[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Meeting 18.12 19:30

[Vladimir Medeyko]

Здравствуйте, коллеги!

Мы с Дмитрием Жуковым будем 18.12 пролётом из Якутска в Москве, и поэтому
хотелось бы провести собрание, на котором мы формально утвердим новый
юридический адрес.

Соответственно, я прошу прийти к 19:30 в новый офис Викимедиа РУ Москва,
Улица Воздвиженка, д. 10, 3-й этаж, офис 350. (Это Военторг, через дорогу
от библиотеки им. Ленина)

Всё, что нужно - это подписать протокол с решением о переезде в офис по
вышеуказанному адресу.

Спасибо!

-- 
  Медейко Владимир Владимирович
  тел. +7-921-940-39-79
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[Wikimedia-l] WikiDonne User Group report Nov 2019 - Nov 2020

[Camelia Boban]

Hi everybody.
Sorry for the delayed time, I just filled WikiDonne
 User
Group report
 for
the period November 2019 - November 2020, sending it to the Affiliates Data
Portal 
 too.
It tried to be detailed and complete as I think is useful to understand all
the affiliate's efforts inside the movement.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions.

Warm regards,
Camelia Boban on behalf of WikiDonne UG
--
*Camelia Boban*

*| Java EE Developer |*

WikiDonne chair & co-founder
Wikimedia Diversity Ambassador
*Affiliations Committee - **Wikimedia Foundation*

*Interwiki Women
 | **Wiki
Loves Sport  | Wiki Loves
Fashion *
WMIT  - WMSE
 - WMAR
 - WMCH
 - WMNY
 - WMDC
 - WMBE
 Member

M. +39 3383385545
camelia.bo...@gmail.com
*Aissa Technologies* * | *Twitter
 *|* *LinkedIn
*
*Wikipedia  **| **WikiDonne
UG * | *WikiDonne Project
 *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga]

Thanks Lisa,
It makes total sense.

Galder

From: Wikimedia-l  on behalf of Lisa 
Gruwell 
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2020 6:53 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge 
Equity Fund"


Hi all,


Thanks for the questions. We intend to announce the Knowledge Equity Fund in 
early 2021, once we have a bit more details and specifics worked out. However, 
we can share the overall intention today.


Some background: Our fiscal year runs from July through June, which means that 
the second half of last year was heavily affected by the unforeseen effects of 
the Covid-19 pandemic. Community events were canceled, hiring slowed, and we 
put work on pause while we responded to the changing circumstances. As a 
result, we ended the year with funds that were underspent, relative to what we 
had planned for the budget.


In May of last year, we were also planning for this current fiscal year and had 
very little insight about how fundraising would perform in this pandemic. 
People around the world were losing their sources of income, as unemployment 
soared. We worked with the board to plan for different scenarios, including if 
fundraising went really poorly.


As a general matter, when the budget is underspent, any remainder goes into the 
reserve. For accounting purposes, it cannot be carried over into the budget of 
a new fiscal year. Because we were concerned about the uncertainty of 
fundraising this year, we decided to set aside underspent funds from the past 
fiscal year, so that we could keep our commitment to our grantees even if 
fundraising fell short and also make progress on knowledge equity. (Good news: 
Fundraising ended up going a lot better than we expected when we were planning 
in the early months of this pandemic.  More to come on that.)


With the WMF board’s approval, we set up a US$8.7 million grantmaking fund at 
Tides Advocacy, which has two purposes: 1) Funding Annual Plan Grants (APG) to 
the affiliates this year and 2) Funding Knowledge Equity. We have been working 
with Tides since 2016 when we launched the Endowment. The relationship has gone 
well and they have a lot of expertise at administering grants internationally.


Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support 
community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants (APG) 
for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates for this 
year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also gives staff 
at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to make thoughtful 
grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who will be receiving 
funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement last summer. All other 
grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are still being 
funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a round of APG grants set to go 
out via Tides this week.


