Project grants

Grants Project grants (£5–250) or Partnership Funding (£250 and upwards) Scholarships Evaluation Panel

Do you have an idea for a project? Is there a rare book you need for your Wikipedia article research? A location that you need to get to for a vital piece of information, or an organisation you want to work with? An essential piece of equipment that will help your Wikimedia activities? We might be able to help. Wikimedia UK’s volunteer grants support volunteers to complete activities which benefit our strategic goals. We provide small amount of funding for individuals or teams to work on: Open knowledge creation (e.g. starting or editing Wikimedia projects) Build volunteer community or work with other Open organisations Encourage institutions to put information or images online under an open licence. Raise awareness of open knowledge Technological innovations You need to be a member of Wikimedia UK to apply for a project grant - but if you're not one already, then it's easy to join! We've made some examples of past projects available to give you some ideas. Please contact us if you want to learn more or talk through an idea with us, or you can submit your application here!

What are project grants for?

Below are some ideas for how you might use a small project grant. This list is not intended to be complete, so if you don't see what you're thinking about here don't let that stop you from putting in an application.

• Supporting Wikimedia-related events: Venue hire for an appropriate venue, where necessary, Internet access costs, tea/coffee, biscuits, sandwiches.

  Events should be widely publicised to encourage participation. Wikimedia UK is happy to help publicise events, though there is much you can do to publicise the event yourself, for instance by using a Geonotice.

• Travel funds: We can subsidise travel to conferences, events, museums, archives, libraries, etc. if it's related to Wikimedia outreach, carrying out research for an article, taking photographs which will be uploaded to Commons of specific objects, and to investigate partnership possibilities (e.g. between Wikimedia and museums).

  The project grant could cover train fares, bus tickets, private car journeys at HMRC rates or lower (45/p mile for the first 150 miles, 25p/mile thereafter), ferry journeys, etc. It may also cover low-cost accommodation and registration fees. It will not, however, cover taxis or travelling in first class.

• Books and other printed sources: Making information in a book available in Wikipedia articles with citations, or digitizing and making the books which are out of copyright available on Wikisource and/or Wikimedia Commons.

  Please check whether the book is available from your local libraries. If a copy isn't available locally, some libraries are prepared to arrange inter-library loans.

  Wikimedia UK will retain ownership of the books, and you will need to keep them safe to pass on in future.

• Equipment: Microphones for recording audio Wikipedia / Wikinews / etc. articles, Scanners for scanning in books and other documents, cameras for intensive work photographing collections / locations, video recorders for recording events and locations

  Applications should also consider insurance and extended warranties to ensure longer useful lifetimes for the objects. Wikimedia UK will retain ownership of the equipment.

Does this idea require than just equipment or expenses?

As an established charity in the cultural and education sector, we have good contacts and a track record of building relationships and working in partnership with institutions and applying for external funding to support projects.

Does your project idea have any natural partnership institutions? Could it achieve more, reach more people and have greater impact with more funding and staff support?

If so, let us know and we could connect this with existing contacts or help start new partnerships.

Things to avoid

Things that won't be considered include:

• Anything that does not fit in with our published Strategic goals
• Anything that could be done independently or for free without having a project grant
• Website hosting (although webspace can be provided if needed by other means)

Process

Please submit your application via the applications page. The template will tell you what information we need from you.

If you don't want your name publicly associated with a request, then please email it to us at grantswikimedia.org.uk. We will then place it on the applications page without your name. You need to be a member of Wikimedia UK to apply for a grant - but don't worry if you aren't, as you can always join for just £5! You should only have one application in progress at any one time (although there is no limit to how many applications you can put in over time). If you have not had a project grant before, then you need to go through the complete process before applying for another.

Decision making

Applications will be reviewed by the Grants Committee. Wherever possible this will be done transparently on the applications page. If clarification of the application is needed, this will be done interactively on the wiki.

Using the grant

Once a grant is approved, you can either ask Wikimedia UK to purchase the approved items for you, which can then be posted to you, or you can purchase the approved items yourself and use our expenses form to claim the money back.

Reporting

Once you've achieved the aims of the project grant, then you should make a report on the outcome(s) at the bottom of the application page. The report only needs to be a few sentences long and should provide evidence of the benefits such as a link showing article improvements or whether there were any useful strategic contacts with organisations/individuals.

If your project grant activity lasts over a year, then you should report yearly on the progress that has been made.

Any equipment or books purchased through a project grant belong to Wikimedia UK and once the project the grant supported has come to a conclusion the property should be returned to Wikimedia UK. The charity will do an annual audit (at the start of each calendar year) to track objects purchased through a project grant.

Things to avoid

Things that won't be considered include:

• Anything that does not fit in with our published Strategic goals
• Anything that could be done independently or for free without having a project grant
• Website hosting (although webspace can be provided if needed by other means)

See also

Grants on Meta.