Verksamhetsplan 2025

Denna sida är för närvarande under omarbetning, hjälp gärna till. Denna mall tas bort när sidan är klar.

<< 2024

Operational overview

Wikimedia Sverige’s (WMSE) operations are expected to increase in 2025 compared to 2024. In 2024, we were forced to reduce both our staff size and our operations due to increased financial risks, which prompted us to refocus our work: we scaled up our work towards fundraising, public policy advocacy, and international hub efforts to support the 2030 Strategic recommendations for the Wikimedia movement. In 2025, we will continue building on this preparatory work.

The fundraising work has been partly successful and several long-term project grants have been secured. Thanks to this, we are now able to again increase the size of our team. This is despite the fact that funding for the years 2025–2027 from the Wikimedia Foundation is expected to stay at the same level as the funding received in 2024, with only the inflation adjusted in line with the IMF rate. It is unfortunate that Movement funding does not allow for expansion of affiliate work, but the long-term nature of the funding provided is very positive as it gives our association time to invest in increased fundraising work over a number of years. The Wikimedia Foundation's funding is expected to reach approx. 42.5% of the budget for 2025, maintaining its place as our largest individual funder.

We will put a lot of effort into increasing the association's visibility, and run several campaigns to attract donations and members with the purpose of raising more financial resources in the medium and long term. This work has still to show its potential but considering the preparations and heavy investments made in 2024, we are optimistic. We will also continue to invest heavily in our work on developing project applications. The multi-year effort to secure long-term and stable financing is still the top priority of the year with a significant increase in investments happening.

The funding from Wikimedia Foundation through the Wikimedia Community Fund allows us to cover costs that are very hard to secure from external sources. This includes the costs of (1) the day-to-day running of the association: office costs, member management, administration, finances, staff management, weekly staff meetings and staff training, (2) the well-established, small, and multi-year projects and initiatives that lack a suitable external funder, (3) of developing grant applications and the self-funding that is nearly always needed to secure an external grant, and (4) donor and membership recruitment.

The flexible and stable funding from the Wikimedia Community Fund is what allows us to fundraise successfully each year. Arguably, it is this core funding that enables us to execute the projects and deliver measurable and tangible results, e.g. the Core Metrics.

In 2025, we plan to expand our team with three key hires.

We are planning to hire an Event Manager, a junior part-time position, to reduce workload for existing team members. This role will primarily support the projects funded by the Wikimedia Community Fund. It is designed to support our outreach and engagement activities to improve the effect of work already underway, similar to the work done by our communication staff.

As we have secured a couple of large grants, each requiring extensive reporting, we will also hire a Controller, a part-time position, to support the administrative team. This role should allow the C-level team to be able to refocus more efforts towards securing new strategic partnerships and funding and to deliver on the existing projects. If the Controller function is a good fit for our organization we should, in future years, be able to take on more grants from e.g. EU funds, as well as take on coordinating and fund distributing roles in larger aid projects. These are opportunities that we have identified, but have stayed clear from to date as our team has been too small.

We will also hire a new software developer to work on an externally funded project. Additionally, their expertise will add capacity and competence that will be of value for other parts of our work in the coming years.

To support our fundraising work we will continue our experimentation with short-term hires for member and donor recruitment through face-to-face (F2F) fundraising – also known as canvassing. We hope to rehire a couple of canvassers who have worked for us previously.

We plan to engage three different contractors, two from outside of Sweden, in our work to deliver results in strategic areas throughout the year. They will focus on international partnerships, developing e-learning material and community engagement respectively.

Introduction to Wikimedia Sverige

Wikimedia Sverige is a non-profit association working to ensure that all people have free access to humanity's collected knowledge.

Among other things, we contribute by helping for example archives, museums and UN agencies to reach out with their material through the Wikimedia platforms. We support both experts and the general public to start sharing their knowledge by providing them with training and different types of support. We also support the existing volunteer community who improve Wikipedia and the other platforms to be able to do it more easily and with higher quality. As it is of central importance to us that more people with different backgrounds can participate and share knowledge, we work actively with diversity in several ways.

Above all, we work together with others, for example public agencies, museums, other associations and volunteers. Our organization changes society: experimenting is central to us as there is no ready-made success template.

The association is a local, legally independent chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs some of the world's largest knowledge repositories, including Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. The goal of our work is to work to spread copyright-free knowledge to as many people as possible. Our members direct our work.

The association also contributes to the development of the software behind Wikipedia. For example, we have developed a speech synthesizer for Wikipedia, making it possible for those who search for knowledge in it to also listen to the articles. Better digital accessibility and the ability to consume knowledge in different ways is essential for our platforms to stay relevant. We are also building and improving various tools to make it easier for volunteers and partner organizations alike to contribute.

We work to ensure that the internet continues to evolve to make free knowledge possible. This includes working on legislation and contributing to ethical AI.

All our work aims to achieve our vision: "Free knowledge for a better world. To help people and organizations create and support free knowledge, and make it easily accessible for all."