As the Audit Report FAQ states,[1] the remaining funds will be used to launch 
the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This new fund is in addition to the 
existing grants that are already available for the communities (Community 
Grants, Rapid Grants, Project Grants, and APGs) and does not impact the amount 
of funds in those grant portfolios.


Our goal is to use this fund to invest in new opportunities that increase the 
availability of free knowledge for marginalized people and counteract 
structural inequalities. Knowledge equity is a key pillar of the 2030 movement 
strategy, and this investment will help us to address some of the barriers 
preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge.


As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We are 
still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it will 
operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we go.


We’ll share more details in early 2021 about the Knowledge Equity Fund. We are 
excited to see what progress we can make for knowledge equity with this 
investment.


Thank you,


Lisa Gruwell


[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audits/2019-2020_-_frequently_asked_questions/id#This_year%E2%80%99s_report_says_that_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_provided_an_unconditional_grant_of_$8.723_million_to_Tides_Advocacy_for_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund._What_is_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund?


On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 12:35 PM Katherine Maher 
mailto:kma...@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
Hi folks,

Happy Sunday from San Francisco -- we've seen the questions 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lisa,

OK, so who in the Wikimedia movement is reviewing the funding applications and 
deciding where the money that Tides has been entrusted with gets spent?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 21:17, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
> 
> Hi Mike-
> 
> Thanks for the question.  The review and oversight that we will get from 
> Tides is nothing like the FDC review.  They will be looking at, for example, 
> "Is this grant supporting activity that is legal for a 501c3 to fund?"  It is 
> in no way a replacement for the work that the FDC or the Global Council would 
> do regarding grants.
> 
> Best,
> Lisa
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 12:55 PM Michael Peel  > wrote:
> Hi Lisa,
> 
> Isn’t this the oversight work that the WMF wanted to be able to do when it 
> changed from Wikimedia affiliates being able to fundraise directly to the FDC 
> process? Why has WMF chosen to outsource this to Tides rather than continuing 
> to do it in-house? And why does Tides now get to approve such grants, rather 
> than a community appointed committee?
> 
> FDC was a process that worked extremely well, and was discontinued for 
> obscure reasons. The Global Council approach that the strategy was heading 
> towards looked like it might be a good replacement. Outsourcing it to Tides 
> seems really bad.
> 
> Boldly creating a new fund for fellow organisations looks nice, but without 
> community involvement it’s a controversy in development.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
>> On 14 Dec 2020, at 20:11, Lisa Gruwell > > wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Chris-
>> 
>> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking 
>> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes 
>> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the grants,  
>> approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to the 
>> grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were to 
>> see one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to 
>> hearing their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and 
>> transparency requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making 
>> recommendations for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will 
>> play a similar role as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there 
>> will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your 
>> patience for the folks initiating this and trust that they will share more 
>> soon.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Lisa
>> 
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating > > wrote:
>> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some 
>> questions still.
>> 
>> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support 
>> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants 
>> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates 
>> for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also 
>> gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to 
>> make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who 
>> will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement 
>> last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project 
>> Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a 
>> round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>> 
>> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will 
>> Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what 
>> amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to the 
>> reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants? What is 
>> the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was abolished a 
>> couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any community-driven 
>> replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has gone into the 
>> implementation of the strategy?
>>  
>> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We 
>> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it 
>> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we 
>> go. 
>> 
>> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not previously 
>> heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million transfer 
>> without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there anything more 
>> that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund knowledge equity 
>> somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led process (maybe even 
>> involving the community), or will Tides be actually making recommendations 
>> about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are Tides going to adjust 
>> to the Wikimedia community's expectations about transparency?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Chris
>> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Lisa Gruwell]

Hi Mike-

Thanks for the question.  The review and oversight that we will get from
Tides is nothing like the FDC review.  They will be looking at, for
example, "Is this grant supporting activity that is legal for a 501c3 to
fund?"  It is in no way a replacement for the work that the FDC or the
Global Council would do regarding grants.

