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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Grow Wikimedia language diversity by 5%

< Grants:Programs | Wikimedia Community Fund | General Support Fund
statusFunded
Grow Wikimedia language diversity by 5%
Fluxx IDG-GS-2409-17236
start date2025-01-012025-01-01T00:00:00Z
end date2027-12-312027-12-31T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)233080 USD
amount recommended (local currency)233080 USD
grant typeWikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
funding regionNA
decision fiscal year2024-25
funding program roundRound 1
organization (if applicable)Wikitongues, Inc.

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the web service of Wikimedia Foundation Funds where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

Applicant information

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Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)
Wikitongues, Inc.
Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)
Yes, I have already applied and received a General Support Fund
You are applying as a(n). (required)
Wikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)
Yes
Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
No
Fiscal organization name.
N/A
Please provide links to the following documents if they are available

These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.

  • Organizational website
  • Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
  • Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
  • Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan
- Website: https://wikitongues.org

Main proposal

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1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)
Grow Wikimedia language diversity by 5%
2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants)
Yes
2.1. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)

Our objective is to increase language inclusion across the Wikimedia movement by 5% in three years, maintaining the Wiki track of our Language Revitalization Fellowship. Each year, we will help five language communities establish or grow their Wikimedia presence, for a total of 15 language communities by Q2 2028. Therefore, our activities and budget in Years 1, 2, and 3 will be more or less the same. Our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan, which is attached to this application, includes program growth outside our core Wikimedia activities, but this growth will be externally funded.


3. Proposed start date. (required)
2025-01-01
4. Proposed end date. (required)
2027-12-31
5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
No
6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
Yes
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17cPPyfig9TYoIvNIGglMZkIbZADXt-bfI03bLsfbEEs/edit?usp=sharing
7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions)
Wikitongues is based in the United States, where our Executive Director lives and works. Our Programs Director is based in Finland. Our Wikimedian-in-Residence is from and has historically been based in Nigeria, but as of September 2024 she is also based in Finland. We support language projects on a global scale, with our primary operating countries changing from year to year. In 2024, we're actively supporting Wikimedia-driven language revitalization projects in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Peru, Australia, Nigeria, D.R. Congo, Ghana, and Pakistan. Since 2021, we have supported language revitalization projects in 27 countries. Since we were founded in 2014, we have crowdsourced language documentation from 116 countries, including open-license language documentation from 83 countries, which we have added to the Wikimedia Commons.
8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

By the Wikimedia Foundation’s own estimates, 320 languages, or 5% of every language in the world, are represented across the spectrum of Wikimedia projects. What would our movement look like if 5% became 10%, 20%, or more? By 2028, Wikitongues will grow Wikimedia’s language diversity by up to 5%, supporting the addition of 15 new languages to Wikipedia and its sister projects. At the same time, we will improve our operational stability by investing in sustainable revenue streams and reducing our long-term dependence on foundation grants. As we grow our impact, we will document our development process, creating fundraising templates for other chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups, contributing to the Foundation’s goal of making affiliates self-sustaining.

To prevent language extinction, Wikitongues invests in language activists, accelerates endangered language revitalization, and defends language diversity worldwide. In 2021, we launched a four-year pilot for the Language Revitalization Accelerator, a funded fellowship for rising language activists. Within that program, we designed a special track for activists using Wikimedia projects to keep their languages alive. With partial support from the Community Fund, we launched the final cycle of our Accelerator pilot in 2024 and published a new three-year strategic plan (2025-2028), which expands our mission to include storytelling, language rights, and language technology as program areas. The plan also refines our fellowship model to support up to 100 language projects per year—the average annual number of applications we received during the pilot period. Of these, we expect 5 projects per year, or 15 projects over three years, to center Wikimedia contributions.

