]
As far as I can see, the user will only ever be shown a small FAQ link if and after they initiate the payment process. At that point, their attention is distracted, because they have to select a money amount or mode of payment, email option etc. This seems designed to minimise the likelihood that a user will actually go and read the FAQ.
Best, Andreas
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-year... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_... [3] https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9/Archivo/Misce... [4] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Banner_solicita...)
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 1:56 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you to those who attended our Equity Fund Office Hours. We had a small turnout with about three people attending the second session (evening UTC) earlier today to speak with the Equity Fund Committee and learn more about the fund. It was a constructive conversation and we learned of some particular challenges in India that are barriers for participation in our projects. We are adding the questions that were asked and the answers in the Knowledge Equity Fund FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_questions. Thank you to those who attended.
My 2 cents on some of the points in this thread:
Definitely complete the form, Sam! Those projects seem very interesting and definitely worthy of exploration for this. Thank you for sharing them. 2.
We want to be clear: This fund is insufficient to solve the problems with Knowledge Inequity as it relates to race. We are aiming to make progress and work with others who also advance this work. 3.
Knowledge Equity is a central part of the 2030 Strategic Direction and our donors were included in the conversations that got us there. They very much want equity to guide our work. Last year, Katherine and Janeen published a very clear stand on racial justice https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca that led to this fund. While we can’t mention every WMF program in the space of a banner, we do include more information about WMF programs in the donor FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikipedia? which is linked on every banner with more links to our plans, annual reports, announcements and more detail regarding our programs. In terms of the Knowledge Equity Fund, we announced it in the press release https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-years/ that we posted for Wikipedia’s 20th birthday in January in seven languages. It is also in our 2019-2020 fiscal year Audit Report https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. More information on the Knowledge Equity Fund https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund is now on meta. We look forward to sharing more information about the Fund’s progress with the community and donors alike later this summer. 4.
To clarify, this is not a $4.5 million grant to Tides Advocacy for their programs around racial inequity. Instead, the Equity Fund Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#The_Equity_Fund_Committee sets the direction of the fund, identifies grantees and submits them to Tides for review and administration. The Equity Fund Committee is identifying grantees that fit in the five focus areas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Areas_of_Funding to address racial inequity and free knowledge, and will benefit the Wikimedia movement.
Thanks again for the questions and suggestions. We welcome any follow-up or additional questions on the Talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1 .
Best,
Lisa
On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:17 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- *Nadee Gunasena* Executive Communications Manager 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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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--
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hi Lisa and all,
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 3:13 PM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
The links to the donor FAQ are there. The smaller banners expand when you click on a payment method.
You'll find that this information was already contained in the post you replied to.
The point remains though: now that it exists, the knowledge equity fund needs publicity. At $4.5M, it is about half as much again as all the grants and awards disbursed to movement members in the 2019/2020 FY combined (which came to $9.2M, by my calculation: $22.9M total – $5M endowment – $8.7M Tides Advocacy). Relative to your overall annual grantmaking, this is a very substantial amount of money that is now available to non-affiliates working on racial equity issues.
Moving forward, given that the decision has been made, how will racial equity organisations learn about the availability of this money? You are soliciting recommendations from Wikimedians on Meta, but surely you can't just rely on those and your own networks? I mentioned a blog post – to date there has not even been a tweet from the WMF about this. How about an article in The Root[1] or a similar publication?
Andreas
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 3:06 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for those links, Lisa. I note that the January press release[1] merely said,
*"In addition, the Foundation recently developed a $4.5 million Equity Fund that will offer grants to advance more equitable, inclusive representation in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia."*
This tells the reader very little. In particular, it does not make clear that these are grants for recipients that would be ineligible for Wikimedia's traditional community grants.
The 2019/2020 audit report[2] said, in the notes on page 14,
*During the year ended June 30, 2020, the Foundation provided an unconditional grant to Tides Advocacy in the amount of of $8.723 million for the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This fund will be used to invest in grant-making opportunities to increase the availability of free knowledge and counteract structural inequalities to foster a just and equitable representation of knowledge and people in the Wikimedia movement, and to fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia chapter organizations in service of our mission of free knowledge. The Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund is managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy. For the year ended June 30, 2020, the amount funded is recorded in awards and grants expense.*
Neither of these really provided enough detail to give the reader an adequate sense of these plans, or explained how the funds will be disbursed.
