EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Through diverse projects[1] including Wikipedia, and the support structure of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia community is mobilized around the belief that free knowledge — free access to information and the ability to learn in your own language — is a human right. Since the beginning of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Grantmaking Programs, this belief and a shared set of values such as Transparency, Accountability, Stewardship, Shared Power, and Internationalism have informed the distribution of over $15 million dollars invested in the evolution of the international Wikimedia movement.
This report is a comparative review of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking practices, situating the work of the Foundation within a larger field of practice in philanthropy called Participatory Grantmaking[2]. As authors of "Who Decides?: How Participatory Grantmaking Benefits Donors, Communities, and Movements[3]," The Lafayette Practice[4] (TLP) found that Participatory Grantmaking is an effective and impactful strategy for resource distribution. Simultaneously — and perhaps more importantly — we found that Participatory Grantmaking is a powerful movement building strategy, increasing movement resources of not only money but also knowledge and self-determination.
| ...we found that Participatory Grantmaking is a powerful movement building strategy, increasing movement resources of not only money but also knowledge and self-determination. |
In 2014, The Lafayette Practice conducted new research on the Wikimedia Foundation to provide a first ever, in-depth insight into the Foundation's unique grantmaking practices in the context of this philanthropic strategy.
The Wikimedia Foundation is innovative and groundbreaking in its application of Participatory Grantmaking at — by far —the largest scale we have seen, in terms of both collective participation and distributed funds.
- We found that Wikimedia Foundation grantmaking is the largest known Participatory Grantmaking Fund. WMF Grantmaking exceeds any of the eight funds documented in the "Who Decides" report. In our original study, which did not include the WMF, the highest documented
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