Best,
Lisa

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 12:55 PM Michael Peel  wrote:

> Hi Lisa,
>
> Isn’t this the oversight work that the WMF wanted to be able to do when it
> changed from Wikimedia affiliates being able to fundraise directly to the
> FDC process? Why has WMF chosen to outsource this to Tides rather than
> continuing to do it in-house? And why does Tides now get to approve such
> grants, rather than a community appointed committee?
>
> FDC was a process that worked extremely well, and was discontinued for
> obscure reasons. The Global Council approach that the strategy was heading
> towards looked like it might be a good replacement. Outsourcing it to Tides
> seems really bad.
>
> Boldly creating a new fund for fellow organisations looks nice, but
> without community involvement it’s a controversy in development.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On 14 Dec 2020, at 20:11, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
>
> Hi Chris-
>
> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking
> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes
> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the
> grants,  approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to
> the grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were
> to see one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to
> hearing their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and
> transparency requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making
> recommendations for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will
> play a similar role as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there
> will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your
> patience for the folks initiating this and trust that they will share more
> soon.
>
> Best,
> Lisa
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some
>> questions still.
>>
>>>
>>> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
>>> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
>>> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for
>>> affiliates for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising
>>> performed. It also gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time
>>> to work together to make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush.
>>> All affiliates who will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of
>>> the arrangement last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants,
>>> Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly,
>>> as usual. There is a round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>>>
>>
>> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or
>> will Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and
>> what amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change
>> to the reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants?
>> What is the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was
>> abolished a couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any
>> community-driven replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has
>> gone into the implementation of the strategy?
>>
>>
>>> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million.
>>> We are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how
>>> it will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as
>>> we go.
>>>
>>
>> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not
>> previously heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million
>> transfer without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there
>> anything more that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund
>> knowledge equity somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led
>> process (maybe even involving the community), or will Tides be actually
>> making recommendations about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are
>> Tides going to adjust to the Wikimedia community's expectations about
>> transparency?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Chris
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Lisa 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Lisa, that's very reassuring.

Again, I know there will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the
> new year.  I ask your patience for the folks initiating this and trust that
> they will share more soon.
>

I look forward to hearing more from those folks in due course. There must
be some more details circulating internally though? I'm guessing the Board
probably had more information than "$4.5M for Knowledge Equity, to be
specified" in front of them when they agreed the grant? (Not that these
questions are addressed to you personally...)

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Michael Peel]

Hi Lisa,

Isn’t this the oversight work that the WMF wanted to be able to do when it 
changed from Wikimedia affiliates being able to fundraise directly to the FDC 
process? Why has WMF chosen to outsource this to Tides rather than continuing 
to do it in-house? And why does Tides now get to approve such grants, rather 
than a community appointed committee?

FDC was a process that worked extremely well, and was discontinued for obscure 
reasons. The Global Council approach that the strategy was heading towards 
looked like it might be a good replacement. Outsourcing it to Tides seems 
really bad.

Boldly creating a new fund for fellow organisations looks nice, but without 
community involvement it’s a controversy in development.

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 20:11, Lisa Gruwell  wrote:
> 
> Hi Chris-
> 
> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking 
> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes 
> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the grants,  
> approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to the 
> grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were to see 
> one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to hearing 
> their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and transparency 
> requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making recommendations 
> for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will play a similar role 
> as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there will be more info on 
> the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your patience for the folks 
> initiating this and trust that they will share more soon.
> 
> Best,
> Lisa
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating  > wrote:
> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some 
> questions still.
> 
> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support 
> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants (APG) 
> for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates for this 
> year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also gives 
> staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to make 
> thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who will be 
> receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement last summer. 
> All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are 
> still being funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a round of APG 
> grants set to go out via Tides this week.
> 
> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will 
> Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what 
> amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to the 
> reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants? What is 
> the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was abolished a 
> couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any community-driven 
> replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has gone into the 
> implementation of the strategy?
>  
> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We 
> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it 
> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we go. 
> 
> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not previously 
> heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million transfer 
> without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there anything more 
> that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund knowledge equity 
> somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led process (maybe even 
> involving the community), or will Tides be actually making recommendations 
> about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are Tides going to adjust to 
> the Wikimedia community's expectations about transparency?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 
>  and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 
> 
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> 
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l 
> , 
>  ?subject=unsubscribe>
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell 
> Chief Advancement Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation  
> 
> ___