The 2025 Annual Plan is based on these priorities and constraints. It also describes what is required in terms of supporting resources, systems and practices to meet these high goals. The objectives, milestones and tactical priorities that will guide our work in 2025 are presented below.

Strategy

Wikimedia Sverigeʼs four-year strategy was adopted at the Annual General Assembly on 24 April 2021 and the chapter's work has since shifted towards fulfilling the new strategic direction. The programs are divided into 11 strategic areas. How much focus each strategic area gets will vary from year to year and is determined, among other things, by how the different strategic areas contribute to and build on each other; what financial resources have been secured; what skills our staff, board members, volunteers and association members have; what partnerships have been established, etc. The intention is to gradually expand the work to more areas each year. In 2025, preparatory work for the new strategy for 2026–2030 will be done.

Access		Use
The chapter shall work to ensure that information that is of broad interest is made open and easily accessible, linked together and refined.	The chapter shall work towards a societal change, where increased access to free knowledge is facilitated by practical means and thus becomes the norm.	The chapter shall provide volunteers and users with tools and opportunities to contribute to and ensure qualitative information.	The chapter shall contribute to improving the user experience on the Wikimedia platforms.	The chapter shall work towards giving all volunteers equal opportunities to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms.
Community		Enabling
The chapter shall support existing communities. The chapter's work shall be financially sustainable.	The chapter shall help create new communities.	The chapter's work shall be operationally sustainable.	The chapter shall collaborate with new partners and actors.	The chapter's work shall be based on and contribute to learning and monitoring what's happening in the world.

Program

Based on the strategy for 2021–2025 we have divided our work in four programmatic areas to tackle different challenges:

Program	Access	Use	Community	Enabling
Description	Where more material is being shared on the Wikimedia platforms.	Where we work to get more people to use the material and to gain knowledge about it.	Where we support our active volunteers and grow and diversify the group.	Where we ensure that our association is working well and keeps developing in a number of areas.

The year's main objectives

The main objectives for the year, for each of the four programmatic areas, are described below. While the work we are doing in each program is not limited to the points outlined, they correspond to where we chose to invest the most resources this year.

Access

The work with the Access program has three main areas of focus for the year: improving and expanding content on the Wikimedia platforms, work with influencing the legislative process through lobbying and opinion building, as well as furthering the development of the Thematic hub for content partnerships and its governance.

Using WCF funding, we are expecting to develop a number of internationally oriented external project applications. Our preparatory work with the Content Partnerships Hub, and with earlier initiatives such as Connected Open Heritage, FindingGLAMs and WikiGap, has positioned us well for a number of large Swedish funding bodies. Our previous work in two large projects focusing on public policy advocacy has also opened up the opportunity to join new projects in 2025. We have, or aim to, secure funding for a total of eight different externally funded projects during the year, most of them spanning several years. The WCF funding also covers the costs of developing new consultancy agreements with our GLAM partners.

A significant part of the externally funded projects in the Access program will cover part of the costs for the initiatives we are experimenting with as part of the Content Partnerships Hub. WCF funding will be used as part of self-funding and/or to cover the costs of writing the applications. This includes work specifically targeting heritage at risk (with Wikimedia Ukraine and other Wikimedia organizations from the CEE region), as well as, possibly, work done together with the Ministry for Foreign affairs. The latter is a suggested new area of cooperation, as the Ministry is no longer supporting the continued organization of the WikiGap initiative due to changing political priorities. The remaining externally funded projects are mainly focused on public policy advocacy, or are consultancy work with specific unique and valuable collections that we believe would greatly benefit the Wikimedia platforms and communities.

Main objective: Ensuring use and follow-up of the content from our partners to maximize value of our joint efforts

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 11.4 and 16.10 and 17.17.

Through our long-term partnerships with the main players in the cultural heritage sector in Sweden, we have contributed many tens of thousands of unique and educational media files to Wikimedia Commons and made thousands of improvements to Wikidata. Experts from the organizations have created numerous articles, and we are frequently invited to join different research projects and activities they organize. Many of the GLAM institutions have been member organizations of Wikimedia Sverige, providing financial support for our work and, more importantly, demonstrating a deep commitment to our shared mission.

As the requests for content partnerships have outgrown our capacity, we made a strategic decision to shift our focus. Instead of our staff providing introductory training, we aim to to focus on what we already have and scale that part of the work to maximize the impact. That includes following up on older partnerships to ensure that we e.g. have the most up to date material from them (otherwise we will upload new higher resolution media files and/or improve the metadata), finding new collections that we can work on uploading together, and organizing activities to ensure that the material is being used on the Wikimedia platforms.

A valuable side effect of this approach is that it gives us the opportunity to ensure that GLAM institutions are aware and understand the benefits of becoming an organizational member of our association, as well as that they consider us partners when applying for grants and other funding opportunities.

