Grants:Project/Learn
 | This page is kept for historical interest. Any grant programs, policies, or related details mentioned may be obsolete. You can find Wikimedia Foundation's current funding programs at Grants:Start. |
- Wikimedia Grants
- Conference & Event Grants
- Rapid Funds
- Project Grants
- Simple Annual Plan Grants
- Annual Plan Grants
- Risk Assessment During COVID-19
Project Grants
Learn the information you need to apply for a Project Grant, including program guidelines, who is eligible for funding, criteria used to review requests, timelines for the process, and what expenses can be requested.
Guidelines and Criteria
Eligibility criteria
- Individuals, groups, and organizations may apply.
- Requests must be over USD 2,000. Maximum request is USD 100,000.
- Grants can be up to 12 months in length.
- Grant requests and reports are accepted in any language.
- You must agree to the reporting requirements, be willing to sign a grant agreement, and provide the Wikimedia Foundation with information needed to process your funding.
- Any individual, group, or organization is allowed three open grants at any one time. This includes both Rapid Grants and Project Grants.
- We primarily support volunteer participation. Volunteer-based projects, in which grant funds are used for direct expenses rather than to pay for people's time, will have a competitive advantage in our review process. However, we will review requests to pay for people's time recognizing that not all projects are feasible to complete exclusively with volunteers. Please review the Funding Guidelines further down in this page and email projectgrants
wikimedia.org if you have questions. - Grant recipients cannot be employed by the Wikimedia Foundation as staff, or as contractors working more than part-time.
- Because we believe that all grantees serve as role models within the Wikimedia community, we require that all grantees be in good community standing and have a history of adhering to the Friendly space expectations. Please carefully review the Behavioral requirements section for a fuller description of our expectations for grantees.
Behavioral requirements
We ask that applicants meet the following criteria for behavioral conduct. These standards apply to all members of a group’s or organization’s leadership team, and to any key people involved with organizing the funded activities. A list of these people must be provided to the grants administration team at the time of application.
- Applicants should be in good standing in regard to ethical behavior within your community (e.g. social behavior, financial behavior, legal behavior, etc), as determined through the due diligence process of the grant program. Past instances as well as current investigations or incidents will be considered by WMF when determining the eligibility of each applicant.
- Within the last year, applicants have not been blocked, banned, or otherwise flagged by WMF or another affiliate for violations of friendly space expectations or friendly space policies, or for other types of violations or conduct issues. If such issues have occurred in the past, the applicants demonstrate learning and understanding in regard to the cause for the issue, such that they are ready to serve as a role model for others as a grantee.
- Within the last year, applicants have not been repeatedly blocked or flagged for the same issue and/or have not been banned on the Wikimedia Projects. If a block/ban is recorded in the applicant's account history, the applicant demonstrates learning and understanding in regard to the cause for the block, such that they are ready to serve as a role model for others as a grantee.
- On occasion, we make exceptions to these criteria if we believe it contributes to a fair and equitable review process. If there is something you believe is important for us to understand about your circumstances in regard to our criteria, you are welcome to reach out to us at projectgrantswikimedia.org.
- Due to issues around privacy and the sensitivity of information, it may not always be possible to share complete information about eligibility decisions with each applicant for every decision.
Details on grant limit
- An open grant is defined as a grant that is approved but not yet completed. This also includes approved grants with terms not started, and also grants with terms that have ended, but for which reporting is not yet finished.
- This limit applies to both Rapid Grants and Project Grants. Conference Grants are not included in this cap. Grantees receiving Annual Plan Grants (APGs) are limited to one grant (their APG), with the exception of Conference Grants, and are not eligible for Rapid Grants or Project Grants with grant terms that overlap with their Annual Plan Grant, according to the requirements of the APG program.
- Grants to individuals that involve participation from other members of the affiliate or group they belong to will be considered group grants, and therefore will be included in the three open grant count per group. (This is to prevent grants that are actually to groups being granted to individuals who wish to avoid the cap.)
- Some activities are appropriate for groups and not individuals. If you apply as an individual for a group activity, your program officer may suggest that you apply as a group instead of as an individual. (This is to prevent grants that are actually to groups being granted to individuals who wish to avoid the cap.)
Selection criteria
When selecting applications we consider the following criteria…
- Strategic priority: Do your activities improve one or more of Wikimedia’s existing websites?
- Potential outcomes and impact: What are the concrete outcomes that are anticipated as a result of the activities? What difference do you expect your project to make?
- Contribution record: Do you have a history of engaging with Wikimedia projects and communities?
- Support and endorsement: Do you have sufficient volunteers to complete the project and endorsements from community members?
Funding guidelines
Please check with your local Wikimedia affiliate to see if they offer a local grant program!