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Samuel Klein]

This is great to see.  Thank you for helping to ensure continuity of
support in a tense time.  SJ

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 3:11 PM Lisa Gruwell  wrote:

> Hi Chris-
>
> I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking
> the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes
> from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the
> grants,  approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to
> the grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were
> to see one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to
> hearing their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and
> transparency requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making
> recommendations for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will
> play a similar role as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there
> will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your
> patience for the folks initiating this and trust that they will share more
> soon.
>
> Best,
> Lisa
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating 
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some
>> questions still.
>>
>>>
>>> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
>>> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
>>> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for
>>> affiliates for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising
>>> performed. It also gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time
>>> to work together to make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush.
>>> All affiliates who will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of
>>> the arrangement last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants,
>>> Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly,
>>> as usual. There is a round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>>>
>>
>> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or
>> will Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and
>> what amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change
>> to the reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants?
>> What is the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was
>> abolished a couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any
>> community-driven replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has
>> gone into the implementation of the strategy?
>>
>>
>>> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million.
>>> We are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how
>>> it will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as
>>> we go.
>>>
>>
>> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not
>> previously heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million
>> transfer without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there
>> anything more that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund
>> knowledge equity somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led
>> process (maybe even involving the community), or will Tides be actually
>> making recommendations about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are
>> Tides going to adjust to the Wikimedia community's expectations about
>> transparency?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Chris
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation 
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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> 
>


-- 
Samuel Klein  @metasj   w:user:sj  +1 617 529 4266
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Lisa Gruwell]

Hi Chris-

I am happy to answer your questions about Tides.  No, Tides is not picking
the grantees.  The docket of grantees and the specific of the grants comes
from us.  Tides provides legal and administrative review of the
grants,  approves them, and processes the grants(i.e. wires the funding to
the grantees).  It is rare that there is ever a problem, but if Tides were
to see one, we actually appreciate the outside review and would be open to
hearing their reasons.  There is no change for the reporting and
transparency requirements for APG grants. Tides will also not be making
recommendations for the grants for the Knowledge Equity Fund.  They will
play a similar role as I described for the APG grants. Again, I know there
will be more info on the Knowledge Equity Fund in the new year.  I ask your
patience for the folks initiating this and trust that they will share more
soon.

Best,
Lisa

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 10:18 AM Chris Keating 
wrote:

> Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some
> questions still.
>
>>
>> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
>> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
>> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for
>> affiliates for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising
>> performed. It also gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time
>> to work together to make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush.
>> All affiliates who will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of
>> the arrangement last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants,
>> Rapid Grants, Project Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly,
>> as usual. There is a round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>>
>
> Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will
> Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what
> amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to
> the reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants?
> What is the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was
> abolished a couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any
> community-driven replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has
> gone into the implementation of the strategy?
>
>
>> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million.
>> We are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how
>> it will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as
>> we go.
>>
>
> Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not
> previously heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million
> transfer without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there
> anything more that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund
> knowledge equity somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led
> process (maybe even involving the community), or will Tides be actually
> making recommendations about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are
> Tides going to adjust to the Wikimedia community's expectations about
> transparency?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
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-- 

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Wikimedia Foundation 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedistas de Uruguay

[Camelia Boban]

Congratulations, happy to see you turning back inside the community.