$4.5 million is a substantial amount of money. It represents no less than 4% of total 2019/2020 expenses. In my view, this warrants more visible communication than a single sentence buried in a 1,000-word blog post that was about a different topic altogether, and an unpublicised page on Meta that no one but an insider is likely to find.
Lastly, you say that every banner includes a link to the donor FAQ. When the Latin American fundraising campaign was announced on Spanish Wikipedia, Camille posted[3] the following to show the community what the banners would look like:
Lo siento, envié URL obsoletas. Aquí están los actualizados. Desktop Large https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Desktop Small https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Large https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Small https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL --CDenes (WMF) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:CDenes_(WMF) ( discusión https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usuario_discusi%C3%B3n:CDenes_(WMF)&action=edit&redlink=1) 19:30 30 abr 2021 (UTC)
Clicking on her links on my desktop, I find that only one of the four banners (Desktop Large), as displayed on the Wikipedia page that comes up, includes a link, in small print, to the FAQ ("Preguntas frecuentes"). None of the others do. Can anyone else see such links on the pages that come up when you click on Camille's links?
The recent Brazilian press screenshot available at https://img.olhardigital.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Doacao-Wikipedia.... lacks such a link as well, does it not? While it is in Portuguese rather than Spanish, it matches the layout of what Camille posted precisely (with the wording as adjusted following the recent community complaints at the Portuguese Village Pump).[4]
As far as I can see, the user will only ever be shown a small FAQ link if and after they initiate the payment process. At that point, their attention is distracted, because they have to select a money amount or mode of payment, email option etc. This seems designed to minimise the likelihood that a user will actually go and read the FAQ.
Best, Andreas
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-year... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_... [3] https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9/Archivo/Misce... [4] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Banner_solicita...)
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 1:56 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you to those who attended our Equity Fund Office Hours. We had a small turnout with about three people attending the second session (evening UTC) earlier today to speak with the Equity Fund Committee and learn more about the fund. It was a constructive conversation and we learned of some particular challenges in India that are barriers for participation in our projects. We are adding the questions that were asked and the answers in the Knowledge Equity Fund FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_questions. Thank you to those who attended.
My 2 cents on some of the points in this thread:
Definitely complete the form, Sam! Those projects seem very interesting and definitely worthy of exploration for this. Thank you for sharing them. 2.
We want to be clear: This fund is insufficient to solve the problems with Knowledge Inequity as it relates to race. We are aiming to make progress and work with others who also advance this work. 3.
Knowledge Equity is a central part of the 2030 Strategic Direction and our donors were included in the conversations that got us there. They very much want equity to guide our work. Last year, Katherine and Janeen published a very clear stand on racial justice https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca that led to this fund. While we can’t mention every WMF program in the space of a banner, we do include more information about WMF programs in the donor FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikipedia? which is linked on every banner with more links to our plans, annual reports, announcements and more detail regarding our programs. In terms of the Knowledge Equity Fund, we announced it in the press release https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-years/ that we posted for Wikipedia’s 20th birthday in January in seven languages. It is also in our 2019-2020 fiscal year Audit Report https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. More information on the Knowledge Equity Fund https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund is now on meta. We look forward to sharing more information about the Fund’s progress with the community and donors alike later this summer. 4.
To clarify, this is not a $4.5 million grant to Tides Advocacy for their programs around racial inequity. Instead, the Equity Fund Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#The_Equity_Fund_Committee sets the direction of the fund, identifies grantees and submits them to Tides for review and administration. The Equity Fund Committee is identifying grantees that fit in the five focus areas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Areas_of_Funding to address racial inequity and free knowledge, and will benefit the Wikimedia movement.
Thanks again for the questions and suggestions. We welcome any follow-up or additional questions on the Talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1 .
Best,
Lisa
On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:17 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena ngunasena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
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-raci...
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch...