As we put our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan into action, Wikitongues will be divided into four departments based on the program areas outlined in our mission: Language Revitalization, Language Rights, Language Technology, and Language Storytelling. Our Language Revitalization Department will maintain our expanded fellowship, as well as our toolkits, archive, Wikimedia User Group, and related community-facing projects. Our Language Rights Department will publish the first-ever report on the state of global language rights and pilot a framework for pairing activists with external pro-bono legal support, in order to challenge language rights violations or press for expanding language rights in their countries. (In these cases, Wikitongues will operate strictly as a facilitator between the activists and pro-bono legal teams.) Our Language Technology Department will publish annual reports on the state of language inclusion in tech, measuring the number of languages supported by critical platforms and tools, as well as the quality of support for each language. This department will also provide in-kind support to Wikitongues fellows with tech-forward revitalization projects. Lastly, our Language Storytelling Department will produce events and media that build public support for linguistic diversity and contribute to growing our audience or revenue.

In order to support up to 100 languages per year, the Wikitongues Fellowship will be divided into two tiers: 1) an intensive program with guaranteed funding, frequent staff support, and in-kind services for 15-45 fellows per year, and 2) a self-guided, peer-to-peer program with funding opportunities and limited staff support for 55-85 fellows per year. Both tiers will share an open application to which anyone can apply. We will choose fellows for the intensive tier by evaluating the strength and urgency of their initial revitalization plans, the extent to which their languages are endangered or under-resourced, and each project’s potential for wider community impact. For the most part, any applicant, including those not admitted to the intensive tier, will qualify for the peer-to-peer tier, as long as their language is endangered or under-resourced and they clearly understand the program’s parameters and purpose. After completing a self-guided curriculum, culminating with publishing a strategic plan for revitalizing their language, any peer-to-peer fellow will have an opportunity to re-apply specifically to the intensive tier, further advancing their work.

The Wiki track will be a special working group of the intensive fellowship, as it was during the Accelerator pilot’s 2023 and 2024 cohorts. Each fellow will receive the same as other intensive tier participants: guaranteed funding and one-on-one guidance as they progress through a curriculum about language revitalization, and specialized volunteer support based on their project needs. They will also be guided through a special curriculum based on the Wikimedia Language Toolkit, a free handbook for adding your language to Wiki, which we published earlier this year with the Language Diversity Hub. In group workshops and individual sessions with our Wikimedian-in-Residence, each fellow will be exposed to the Wikimedia movement landscape, determine which Wikimedia project is best suited for their community’s language needs, and learn the technical and process fundamentals of contributing to that project. We will support fellows through some of the bigger hurdles of mother-tongue Wikimedia contribution, like securing Language Committee recognition. In parallel, our User Group will organize up to two language-themed edit-a-thons per year and mediate our wider contribution to the Language Diversity Hub and other Wikimedia initiatives.

Our new strategic plan also includes a roadmap for achieving operational stability over the next three years, reducing our dependence on foundation grants. We’ll get there by increasing our YouTube channel’s earnings to $200,000/year, widening our base of small donations to account for a third of our overall revenue, and seeding an endowment large enough to generate about $100,000/year. We will maximize YouTube and our small donor base by investing in original content about our fellows and their languages, and seed an endowment by working with previous high-networth donors and targeting capacity-building grants. If successful, this strategy will fund our operations, core staff, and fellowship grants, reducing our need for foundation grants to support specific programs and research/development. As we improve our operational stability, we will document our successes and challenges, distilling our lessons into a template for other affiliates to build their own sustainable revenue streams, contributing to Wikimedia’s longevity.

9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)
Category Yes/No
Education Yes
Culture, heritage or GLAM Yes
Gender and diversity Yes
Community support and engagement Yes
Participation in campaigns and contests Yes
Public policy advocacy No
Other No

Education

9.1.1. Select all your programs and activities for Education. (required)
Editing Wikipedia Training, Translation, Wikidata programs, Wikimedia Commons programs, Other Wikimedia project programs
Other programs and activities if any: N/A
9.1.2. Select all relevant audience groups for Education. (required)
Other groups
Other groups if any: Language activists and rising Wikimedians from under-represented cultural groups; it is not uncommon for language leaders to be community elders or involved in education, so we may indirectly reach secondary school and higher education students, teachers and professors, and senior citizens.