Hugs,
Camelia

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 8:55 PM Esteban Zarate  wrote:

> Thanks Mehman, I write you as member of Wikimedistas de Uruguay user
> group. We are very happy to continue participating of the movement.
> Regards!!!
>
> El lun, 14 de dic. de 2020 a la(s) 16:01, Mehman Ibragimov (
> m.ibragimov@gmail.com) escribió:
>
>> Hi everyone!
>>
>> I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
>> [1] *Wikimedistas de Uruguay *[2] as a Wikimedia User Group. This is a
>> working group created at the initiative of former members of the official 
>> Wikimedia
>> Uruguay  chapter (which
>> stopped working in mid-2020) to which new people also joined. They wish to
>> promote access to content produced in Uruguay and its dissemination in
>> digital environments, rescuing our public domain, and promoting the use of
>> free licenses.
>> Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> *Mehman Ibragimov*
>>
>> *Vice-Chair, **Affiliations Committee*
>>
>>
>> [1]
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
>>
>> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
>> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedistas de Uruguay

[Esteban Zarate]

Thanks Mehman, I write you as member of Wikimedistas de Uruguay user group.
We are very happy to continue participating of the movement. Regards!!!

El lun, 14 de dic. de 2020 a la(s) 16:01, Mehman Ibragimov (
m.ibragimov@gmail.com) escribió:

> Hi everyone!
>
> I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
> [1] *Wikimedistas de Uruguay *[2] as a Wikimedia User Group. This is a
> working group created at the initiative of former members of the official 
> Wikimedia
> Uruguay  chapter (which
> stopped working in mid-2020) to which new people also joined. They wish to
> promote access to content produced in Uruguay and its dissemination in
> digital environments, rescuing our public domain, and promoting the use of
> free licenses.
> Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>
> Regards,
>
> *Mehman Ibragimov*
>
> *Vice-Chair, **Affiliations Committee*
>
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
>
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedistas de Uruguay

[Michael Peel]

Hi Mehman,

Could you share a summary of what happened to turn Wikimedia Uruguay into a 
user group, please?

Thanks,
Mike

> On 14 Dec 2020, at 18:49, Mehman Ibragimov  wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized [1] 
> Wikimedistas de Uruguay [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. This is a working 
> group created at the initiative of former members of the official Wikimedia 
> Uruguay  chapter (which 
> stopped working in mid-2020) to which new people also joined. They wish to 
> promote access to content produced in Uruguay and its dissemination in 
> digital environments, rescuing our public domain, and promoting the use of 
> free licenses.
> 
> Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
> 
> Regards,
> Mehman Ibragimov
> Vice-Chair, Affiliations Committee
> 
> [1] 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
>  
> 
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Research Showcase] December 16, 2020: Disinformation and Reliability of Sources in Wikipedia

[Janna Layton]

Just a reminder that this Showcase will be happening on Wednesday.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 11:22 AM Janna Layton  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed on Wednesday, December
> 16, at 9:30 AM PST/17:30 UTC, and will be on the theme of disinformation
> and reliability of sources in Wikipedia. In the first talk, Włodzimierz
> Lewoniewski will present recent work around multilingual approaches for the
> assessment of content quality and reliability of sources in Wikipedia
> leveraging machine learning algorithms. In the second talk, Diego
> Saez-Trumper will give an overview of ongoing work on fighting
> disinformation in Wikipedia; specifically, the development of tools and
> datasets aimed at supporting the discovery of suspicious content and
> improving verifiability.
>
> Youtube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Wcc-TeaEY
>
> As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You
> can also watch our past research showcases here:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
>
> Talk 1
>
> Speaker: Włodzimierz Lewoniewski (Poznań University of Economics and
> Business, Poland)
>
> Title: Quality assessment of Wikipedia and its sources
>
> Abstract: Information in Wikipedia can be edited in over 300 languages
> independently. Therefore often the same subject in Wikipedia can be
> described differently depending on language edition. In order to compare
> information between them one usually needs to understand each of considered
> languages. We work on solutions that can help to automate this process.
> They leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. The
> crucial component, however, is assessment of article quality therefore we
> need to know how to define and extract different quality measures. This
> presentation briefly introduces some of the recent activities of Department
> of Information Systems at Poznań University of Economics and Business
> related to quality assessment of multilingual content in Wikipedia. In
> particular, we
>
> demonstrate some of the approaches for the reliability assessment of
> sources in Wikipedia articles. Such solutions can help to enrich various
> language editions of Wikipedia and other knowledge bases with information
> of better quality.
>
>
> Talk 2
>
> Speaker: Diego Saez-Trumper (Research, Wikimedia Foundation)
>
> Title: Challenges on fighting Disinformation in Wikipedia: Who has the
> (ground-)truth?
>
> Abstract: Different from the major social media websites where the fight
> against disinformation mainly refers to preventing users to massively
> replicate fake content, fighting disinformation in Wikipedia requires tools
> that allows editors to apply the content policies of: verifiability,
> non-original research, and neutral point of view. Moreover, while other
> platforms try to apply automatic fact checking techniques to verify
> content, the ground-truth for such verification is done based on Wikipedia,
> for obvious reasons we can't follow the same pipeline for fact checking
> content on Wikipedia. In this talk we will explain the ML approach we are
> developing to build tools to efficiently support wikipedians to discover
> suspicious content and how we collaborate with external researchers on this
> task. We will also describe a group of datasets we are preparing to share
> with the research community in order to produce state-of-the-art algorithms
> to improve the verifiability of content on Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Janna Layton (she/her)
> Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
> Wikimedia Foundation 
>