[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/
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- *Nadee Gunasena* Executive Communications Manager 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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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--
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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--
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 To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
As soon as I'd sent my earlier post, I regretted not having named a non-US outlet (however fine a publication The Root is). I realise that this, in part, is precisely the point of the equity fund: to get away from a US and Euro-centric approach. Mea culpa.
The Knowledge Equity Fund page on Meta says, "The first round of grant recipients will be chosen by the Equity Fund Committee, based on an evaluation of their existing programmatic work and how it furthers racial equity in the context of free knowledge."
I hope the eventual grantees will not all turn out to be pre-existing Tides grant recipients.
Andreas
On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 8:41 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 3:13 PM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
The links to the donor FAQ are there. The smaller banners expand when you click on a payment method.
You'll find that this information was already contained in the post you replied to.
The point remains though: now that it exists, the knowledge equity fund needs publicity. At $4.5M, it is about half as much again as all the grants and awards disbursed to movement members in the 2019/2020 FY combined (which came to $9.2M, by my calculation: $22.9M total – $5M endowment – $8.7M Tides Advocacy). Relative to your overall annual grantmaking, this is a very substantial amount of money that is now available to non-affiliates working on racial equity issues.
Moving forward, given that the decision has been made, how will racial equity organisations learn about the availability of this money? You are soliciting recommendations from Wikimedians on Meta, but surely you can't just rely on those and your own networks? I mentioned a blog post – to date there has not even been a tweet from the WMF about this. How about an article in The Root[1] or a similar publication?
Andreas
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 3:06 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for those links, Lisa. I note that the January press release[1] merely said,
*"In addition, the Foundation recently developed a $4.5 million Equity Fund that will offer grants to advance more equitable, inclusive representation in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia."*
This tells the reader very little. In particular, it does not make clear that these are grants for recipients that would be ineligible for Wikimedia's traditional community grants.
The 2019/2020 audit report[2] said, in the notes on page 14,
*During the year ended June 30, 2020, the Foundation provided an unconditional grant to Tides Advocacy in the amount of of $8.723 million for the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This fund will be used to invest in grant-making opportunities to increase the availability of free knowledge and counteract structural inequalities to foster a just and equitable representation of knowledge and people in the Wikimedia movement, and to fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia chapter organizations in service of our mission of free knowledge. The Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund is managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy. For the year ended June 30, 2020, the amount funded is recorded in awards and grants expense.*
Neither of these really provided enough detail to give the reader an adequate sense of these plans, or explained how the funds will be disbursed.
$4.5 million is a substantial amount of money. It represents no less than 4% of total 2019/2020 expenses. In my view, this warrants more visible communication than a single sentence buried in a 1,000-word blog post that was about a different topic altogether, and an unpublicised page on Meta that no one but an insider is likely to find.
Lastly, you say that every banner includes a link to the donor FAQ. When the Latin American fundraising campaign was announced on Spanish Wikipedia, Camille posted[3] the following to show the community what the banners would look like:
Lo siento, envié URL obsoletas. Aquí están los actualizados. Desktop Large https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Desktop Small https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias&banner=B2021_0503_esLA_dsk_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Large https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p1_lg_twin1&country=CL // Mobile Small https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia?banner=B2021_0503_esLA_m_p2_sm_twin1&country=CL --CDenes (WMF) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:CDenes_(WMF) ( discusión https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usuario_discusi%C3%B3n:CDenes_(WMF)&action=edit&redlink=1) 19:30 30 abr 2021 (UTC)
Clicking on her links on my desktop, I find that only one of the four banners (Desktop Large), as displayed on the Wikipedia page that comes up, includes a link, in small print, to the FAQ ("Preguntas frecuentes"). None of the others do. Can anyone else see such links on the pages that come up when you click on Camille's links?
The recent Brazilian press screenshot available at https://img.olhardigital.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Doacao-Wikipedia.... lacks such a link as well, does it not? While it is in Portuguese rather than Spanish, it matches the layout of what Camille posted precisely (with the wording as adjusted following the recent community complaints at the Portuguese Village Pump).[4]
As far as I can see, the user will only ever be shown a small FAQ link if and after they initiate the payment process. At that point, their attention is distracted, because they have to select a money amount or mode of payment, email option etc. This seems designed to minimise the likelihood that a user will actually go and read the FAQ.
