Matt Vetter, professor of English, has been awarded a $66,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation for a new international initiative designed to help Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates collaborate and secure external funding for free knowledge projects.
The project, titled “Strengthening Wikimedia Communities Through Shared External Grantmaking Knowledge and Collaboration,” is co-led by Brett Buttliere, assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. Together, the team will develop resources, training programs, and collaborative networks that help Wikimedia communities identify and pursue grants from governments, foundations, research agencies, and other external funding organizations.
“Wikimedia communities around the world have tremendous expertise and innovative ideas, but too often they lack the financial resources needed to bring those ideas to life,” said Vetter. “Our project is about helping these communities navigate the broader funding landscape so they can access opportunities that extend beyond Wikimedia’s internal community resources.”
The initiative responds to a growing challenge within the free knowledge movement. As Wikimedia communities continue to expand worldwide, demand for funding has grown faster than the resources available through internal sources . Rather than increasing competition for limited funds, Vetter’s project seeks to broaden the overall funding ecosystem by connecting contributors with external opportunities and fostering partnerships across countries and institutions.
The project will establish a publicly accessible database of relevant funding opportunities, host monthly virtual learning sessions and networking events, organize presentations by successful grant recipients, and provide mentoring for Wikimedia contributors developing proposals. The team also plans to serve as a collaborative “clearinghouse,” helping match potential partners across regions and disciplines to strengthen applications for large, multi-institutional grants.
“Our goal is to make grant-making knowledge something that is shared rather than siloed,” Vetter said. “When communities collaborate instead of competing, they can build stronger international partnerships and ultimately bring more resources into the free knowledge movement.”
This award marks Vetter’s third major Wikimedia Foundation grant in recent years, following Developing Wikimedia Impact Metrics as a Sociotechnical Solution for Encouraging Funder and Academic Engagement and The State of Science and Wikimedia: Who Is Doing What, and Who Is Funding It?. The new initiative also builds upon previous collaborations between Vetter and Buttliere focused on developing tools and metrics to strengthen Wikimedia’s impact within higher education and scientific research.
Over the course of the project, the team aims to engage approximately 200 participants worldwide, establish new partnerships between Wikimedia communities and funders, support the development of multiple grant proposals, and build long-term capacity for sustainable funding across the movement. Resources developed through the project, including the grant opportunity database and training materials, will be made openly available via a Creative Commons license.
Vetter is a free-knowledge advocate and a long-time Wikimedia volunteer. He made his first edit to Wikipedia in 2011 and has taught hundreds of students and professors how to improve the online encyclopedia over the last 15 years. He has also served on various Wikimedia committees, most recently the Regional Funds Committee for North America and the Global Distribution Resource Committee. He is cochair, with Jennifer Johnson, of the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative, a project that works to improve representation of writing studies in the encyclopedia.
To learn more, please visit the project proposal page on meta.