-- 
Janna Layton (she/her)
Administrative Associate - Product & Technology
Wikimedia Foundation 
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[Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedistas de Uruguay

[Mehman Ibragimov]

Hi everyone!

I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] *Wikimedistas de Uruguay *[2] as a Wikimedia User Group. This is a
working group created at the initiative of former members of the
official Wikimedia
Uruguay  chapter (which
stopped working in mid-2020) to which new people also joined. They wish to
promote access to content produced in Uruguay and its dissemination in
digital environments, rescuing our public domain, and promoting the use of
free licenses.
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!

Regards,

*Mehman Ibragimov*

*Vice-Chair, **Affiliations Committee*


[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedistas_de_Uruguay
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[Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedians of the Uzbek language User Group

[Mehman Ibragimov]

Hi everyone!

I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
[1] *Wikimedians of the Uzbek language User Group* [2] as a Wikimedia User
Group. It is a regional user group representing all Wikimedians who speak
the Uzbek language, a Turkic language spoken in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in
Central Asia. The group aims to enrich Wikimedia projects in the Uzbek
language, particularly the Uzbek Wikipedia and Uzbek Wiktionary. As a
regional user group, it serves to encourage Wikimedians in Central Asia and
elsewhere to get to know each other, as well as foster support for events
in the region.

Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!

Regards,
Mehman Ibragimov
Vice-Chair, Affiliations Committee
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Wikimedians_of_the_Uzbek_language_User_Group
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_the_Uzbek_language_User_Group
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Donations - show the editors you care?

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi,

I'd just like to revive the point made by Pelagic in the post that started
this thread. I was just now once again presented with this banner wording,
"Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified information that their
work matters."

I find this wording very offensive, as it implies that the WMF is the one
doing that work of bringing the public "neutral and verified information" –
which it is not – and that the WMF should be given money to honour that
work.

I'd much rather the WMF were highlighting what *it* is doing in its
fundraising appeals. Surely this is not too hard to understand?

Andreas

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 1:37 PM Pelagic via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> [ Cross-posted from
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Donations_-_show_the_editors_you_care%3F
> ]
>
> I had the misfortune of visiting Wikipedia logged-out the other day, and
> was struck by the large size of the donation banner, and the odd wording of
> the appeal. (Something about awkward and humble.) Re-checking now, the
> "awkward" bit is gone, but the following sentences are still there:
>
> "If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge, take a minute to
> donate. Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified information
> that their work matters."
>
> As an occasional editor I want to know: how do the donations show me that
> the work matters? Is there some W?F "appreciation fund" that's going to
> start handing out disbursements to editors? Will the money hire more dev's
> to implement all the unfinished items from the Community Wishlists? Will
> funds be used to run better "community consultations" where the communities
> are actually listened to? Or is it just a big fat cynical marketing lie?
>
> [Add: okay, I get it that donation appeals have to phrased in a way that
> actually causes people to donate.  But this skates very close to implying
> that Wikipedia's editors are paid from donors' money.]
>
> Cheers,
> Pelagic
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Chris Keating]

Thanks Lisa. That statement makes a lot of sense, though I do have some
questions still.