Culture, heritage or GLAM

9.2. Select all your programs and activities for Culture, heritage or GLAM. (required)
Documenting or incubating languages on Wikimedia projects, Introducing new approaches to underrepresented culture and heritage, e.g. decolonising or reparative work; oral and visual knowledge; outreach to communities of origin, indigenous and first nations self-determination, Partnering with institutions, professional associations, and allied organizations to raise awareness of open culture, ethical sharing, and related issues, Other
Other programs and activities if any: We pair activists with institutions to build new archival processes and flows that support open collections for language materials.

Gender and diversity

9.3. Select all your programs and activities for Gender and diversity.
Focusing on creating content about marginalized (underrepresented) communities and their knowledge, Focusing on knowledge equity by bringing in contributors from underrepresented communities, Building organizer skills in women and diversity groups, Other
Other programs and activities if any: In rural communities, it’s not uncommon for women to be language keepers, so supporting language revitalization and language diversity efforts can lead to gender-diverse inclusion. As our Fellowship grows, we may set up a working group for women language activists to learn from one another as they navigate unique challenges in their cultural contexts. Beyond gender, the extent to which this work promotes cultural diversity and knowledge equity is, we think, self-evident.

Community support and engagement

9.4. Select all your programs and activities for Community support and engagement.
On-wiki training of community members, Off-wiki training of community members, Organizing meetups, conferences, and community events, Offering micro-funding and other financial support to community members , Offering non financial support and services to community members (equipment, space, books, etc.)
Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Participation in campaigns and contests

9.5. Select all campaigns that apply. (required)
Art+Feminism, Wikipedia Asian Month, Wiki Loves Folklore, Wiki Loves Women, WikiGap, Wikipedia Birthday or Anniversary, Other
Other programs and activities if any: In 2024, we organized a contest for language and linguistics contributions to Wikipedia and its sister projects, which exceeded our expectations. Over this three-year period, we hope to establish at least one lasting campaign that incentivizes contributions about and in different languages.
10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)
The following document can also be found as an appendix to our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/191qB2FC05zqrgHzHHmD_dhDKNsWNc2ffKULRE7HCoIY/edit#heading=h.4s7nr1wpuxdu

11. Describe your team. (required)

Governing Board:

We’re currently building the third generation of our board by adding members who represent subject areas and industries that are directly relevant to our mission. In addition to our co-founders Daniel Bögre Udell and Frederico Andrade, our board has four members: Kamal El-Wattar, a philanthropist, nonprofit leader, and former translation industry professional, Aleksandra Przegalinska, an AI researcher at Harvard and Kominski University in Poland, Darío Maestro, a human rights lawyer, and Joe Maceda, a PR and content strategist. Aleksandra was also the keynote speaker at Wikimania 2024. We will continue to add new members over the next three years, with an emphasis on representation from South Asia, Africa, and Indigenous America.

Current FTE Staff:

1. Daniel Bögre Udell (@bogreudell) will continue to serve as our Executive Director. He will:

  • Own the organization’s strategic vision; lead R&D
  • Own fundraising, development and storytelling/PR
  • Spearhead and manage fundraising, development and storytelling partnerships
  • Mediate between the Governing Board, Advisory Board, and Staff
  • Evaluate impact/effectiveness of programs and senior staff
  • Verify financial statements, ensure legal compliance, and manage budget projections

2. Kristen Tcherneshoff (@ktchernes) will continue to serve as our Programs Director. She will:

  • Own the organization’s mission; lead programs design and implementation
  • Own the Annual Report on the State of Global Language Rights
  • Own census of global language revitalization projects
  • Evaluate effectiveness of junior staff and interns
  • Spearhead and manage programs-level partnerships
  • Support junior staff, interns, and volunteers as needed
  • Support revitalization fellows, as needed

Current Part-time Staff:

3. Tochi Precious (@Tochiprecious) will continue to serve as our Wikimedian-in-Residence. She will:

  • Own the Revitalization Fellowship’s Wiki track
  • Run relevant events, produce relevant materials, and support fellows as needed
  • Mediate between Wikitongues and the rest of the Wikimedia movement
  • Own Wikitongues User Group events, like edit-a-thons
  • Ensure WMF compliance

