Project grants
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Project grants (£5–250) or Partnership Funding (£250 and upwards) |
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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 to do some outreach? An essential piece of equipment that will help your Wikimedia activities? We might be able to help. We can provide microgrants of between £5 and £250 that help improve or facilitate your editing or outreach activities on any Wikimedia project. You need to be a member of Wikimedia UK to apply for a microgrant - but if you're not one already, then it's easy to join! We've made some examples available to give you some ideas. Submit your application here!
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What are microgrants for?
Below are some ideas for how you might use a micro-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.
Travel funds
Travel funds to get to conferences, events, museums, archives, libraries, etc.
Potential purposes:
- To do outreach
- To carry out research
- To take photographs of specific objects
- To investigate partnership possibilities (e.g. between Wikimedia and museums)
The microgrant 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 traveling in first class.
Books and other information sources
Potential purposes:
- Making information in a book available in Wikipedia articles (with citations)
- Digitizing and making the books available on Wikisource and/or Wikimedia Commons (if the material is not copyrighted)
Please check whether the book is available from your local libraries. In some circumstances you might also be able to achieve the result you want by consulting the book at the British Library or another copyright library.
Wikimedia UK will retain ownership of the books, and you will need to keep them safe to pass on in future.
Equipment
Potential purposes:
- 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.
Potential purposes:
- 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.
Things to avoid
Things that won't be considered include:
- Anything that does not fit in with our objectives
- Anything that could be done independently/for free without having a microgrant
- 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 microgrants
wikimedia.org.uk. We will then place it on the applications page without your name associated with it.
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 microgrant before, then you need to go through the complete process before applying for another.
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!
Decision making
Applications will be reviewed by a member of the Wikimedia UK Board (currently Mike Peel). 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.
In some cases, for instance if your application is particularly novel, the decision may be escalated to the WMUK board, which means that it may take a little longer to have a decision.
Using the grant
Once a grant is approved, you have a budget of up to the amount specified. You can either ask us to purchase the approved items for you using that budget, 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 completed the tasks that the microgrant enabled, then you should make a brief (1-2 paragraphs long) report on what the funds were used for, and what the benefits were, on the report page. In this report, you should provide evidence of the benefits (e.g. link to new articles and diffs), and mention any useful strategic contacts with organizations/individuals.
If your microgrant activity lasts over a year, then you should report yearly on the progress that has been made.
Wikimedia UK will do an annual audit (at the start of each calendar year) to track objects purchased through a microgrant.