>
> Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
> community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
> (APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates
> for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also
> gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to
> make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who
> will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement
> last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants,
> Project Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly, as usual.
> There is a round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.
>

Are Tides simply administering these funds at the WMF's direction, or will
Tides start to take over decisions about who gets these grants and what
amount different entities are eligible for? Has there been any change to
the reporting and transparency requirements that go with the APG grants?
What is the intention about how APG grants will work, since the FDC was
abolished a couple of years ago and there is unlikely to be any
community-driven replacement for it until at least a year or two's work has
gone into the implementation of the strategy?


> As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We
> are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it
> will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we
> go.
>

Funding knowledge equity sounds like a great idea, but I have not
previously heard of an organisation making an irrecoverable $4.5 million
transfer without knowing what that money will be used to fund. Is there
anything more that can be shared apart from "it'll be used to fund
knowledge equity somehow"? And as above - is this going to be a WMF-led
process (maybe even involving the community), or will Tides be actually
making recommendations about who and what is funded? If the latter, how are
Tides going to adjust to the Wikimedia community's expectations about
transparency?

Thanks,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund"

[Lisa Gruwell]

Hi all,

Thanks for the questions. We intend to announce the Knowledge Equity Fund
in early 2021, once we have a bit more details and specifics worked out.
However, we can share the overall intention today.

Some background: Our fiscal year runs from July through June, which means
that the second half of last year was heavily affected by the unforeseen
effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Community events were canceled, hiring
slowed, and we put work on pause while we responded to the changing
circumstances. As a result, we ended the year with funds that were
underspent, relative to what we had planned for the budget.

In May of last year, we were also planning for this current fiscal year and
had very little insight about how fundraising would perform in this
pandemic. People around the world were losing their sources of income, as
unemployment soared. We worked with the board to plan for different
scenarios, including if fundraising went really poorly.

As a general matter, when the budget is underspent, any remainder goes into
the reserve. For accounting purposes, it cannot be carried over into the
budget of a new fiscal year. Because we were concerned about the
uncertainty of fundraising this year, we decided to set aside underspent
funds from the past fiscal year, so that we could keep our commitment to
our grantees even if fundraising fell short and also make progress on
knowledge equity. (Good news: Fundraising ended up going a lot better than
we expected when we were planning in the early months of this pandemic.
More to come on that.)

With the WMF board’s approval, we set up a US$8.7 million grantmaking fund
at Tides Advocacy, which has two purposes: 1) Funding Annual Plan Grants
(APG) to the affiliates this year and 2) Funding Knowledge Equity. We have
been working with Tides since 2016 when we launched the Endowment. The
relationship has gone well and they have a lot of expertise at
administering grants internationally.

Our first priority was to ensure that we had enough funding to support
community grants. We transferred the full amount for Annual Plan Grants
(APG) for FY20-21 over to Tides to ensure that all funding for affiliates
for this year was secured, regardless of how fundraising performed. It also
gives staff at affiliates and the Foundation more time to work together to
make thoughtful grants, instead of an end-of-year rush. All affiliates who
will be receiving funding through Tides were informed of the arrangement
last summer. All other grantmaking (Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project
Grants) are still being funded through WMF directly, as usual. There is a
round of APG grants set to go out via Tides this week.

As the Audit Report FAQ states,[1] the remaining funds will be used to
launch the Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund. This new fund is in addition to
the existing grants that are already available for the communities
(Community Grants, Rapid Grants, Project Grants, and APGs) and does not
impact the amount of funds in those grant portfolios.

Our goal is to use this fund to invest in new opportunities that increase the
availability of free knowledge for marginalized people and counteract
structural inequalities. Knowledge equity is a key pillar of the 2030
movement strategy, and this investment will help us to address some of the
barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free
knowledge.

As of now, this is a one-time commitment of approximately $4.5 million. We
are still working on the specific initial objectives of the fund and how it
will operate. As a pilot initiative, we’ll be learning and adapting as we
go.