Best, Andreas
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-year... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_... [3] https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9/Archivo/Misce... [4] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Banner_solicita...)
On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 1:56 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thank you to those who attended our Equity Fund Office Hours. We had a small turnout with about three people attending the second session (evening UTC) earlier today to speak with the Equity Fund Committee and learn more about the fund. It was a constructive conversation and we learned of some particular challenges in India that are barriers for participation in our projects. We are adding the questions that were asked and the answers in the Knowledge Equity Fund FAQ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_questions. Thank you to those who attended.
My 2 cents on some of the points in this thread:
Definitely complete the form, Sam! Those projects seem very interesting and definitely worthy of exploration for this. Thank you for sharing them. 2.
We want to be clear: This fund is insufficient to solve the problems with Knowledge Inequity as it relates to race. We are aiming to make progress and work with others who also advance this work. 3.
Knowledge Equity is a central part of the 2030 Strategic Direction and our donors were included in the conversations that got us there. They very much want equity to guide our work. Last year, Katherine and Janeen published a very clear stand on racial justice https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/we-stand-for-racial-justice-49c31afbabca that led to this fund. While we can’t mention every WMF program in the space of a banner, we do include more information about WMF programs in the donor FAQ https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_Wikipedia? which is linked on every banner with more links to our plans, annual reports, announcements and more detail regarding our programs. In terms of the Knowledge Equity Fund, we announced it in the press release https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/01/14/wikipedia-celebrates-20-years/ that we posted for Wikipedia’s 20th birthday in January in seven languages. It is also in our 2019-2020 fiscal year Audit Report https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. More information on the Knowledge Equity Fund https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund is now on meta. We look forward to sharing more information about the Fund’s progress with the community and donors alike later this summer. 4.
To clarify, this is not a $4.5 million grant to Tides Advocacy for their programs around racial inequity. Instead, the Equity Fund Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#The_Equity_Fund_Committee sets the direction of the fund, identifies grantees and submits them to Tides for review and administration. The Equity Fund Committee is identifying grantees that fit in the five focus areas https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Areas_of_Funding to address racial inequity and free knowledge, and will benefit the Wikimedia movement.
Thanks again for the questions and suggestions. We welcome any follow-up or additional questions on the Talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund&action=edit&redlink=1 .
Best,
Lisa
On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:17 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lisa and all,
Thanks for the info.
Laudable though the goals of the Knowledge Equity Fund surely are, you seem to be saying that you gave $4.5 million – which readers presumably donated because they thought you were struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – to Tides Advocacy for the kind of "dismantling inequities" work that Tides Advocacy does anyway.[1]
If donors had wanted to support Tides Advocacy's racial equity work, surely they could have donated to that organisation in the first place?
Have you announced – or will you announce – this redirection of funds to the public, complete with an explanation of how this decision came about (i.e. as a result of last year's underspend, as described in your mail last December)?[2] At the time of writing, a Google search is unable to locate a related Wikimedia blog post or press release.
Without such a public communication, donors will not even be aware that money they gave in response to banners asking for donations "to protect Wikipedia's independence" etc. is now going to be used for a different purpose altogether, one that is expressly outside of the scope of the conventional Wikimedia community grants that they might reasonably have expected their money to be used for.[3]
Moreover, at some point, Wikipedia readers will no doubt be asked to donate another $4.5 million to meet expenses these funds could have covered (such as the most recent $5 million WMF donation to the endowment).
Do you agree donors should be told?
Best, Andreas
[1] https://tidesadvocacy.org [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund/Frequently_asked_quest... ?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:42 PM Nadee Gunasena < ngunasena@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi all,
We realized we had shared the wrong date for the Equity Fund Office Hours. Lisa's email initially said these would be Monday, June 13 - that should be Monday, June 14. Sorry for any confusion - Updated times below. You can also find these details and more information on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
Monday, June 14 at 0100-0200 UTC meet.google.com/myf-zcaw-ubg
Monday, June 14 at 1500-1600 UTC meet.google.com/dzu-edej-wva
ᐧ
On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 10:15 AM Lisa Gruwell lgruwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
> 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-raci... > > > [2] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-December/096022.html > > > [3] > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunch... > > > [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/ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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