General guidelines
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Projects aimed at improving one or more of Wikimedia's existing websites | Projects aimed at improving third-party applications
(Click here if you're interested in creating a new wiki instead.) |
| Projects that foster conditions to encourage editing by volunteers (e.g. editor recruitment campaigns) | Projects that replace volunteer action by directly funding someone to create content (e.g. editing articles, uploading photos) |
| Production of code, research, materials that are published and released as free and open-source. Licensing should be compatible with current Wikimedia and MediaWiki practices | Production of code, research, materials that are created on a closed source platform or published in such a way that access is not freely available |
| Projects up to 12 months long | Projects more than 12 months long |
| Requests from individuals or a group of people not affiliated with an organization
Requests from organizations with proof of non-profit status |
Requests from groups and organizations that already have a current Annual Plan Grant or Simple Annual Plan Grant
Requests from for-profit companies, organizations, or fiscal sponsors. |
| Requests from affiliates (including User Groups) that have announced grant requests on their official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by each group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced. | Requests from affiliates (including User Groups) that have not announced their grant requests to the user group and received feedback and support from the group. |
| One project per proposal, up to a year in duration. | Multiple projects per proposal. If you would like to submit a multi-project proposal, please apply through our Annual Plan Grants program. |
| Funds for direct expenses
Funds for people’s time for short-term project activities that can't be completed by volunteers and does not involve content creation |
Funds for people’s time when it replaces volunteer activities |
| Project management fees for concentrated work that could not be completed by volunteers or during non-working hours | Full-time staff or paid affiliate board members |
| Requests over $2,000 USD, up to $100,000 USD | Requests of more than $100,000 USD |
| Applicants/grantees that adhere to Friendly space expectations | Applicants with a history of violating Friendly space expectations |
| Applicants who (i) agree to the reporting requirements, and (ii) are willing to sign a grant agreement, and (iii) provide the Wikimedia Foundation with information needed to process their funding. | Applicants who can't comply with the requirements and contractual terms of the program |
| Fiscal sponsor administrative fees of no more than 20% of the requested grant amount. Must be included as an explicit budget line item in the finance section of the grant proposal. | Contingency fees.
Administrative fees above 20% of the requested grant amount. |
| Applicants in good community standing. | Applicants who, within the last year, have been repeatedly blocked or flagged for the same issue and/or have been banned on the Wikimedia Projects, or who have a demonstrated history of not complying with Friendly Space expectations. Applicants who have been in good community standing for at least one year, but who have previous blocks, bans or Friendly Space issues and have NOT demonstrated learning and understanding in regard to the cause for the issues that would prepare them to serve as a role model for others as a grantee. |
Facilities, equipment and materials
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Temporary working space for short-term project organization | Ongoing office space rent |
| Equipment to be shared amongst Wikimedia community members (cameras, laptops, book scanner, wifi hotspot/dongle, etc.) with a plan for use and content integration | Personal equipment, including books, and equipment for non-Wikimedia affiliates |
| Offline (hard-copy) publishing for targeted networking or training (ie: Wiki Love Monuments photo brochure to give your local GLAM partner) | Offline publishing of general outreach materials |
| Merchandise (swag) to recognize exceptional volunteer contributions (i.e: for help organizing an event, as a contest prize, for the best contributions during an editathon, etc.) | Merchandise giveaways for all participants in an event or for general outreach, including t-shirts. (exception: low-cost stickers and pins). Please see this article ("It's time to stop spending billions on cheap conference swag" for more info on the environmental and human impact of swag.) |
| Certificates, gift cards, books, photo equipment, etc. to recognize achievements or contest winners for their contributions | Cash prizes for contest or other competition winners |
| Small scale equipment purchases for Wikimedia affiliates to be shared among multiple volunteers. If no affiliate is available to host the equipment, a single active volunteer in good standing may serve as the coordination point for shared equipment. | Large scale equipment purchases and distribution programs. For example, we cannot fund computer labs or school computer programs. |
| Up to 10% of total budget for unforeseen expenses, such as when items cost more than initially estimated. However, total project budget cannot exceed $100,000 USD. | Expenses already accounted for or estimated in other parts of budget. Budgeting for miscellaneous or unforeseen expenses greater than 10% of total budget. |
Wikipedians-in-Residence
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Wikipedian-in-Residence to collect resources, train/engage GLAM and Wikimedian community, and organize events around integrating content | Wikipedian-in-Residence whose sole focus is to digitize resources and/or personally create content |
Software Projects
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Software projects (including templates, gadgets, bots, and standalone applications) that can be fully completed by the Project Team | Software projects that would depend on WMF staff for code review and integration or other technical support (unless those staff are part of the Project Team) |
| Software projects requiring code review and integration, if there is demonstrated commitment from the related maintainers | Software projects requiring code review and integration that do not have the support of related maintainers |
Digitization Projects
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Digitization of materials as part of a program, at the request of the community, with a plan for how digitized content will be integrated into Wikimedia projects. | Paying individuals to digitize materials as the primary focus of the project |
Events
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| In-person events with a Friendly space policy | In-person events without a Friendly space policy |
| Series of events, such as edit-a-thons or contests | Large, single-instance events over $2,000 are funded through the Conference Support program |
General promotion campaigns
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Volunteers promoting Wikimedia projects/campaigns online or offline. | Hiring an ad agency to promote Wikimedia projects |
| Renting equipment that will only be used for the promotion campaign (e.g. laptop, tablets, video cameras, microphones, etc.) | Buying equipment that will only be for used the promotion campaign |
| Budget for paid ads for social media promotion
|
Video campaigns
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Volunteers producing videos for promotion of Wikimedia projects/campaigns
|
Producing videos with no promotion plan in place |
| Renting equipment that will only be used for the promotion campaign (e.g. laptop, tablets, video cameras, microphones, etc.) | Buying equipment that will only be used for the promotion campaign |
Travel
| Eligible for funding | Not eligible for funding |
| Local travel for project planning, execution and follow-up
|
Longer distance travel for activities that can be done online or by local volunteers |
| Travel to organize an outreach activity (training, editathon, etc.) and conduct follow-up with participants at a non-Wikimedia event | Travel to a non-Wikimedia events with no planned outreach project and follow-up activity |