We’ll share more details in early 2021 about the Knowledge Equity Fund. We
are excited to see what progress we can make for knowledge equity with this
investment.

Thank you,

Lisa Gruwell

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audits/2019-2020_-_frequently_asked_questions/id#This_year%E2%80%99s_report_says_that_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_provided_an_unconditional_grant_of_$8.723_million_to_Tides_Advocacy_for_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund._What_is_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund?



On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 12:35 PM Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> Happy Sunday from San Francisco -- we've seen the questions on this list,
> and we'll reply tomorrow when folks are back at work. Thanks for your
> understanding!
>
> Hope everyone is staying well and safe,
>
> Katherine
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 5:36 AM Isaac Olatunde 
> wrote:
>
>> I agree with Dan. A question about this should have been directed to the
>> WMF and allow them to respond prior to raising it here (if 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 201, Issue 38

[Florence Devouard]

Hello


Still waiting for explanation. But wanted to point out that the 
statement from John below is a bit problematic to me.


Wiki in Africa has been under APG for a year now. At no point have we 
been informed of any changes that would involve a "Tides Advocacy" 
organization.


Note that I completely assume good faith and I trust everything will be 
right. I am not worried.


But must point out that... if the information was meant to be public and 
communicated to all APG orgs... then it was not.


Florence



Le 13/12/2020 à 16:56, John Andersson a écrit :

Hi,

All of the Annual Planning Grants (APGs) to Wikimedia affiliates are 
next year paid through Tides Advocacy. Wikimedia Foundation has 
communicated this change to all of us affiliates that are affected 
many months ago, and there is nothing secretive going on. Please 
assume good faith.


Best,

John Andersson
Executive Director
Wikimedia Sverige

Den sön 13 dec. 2020 13:02 > skrev:


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity
      Fund" (Christophe Henner)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:39:31 +0100
From: Christophe Henner mailto:christophe.hen...@gmail.com>>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF transfers $8.7 million to "Wikimedia
        Knowledge Equity Fund"
Message-ID:
mailto:w...@mail.gmail.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

It is the endowment.

Le dim. 13 déc. 2020 à 10:37 AM, Yair Rand mailto:yyairr...@gmail.com>> a écrit :

> No, the Wikimedia Endowment is a separate thing.
>
> -- Yair Rand
>
> ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 13 בדצמ׳ 2020 ב-4:18 מאת ‪Michael Peel‬‏ <‪
> em...@mikepeel.net ‬‏>:‬
>
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
 ?
>>
>> On 13 Dec 2020, at 08:33, Yair Rand mailto:yyairr...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> According to the recent Independent Auditors' Report of the WMF
[1], at
>> some point prior to the end of June 2020, an entity called the
"Wikimedia
>> Knowledge Equity Fund" was established, and $8.723 million was
transferred
>> to it by the WMF, in the form of an unconditional grant. The
Fund is
>> "managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy" (a 501(c)(4)
advocacy nonprofit
>> previously led by the WMF's current General Counsel/Board
Secretary, who
>> served as CEO, Board Secretary, and Treasurer there). Given
that a Google
>> search for "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" yields zero
results prior to
>> the release of the report, it is clear that the WMF kept this
significant
>> move completely secret for over five months, perhaps over a
year. The
>> Report FAQ additionally emphasizes that the WMF "has no right
of return to
>> the grant funds provided, with the exception of unexpended funds."
>>
>> The WMF unilaterally and secretly transferred nearly $9 million of
>> movement funds to an outside organization not recognized by the
>> Affiliations Committee. No mention of the grant was made in any
Board
>> resolutions or minutes from the relevant time period. The
amount was not
>> mentioned in the public annual plan, which set out rather less
than this
>> amount for the entire grantmaking budget for the year. No
application was
>> made through any of the various Wikimedia grants processes. No
further
>> information has been provided on the administration of this new
Fund, or on
>> the text of the grant agreement.
>>
>> I am appalled.
>>
>> -- Yair Rand
>>
>> [1]
>>

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf


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