Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2024-2025/History
The Annual Plan draft is now available. Translations are underway. |
The Wikimedia Movement adopted the Strategic Direction in 2017. Changes in the world around us make this direction more relevant than ever. This year, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue anchoring its work in the strategic direction and focus on supporting the Wikimedia movement to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge.
In 2020, our movement adopted a set of movement strategy recommendations, and over the past 4 years we have collectively made progress towards many of them. As we approach 2030, we will continue to iterate on new approaches that help us position the movement to serve as the infrastructure of free knowledge beyond 2030. Alongside the Movement Strategy initiatives that have been in the Foundation and other affiliates' plans since 2020, here are a few examples of the significant multi-year initiatives to respond to movement strategy recommendations:
- We have taken significant steps towards Increasing the Sustainability of our Movement, by among other things, better recognizing volunteers, growing support for underrepresented communities, and developing Wikimedia Enterprise as a long-term revenue generation initiative.
- We have made progress towards Providing for Safety and Inclusion by co-creating with the movement a Universal Code of Conduct and global Enforcement Guidelines, as well as enhancing our commitment to supporting the Human Rights of our volunteers and readers.
- We have been Investing in Skills and Leadership Development in the movement with co-created initiatives like Let's Connect and WikiLearn.
Clarifying movement roles and responsibilities moving forward
We continue to identify ways to Ensure Equity in Decision-Making and clarify roles across the movement. The Movement Charter has been proposed to define future roles and responsibilities in the movement for better coordination and stronger impact. Since 2021, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) has drafted the text, grappling with the inevitable challenges that face a movement of our size and complexity. In June 2024, the charter will undergo a community vote.
In alignment with the principles of subsidiarity and efficiency, the Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to sharing and transferring responsibilities that other movement entities are better equipped to own. The Foundation has benefited from direct engagement with the MCDC and conversations with many stakeholders around the world to inform and shape its perspectives on future responsibilities.
Independent of the outcome of the Charter ratification vote, the Foundation believes there are immediate steps that need to be taken today to make progress towards the 2030 goals. We are already preparing these functions to be overseen jointly with volunteers. Sustained change takes time, and to do it well, we need start making these structural changes now:
- Participatory resource allocation - In 2020, we created the Regional Funds Committees to advise the Foundation on regional resource allocation and make funding decisions about community grants. This year, we will ask the committees to partner with the Foundation to advise on regional allocations, bringing us closer towards participatory resource allocation and ensuring greater equity in grants decision making.
- A pilot Product and Technology Advisory Council - This concept builds on the existing Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology Committee and follows the Technology Council's movement strategy initiative. This year, we will try out a pilot to review and advise the Wikimedia Foundation's Product and Technology work.
- Improved Affiliate Strategy - In the previous year the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustee liaisons worked with the Affiliations Committee, affiliates, and Foundation staff to improve the Wikimedia Foundation Affiliate Strategy. This year, we will take forward the learnings and answer some key questions from the process.