Between 2025-2028, we will add the following part-time and FTE roles, in order of priority:

Archival intern (Part-time):

  • Own video and other miscellaneous intake
  • Maintain and improve metadata for existing videos
  • Evaluate the archival collection for better curation (implement with Tech Director)

Social Producer (Initially part-time, FTE as needed):

  • Own original short-form video content for YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram
  • Support the Executive Director in the production of long-form video essays
  • Work with the Executive Director and Programs Director to define the org narrative

Language rights intern (Part-time):

  • Own research for the Annual Report on the State of Global Language rights

Technology Director (FTE):

  • Own the Wikitongues website and back-end tech (archival automations, web crawling)
  • Own ingestion process with archival partners (like Library of Congress)
  • Own the Annual Report on the State of Language Diversity in Tech
  • Support archival and tech interns/volunteers, as needed
  • Support tech-focused revitalization fellows, as needed

Fellowship Coordinator (Part-time):

  • Own the overall Revitalization Fellowship
  • Run relevant events, produce relevant materials, and support fellows as needed

The following staffing needs will be met by firms, agencies, or independent contractors:

  • Accounting and bookkeeping
  • Philanthropy prospecting and prospects management outside staff scope of work
  • Additional design and web/software development outside staff scope of work
  • PR—designing/managing targeted ad and outreach campaigns, etc

Advisory Board:

This Wikitongues Advisory Board is a volunteer committee of field experts who support our staff in program development and implementation. It includes: Satdeep Gill, Senior Program Officer in the Culture and Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation, Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, linguist-in-residence for the Barngala language reclamation program in Australia; Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla, a Hawaiian language activist and linguist at the University of British Columbia; Sarah Bunin Benor, who leads the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College; Scott Rohrer, a software engineer at Flatiron Health in New York City; and Natalie Milbrodt, University Archivist at the City University of New York and former director of the Queens Library Queens Memory Project.

Interns, Volunteers, and Contributors:

In addition to the paid internship programs described above, Wikitongues is powered by unpaid, for-credit interns and volunteer contributors throughout the year. The exact number changes from year to year, but we typically have up to five (5) project-specific volunteers and interns, and up to 180 volunteer contributors to our language archive. These numbers do not include our User Group or editors to Wikipedia and its sister projects.

12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)

In growing language diversity across Wikimedia, we hope to inform ongoing efforts to understand how to best measure progress to that goal. Right now, it’s easy enough to count languages across projects that are sorted by language, like Wikipedia, but it’s difficult to evaluate the quality of representation; and how to count languages across content sandbox projects, like Commons, is unresolved. Beyond that, Wikitongues is the fiscal sponsor and an observer member of the Language Diversity Hub (LDH). Per our fiscal sponsorship agreement, we can’t contribute directly to developing the LDH strategic plan, but we will support their operations and when possible, collaborate internally with other LDH members, like Wikimedia UK, Lingua Libre, the WMF Education Team. There is also representation from Wikimedia Norway, Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, and the Wikimedia Language Committee, among other affiliates and WMF teams. Externally, we will maintain our partnerships with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, which supports grassroots linguistics, 7000 Languages, which supports the creation of education technology for language revitalization projects, and NABU, which supports mother-tongue literacy programs around the world. We also maintain an archival partnership with the American Folklife Center at the U.S. Library of Congress and a handful of other GLAM institutions around the world. Beyond these ongoing relationships, we have worked closely with the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College to document critically endangered Jewish languages, adding language resources to Commons. Lastly, we are developing a partnership with OpenBabylon, an AI/LM nonprofit. Through this partnership, we would provide specialized support to activists expanding AI/LM tools to their languages.

13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required)
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Ensure Equity in Decision-making, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Innovate in Free Knowledge

Metrics

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Wikimedia Metrics

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14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)
14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.

All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.

