Grants talk:Start/2019

Is there any annual report of WMF grants?

I would like to get a report which shows money distributed through the WMF grants program versus other categories.

• money by region (global north versus south, by continent or subcontinent, whatever)
• by thematic focus (if anyone does topic tagging like "women", "minority languages", whatever)
• by type of grant program (rapid, APG, project)

One specific question that I want to answer is the total amount of money which went from the WMF Grants program into India for whatever years there is data. Does anyone know if there are general reports, and specifically, where I can find grants info for, by, or about the region of India? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Hi Lane. We have some of this information available regarding breakdown by grant program and some thematic focus on Meta (i.e. gender-gap focused, funding that supports emerging communities_, see Community Resources/Grants spending analysis. Gathering information on funding to a specific country will take a bit more time. MJue (WMF) or Jtud (WMF), is it possible to gather this information? I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF), Jtud (WMF), and MJue (WMF): I do not want to put anyone out of their way for reports, but if there is information about India, then I would like it. Wikimedia India is on track for derecognition by AffCom and there is a request for numbers about WMF finance in India to the community and otherwise. If you can get information by Wikimania in August then people would discuss it in person there. If this is too much trouble, then it could also be useful for you to say so. The general desire here for members of Wikimedia India to learn about the relationship India has with the WMF in terms of money.

I am looking that that emerging communities report and how this is reported on the "grants spending analysis" page. Thanks for this - the choice of reporting percentage breakdowns of individuals, emerging, and gender gap is a good division which applies to most discussions which the Wikimedia community is having. As I look at this, I am wishing that all these grants could have Wikidata/Wikibase tagging so that it would be possible to query these and run reports.

About the "grants spending analysis" - I see that the talk page has no comments and there are 5 incoming links from public pages reported at Special:WhatLinksHere/Community_Resources/Grants_spending_analysis. I take this to mean that this page is not well known, especially for how important it ought to be in guiding the many strategy discussions we are having now. I might like to present this somehow, maybe in English Wikipedia's The Signpost after the Q4 numbers get posted. I will think about this, thanks for all the information. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:02, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

The WALRUS meetup last night discussed access to information about grant funding in the monthly meeting documented at WALRUS/July 2019 (notes in etherpad, to be transferred to meta soon). The context there was wondering how much money went to conferences, which is something that you already report, so thanks. There was a request for regional information, not about India, but in general.

Pine}, you said in that meeting that around 2016 you had seen a report breaking down grant allocations by region. Do you have more information about that? Even if it was a one-off I am interested. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:53, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I believe that at one time I saw a map which showed how much WMF grant funding was distributed per continent, but I cannot recall the year in which I saw that map. If a global map is not needed for your specific interest in India then I suggest that you request information about grant spending in India only, because this will probably be easier for WMF to research. My guess is that WMF would be willing to provide approximate totals for grant spending in each year for at least the past few years, with two important limitations: 1. funding for grants to individual people may need to be approximated or omitted in order to protect user privacy, and 2. some grants may be spent in or may effect multiple countries, such as if a Wiki Loves Monuments organizer used part of a WMF grant to travel from another country to India and stayed for a few days before departing. In addition to regular grant spending, you may want to ask for WMF for information about WMF spending in India that was done outside of the public WMF grants processes, such as for contracts with consultants, attorneys, or public relations organizations. --Pine (✉) 02:59, 13 July 2019 (UTC)