Grants talk:Programs/Hub Fund/North American Hub 2025-26

This is a revision of an earlier submission

This grant application (Grants:Programs/Hub Fund/North American Hub 2025-26) is revised from this one a couple of months ago: Grants:Programs/Hub_Fund/North_American_Hub_2025 One administrative change is that the submitter had been the user group WCNA. In this one, the submitting group is the new NA Hub which hereby made its new appearance in the Fluxx system. Other changes: the schedule is delayed two months, to give time for the grant submission to be evaluated and decided upon before any activity is promised; and the fiscal sponsor will be Hacks/Hackers, not WMDC as before; and the budget is increased to enable the NA hub to have more support staff. There was some further thinking through of the Central Notice proposal, which may now focus on preliminary design not necessarily implementation. There is some uncertainty there, but we do want to propose it; it could be a big win, and I wrote up slides to explain my understanding of it. I am able and willing to discuss these changes and topics with interested people. -- econterms (talk) 20:27, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Microgrant Processing Labor (e.g. Reimbursing Pizza Money)

One thought after reading the revised grant proposal re this line: "We will establish a small grants program with awards generally from $50-1000."

I'm a big fan of having "pizza money" for events in the movement. But having moved and received small amounts of money with some frequency inside the wikimovement and out, as microgrants and otherwise, it will cost more than $50 of labor to process $50 worth of microgrant, so I recommend setting the minimal for a true microgrant with reimbursement at something like $250.

That being said, Hacks/Hackers uses Brex, which can create temporary/disposable credit cards with all sorts of restrictions and budgets. One option would be to create these for local user groups when they need a credit card. This is obviously harder when someone is paying for something in cash. But for better or worse, the U.S. is moving to a largely cashless economy. And even for local snacks, Instacart means we can order without having a card present.

$15,000 total seems a bit modest for a whole year and geographic area, depending on what the goal of the microgrants are, and how ambitious you want the applicants to be to be. Given that the Foundation has stated it ideally would want something in the hub space to take over the NA Rapid Grants (up to $5,000 each), it seems like that muscle is one the hub should trying to build.

Jenny8lee (talk) 08:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Decision on North American Hub Proposal

Dear North American Hub team,

Thank you for your grant resubmission. We also received your WikiCon North America 2024 report, which was submitted on May 26, 2025, and see that it is currently under review.

Decision: We commend the improvements that have been made, including clarifying the problem and strategies you propose utilizing, hiring staff to manage services, rescoping the microgrant funding envelope to a feasible quantity, and defining an interim governance process. However, the initial feedback was not adequately addressed, and other challenges in the proposal remain; therefore, the decision is not to move forward with hub pilot funding at this point in time.

Rationale:

Insufficient regional engagement and buy-in

The primary reason we do not believe the hub is ready for piloting yet is due to insufficient regional engagement and buy-in. Beyond the research in 2023-4 and the endorsements (mostly from 2024), we can’t find evidence that the hub and its pilot plans were co-developed with the communities it seeks to represent on a regional level.

In particular, it’s not evident that communities outside of the US – Caribbean, Mexico, Canada – were adequately involved in co-leadership and co-design of this hub, nor is there evidence of the steps taken to collaborate and define plans that are desirable and representative of communities beyond those in the US.

As noted in our initial feedback, we want to better understand why some groups did not endorse the hub, and to what extent this reflects active opposition versus limited engagement or disinterest. At the moment, it seems the initiative is mainly spearheaded by the two US Wikimedia Chapters – WMNYC and WMDC – and other Wikimedia groups, even from within the US, as well as from other countries in the region, are not as present or involved as they could be. While we do not expect high levels of engagement from all parts of the region at this early stage, we do expect to see evidence that all communities who would potentially benefit from the hub were given a clear and accessible opportunity to engage. We have received feedback that this was not the case.

Given that the current engagement methods have not led to diverse regional commitment and endorsement, the proposal does not make clear what new approaches would be used to build this engagement after the hub is formed. Ideally, the proposal includes a plan for involving groups that are not yet part of the hub initiative and making their voices heard. Without the buy-in and co-leadership of communities within and outside the US, this initiative cannot yet be considered a regional hub. Moving forward with a pilot under these conditions risks creating community tension and further fragmentation.

Lacking scope and plan for the proposed microgrant program

Beyond representative buy-in and participation, other areas not adequately addressed in the revised proposal were the microgrants and metrics.

We certainly see value in regional management and decision-making of grants, and in line with the principle of subsidiarity, we envision rapid funding to be managed at a more local or regional level in the future. However, we have concerns about the management and decision-making processes for this microgrant program, given the US-centric composition of the hub’s driving team, delays in prior grant reporting and communication, an absence of a proposed process for review and decision-making, and unclear roles and responsibilities for the microgrant program within the team. Additionally, it is not clear how this microgrant program would interact with existing microgranting programs that support the region, such as those with Wikimedia Canada and Art+Feminism.

Regarding metrics, we do not see any changes to the metrics defined, which is a crucial element for piloting. The pilot’s success depends on how well it meets its stated targets.

No WMF support available for Central Notice tooling

Finally, we consulted a wide array of stakeholders across the Wikimedia Foundation to deliberate on the Central Notice tooling and communications proposal.

Coinciding with your proposal, the Wikimedia Foundation has been establishing a more rigorous review process for technical grant proposals in an effort to improve resource planning, accountability, and responsible maintenance of tools. A key part of this review process is ensuring that a Wikimedia Foundation tech team is able to act as an internal steward of this project in case of any issues, dependencies, or impact on existing infrastructure. Considering the proposal in this light, our Product & Tech department was not able to find a team that could commit to stewarding this project due to a lack of capacity and other priorities taking precedence in the next fiscal year. They believe this project requires coordination on deployment and maintenance support that can not be offered at this time.

There are other avenues to continue engaging in the problem space of helping people find events and collaborate. Ilana Fried, the Product Manager for the Campaigns team, is making it easier for people to find events, WikiProjects, and on-Wiki collaborative activities. Ilana is open to collaborating with you if this is of interest.

Summary and next steps:

While the plan and the problems addressed have merit, hub piloting for a North American Hub requires regional co-leadership and participation from a diverse set of communities beyond a given country, language, and demographic.

Suggested next steps:

• Hub: Improve cross-regional communication to gain buy-in. This includes but is not limited to: welcoming people into the decision-making and leadership space; ensuring people have the opportunity to participate; supporting accessibility (e.g., language); and building trust through open dialogue, listening to feedback, staying organized, and following through on commitments. Instead of creating a plan and asking who would be willing to join, co-create the plan together from the start.
• Central Notice: If you are interested in collaborating with Ilana and the Campaigns team, let us know and we can facilitate the connection.

- SPatnaik (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback.

I understand why the proposal for improving central notices is not feasible, and why there may be concerns about the overlap with the Canadian micro-grant program. I was just hoping to clarify, as representative for the Bay Area Wikipedians User Group (proposed user group, and one of the most recently founded in the US), that there was extensive consultation with local groups and contributors, going back to Summer 2024 at least. It was discussed at nearly all monthly NARWHAL meetings. Wikimedia Canada was involved as well in all meetings I attended.

The only reason we did not endorse the NA Hub again is that the core ideas were present last Fall and we did not know the date at which we added our endorsement would be scrutinized. But we participated extensively in the writing, rewriting, meetings, etc, up to submission. There is community support and involvement way beyond WMDC and WMNYC. E mln e (talk) 00:04, 20 June 2025 (UTC)