Participants, editors, and organizers
Metrics name Target Description
Number of all participants 255 These participants will either be members of our fellows’ Wikimedia teams or participants in campaigns and events (like edit-a-thons) hosted by our User Group. These metrics are based on our 2024 output and will be reevaluated in Q3 2025.
Number of all editors 300 These editors will either be members of our fellows’ Wikimedia teams or participants in campaigns and events (like edit-a-thons) hosted by our User Group. These metrics are based on our 2024 output and will be reevaluated in Q3 2025.
Number of new editors N/A
Number of retained editors N/A
Number of all organizers N/A These organizers will be the fellows of our fellowship's Wiki track, the leaders of newly included language communities, with the potential to lead growth on Wikipedia, Commons, and any other Wiki project.
Number of new organizers 15
14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)
Contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project Created Edited or improved
Wikipedia 5000 15000
Wikimedia Commons 400
Wikidata 6000
Wiktionary 500
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator 21 5
Translatewiki 1000
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia
Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)


Other Metrics

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15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)
Yes
Other Metrics Description Target
Languages added to Wikipedia In the form of active incubator versions or newly approved Wikipedias; target to be determined by the composition of our biannual fellowship cohorts, up to 15. N/A
Languages added to Commons In the form of mother-tongue media samples; target to be determined by the composition of our biannual fellowship cohorts, up to 15. N/A
Languages added to Wikidata In the form of lexemes; target to be determined by the composition of our biannual fellowship cohorts, up to 15. N/A
Languages added to Wiktionary In the form of mother-tongue word entries; target to be determined by the composition of our biannual fellowship cohorts, up to 15. N/A
Languages added to Wikisource In the form of mother-tongue documents and incubator versions; target to be determined by the composition of our biannual fellowship cohorts, up to 15. N/A

Budget

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16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)
Yes
16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)

So far, our projected revenue is equivalent to 72% of the Year 1 budget. Multi-year support from the Wikimedia Foundation would fulfill the remaining 28% in our immediate fundraising gap and contribute to about 20% of our overall three-year budget, giving us a strong foundation to execute our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan and pursue development strategies that gradually reduce our need for foundation grants. Below are confirmed funding sources for our Year 1 budget:

  • 2024 surplus: we are projected to end the 2024 fiscal year with a $50,000 surplus.
  • Board contributions: board members serve 18-month terms and have a give/get fundraising commitment of $12,000/term, or $8,000/year. This amounts to about $40,000/year in value, although some board members meet their goal through in-kind contributions. For the 2025 fiscal year, the board has committed to raising at least $24,000 in cash.
  • Foundation Grants: the Ittleson Foundation and May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation have committed $37,500 to Wikitongues in 2025.
  • Other revenue: an individual donor has committed $20,000 to Wikitongues in 2025.
  • Small donors: individual contributions totaled $40,397 in 2023. This was consistent with previous years, so we can safely project $40,000 in individual contributions in 2025.
  • YouTube ad revenue: our YouTube channel generates around $7,000/year in ad revenue and is projected to generate at least that much in 2025.
16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)
386000
17. Your local currency. (required)
USD
18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)
233080 USD
Multi-year funding request summary
Year Amount (local currency)
Year 1 72500 USD
Year 2 77575 USD
Year 3 83005 USD
19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required)
Yes
19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.

3
19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)

Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.

0 - We will have 2 FTEs during this proposal period, but only a portion of their salaries will be covered by this grant.
19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)
As described above, we will add new FTE, part-time, and contract-based positions in 2025-2027. Our Technology Director will improve the user experience of our website, driving small donor conversions, maintain our back-end archival tools and process automations, and provide technical and partnerships support to tech-focused revitalization fellows. Our Social Producer will work closely with our Executive Director to implement our storytelling objectives, creating accessible original content about our fellows, driving our growth on YouTube and other strategically relevant platforms (TBD). Our Fellowship Coordinator will support our Programs Director and WIR. Our paid archival interns will support the intake and distribution of new linguistic resources, and our paid language rights interns will contribute to our reporting on the subject. We also plan to contract development professionals to ramp up our external fundraising, powering programs outside this proposal and seeding an endowment. Depending on the results of our end of year fundraising, we may not be able to hire development professionals until 2026. As outlined in our attached budget, this proposal only covers part-time compensation for our Wikimedian-in-Residence and partial support for our Executive Director and Programs Director FTE salaries. The remaining portions of these FTE salaries and compensation for our other staff will be funded externally.
20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).
Budget category Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs 60360 USD
Operational costs 0 USD
Programmatic costs 10716 USD
21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)


Additional information

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22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)

Wikitongues fights for every language to be celebrated, respected, and institutionally supported. 7,000 languages are spoken or signed today, but as many as 3,000 languages could disappear in a generation, erasing half of all cultural, historical, and ecological knowledge. Language extinction is not inevitable. With the right mother-tongue resources, adults can learn their ancestral languages and teach the next generation, keeping their knowledge alive. In a word, language revitalization is possible. Sadly, a majority of endangered languages are also under-resourced, so the grassroots creation of mother-tongue materials is both a method of safeguarding cultural knowledge and a critical first step to language revitalization. Therefore, mother-tongue contribution to Wikimedia projects represents a valuable opportunity for global language revitalization efforts. With fewer than 5% of the world’s languages represented across WMF, that potential remains largely untapped; and considering the extent to which every language encodes knowledge, there is a gap in our movement’s mission to protect and disseminate the sum of human knowledge on a global scale.

In 2021-2024, we successfully piloted infrastructure for language revitalization, including dedicated support for under-resourced language communities to make Wikimedia contributions. In doing so, we facilitated the contribution of 20 new languages to Wikipedia and its sister projects. Among them, Nigeria’s Igala language now has an active Wikipedia, the Angika language of India has an oral knowledge corpus on Commons, and nearly 2,000 lexemes from Indonesia’s Banjar language have been recorded for Wikidata. Drawing from our fellows as case studies, we published the Wikimedia Language Toolkit, a guide for adding your language to Wiki, and contributed to research by the Language Diversity Hub (LDH) on the roadblocks to mother-tongue Wikimedia contribution. Now, after nearly four years of well-tested impact, we’re ready to refine our model. By helping an additional 15 language communities establish or grow their Wikimedia presence, we can build a replicable framework for reliably increasing language inclusion. In expanding our set of case studies, we can also help answer some of our movement’s most pressing questions about language diversity: How do we count languages across all projects? How do we reconcile cultural subjectivity with objective truth as our linguistic landscape grows? How do we guarantee quality governance without unnecessarily impeding the momentum of fledgling projects in under-resourced communities? In answering our questions and streamlining our approach to supporting new Wikimedians, we can help the foundation set ambitious, long-term language goals over a generation. As we have already asked: what would Wikimedia look like if it represented a majority of every language in the world?

The annual sum we’ve requested for 2025-2027 is about 25% larger than our previous one-year project proposals to the Wikimedia Community Fund. We want to make clear that, in asking for more than is typical for year-over-year funding increases, we’re not seeking to establish an unsustainable growth pattern. Historically, we have sought smaller grants for targeted projects, representing a lower share of our overall budget and activities. Now, we’re seeking a baseline of stable operating support as we implement an ambitious, multi-year plan to advance a core tenet of the Wikimedia mission: safeguarding the sum of human knowledge across the global cultural spectrum. Our proposed budget therefore includes funding for the core staff and non-staff costs of growing language diversity on Wikimedia by up to 5%: part-time support for our Wikimedian-in-Residence, funding for our Wiki track fellows, and partial support for our Executive Director and Programs Director. With that degree of security in place for the next three years, we can begin to pursue the long-term, stability-building fundraising/development strategies described earlier in this application and in our attached development plan, making it possible for us to reduce our dependency on foundation grants over time. In fact, this grant’s annual percentage share of our overall budget will decrease from 28% in 2025 to 15% in 2027. By 2028, we will cultivate stable revenue streams that support 100% of our operational costs and a portion of our core staff costs—making our next multi-year proposal a smaller percentage share of our overall budget.

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback

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