Focus in 2025

The primary focus this year will be on reconnecting with partner organizations that we have worked with previously and following up on their uploaded collections. We will reach out to them and present them with a report for their institution, outlining the visibility of their collections on the Wikimedia platforms. In connection to the release of the report, we will request updated files and data from them. We will develop a priority list based on the responses and when we see a strong interest and dedication we will also request new collections focusing specifically on content on underrepresented groups, such as LGBTQI and the Sami population.

We will also finalize a Wikidata upload of metadata of queer literature that we have previously identified and initiated work around. Our new Event Manager will organize activities that ensure that the material is being used across the Wikimedia platforms. We will also initiate the development of a few new, potentially larger, initiatives to improve articles connected to cultural heritage and/or GLAM institutions, especially those that could be under threat.

The work with our partners that we have been doing for many years to increase their understanding of the possibilities of working with the Wikimedia platforms has borne fruit – especially in the GLAM sector, where organizations now have a good understanding of the value of working with Wikimedia Sverige. We can see that the predominant interest from partner organizations is in more technical matters rather than basic training and workshops. Through the outreach funded by the WCF grant we will, to a limited extent, provide contractors who work with mass uploads and linked open data. We will only take on such tasks if they also help us fulfill other parts of our strategy. We will continue developing a clearer value for organizations to become members of the association.

Even though WCF funding will not be focused on providing staff training to our partner organizations this year, we are intending to participate frequently at conferences and give presentations in different contexts. This will help to ensure that there is a broad understanding of the opportunities that the Wikimedia movement provides. Through our self-funded work with the e-learning modules we should be able to still offer training for the GLAM staff. Through the WCF funds we have the opportunity to investigate the interest in the learn.wiki platform and promote it to our partners.

Main objective: Successfully closing a chapter on copyright legislation and opening new ones to protect our volunteers and platforms

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 9.5, 9.B, 9.C and 10.2, 10.3, and 16.10, 16.B.

At the moment, there is extensive work being done on several legislative matters in Sweden and the European Union that are of utmost interest to us. Wikimedia Sverige has established a clear profile and has been recognized for its efforts, and is receiving more and more frequent invitations to participate in various legislative contexts.

Over the past decade, and especially since the implementation process of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, our representatives have strategically engaged in advocacy work to try to represent the voices of internet users. This group is often underrepresented in the Swedish legislative process. This distinctive approach has positioned us as a respected and unique voice in Sweden.

Our input to government agencies, policymakers and politicians has been valued and significantly influenced various legislative issues, especially in the area of copyright. Fortunately, Wikimedia Sverige was one of only 14 organizations that were trusted to nominate an expert to a governmental public inquiry on this issue. We were the only organization representing the civil society sector. The inquiry’s report focused on exceptions and limitations to copyright, a topic we have prioritized. This marks a significant step towards increasing the flexibility of Swedish copyright law, one of the most important since the turn of the millennium. In 2025, we are reaching the end-point of this work as new legislation is to be proposed.

At the moment, the Swedish government is in the process of turning the report into a bill. With the experience, deep understanding and insights into the arguments of both allies and opponents that we have gained through the investigative process, Wikimedia Sverige is once again in a unique position when it comes to the opportunity to influence the legislative process. In particular, this applies to the possibility of coordinating with allies and like-minded actors. The report is roughly 400 pages long, written in heavy, legal language, and contains complex proposals. We will thus have a decisive opportunity, almost a responsibility, to share our insights and experiences with others. In this way, we can lower the barriers for other like-minded organizations to make their voices heard in the legislative process, to ensure a user-friendly, research-focused law.

There is a need to educate both elected politicians, civil servants and the general public about these issues and encourage them to actively support our positions. In this pivotal time in copyright legislation we believe that it is crucial (and an opportunity!) to activate more engaged volunteers and partners in our work.

Focus in 2025

To engage more volunteers and partners in supporting our work we are engaging a new staff member, an event manager, to support the work.

In the first half of the year, our focus is on public policy advocacy towards legislators to ensure that the newly adopted laws create the best possible conditions for free knowledge, and that they are easily understood by the general public so that crowdsourcing efforts are possible. We will reach legislators both by organizing events aimed at them and through individual meetings, as well as actively communicating our work in the media to build public opinion in line with our positions.

The volunteers of the Wikimedia movement will be crucial for this work, which is why it is important that we create opportunities for them to engage, discuss and steer the work. Clear and consistent communication from the community has the potential to significantly amplify the message to the legislators. To support this, we will invest in organizing meetings, workshops and spaces for the volunteers to contribute and engage.

Over the past decade, our work with public policy advocacy has demonstrated the power of working together with like-minded organizations. We are aiming to continue building upon the existing networks we currently engage with and lead. We are also planning to develop new networks in policy areas that are rapidly gaining importance for us and the wider Wikimedia movement, such as legislation around AI and text and data mining (TDM). This is a high-priority area for us, as we have a large externally funded project focusing on improving digital accessibility through the use of machine learning models and collecting data needed to achieve ethical AI.

Even though our main focus is on Swedish legislation, we expect to continue liasoning with both the Wikimedia EU and the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We will also continue our collaboration with Creative Commons to build engagement around a new UNESCO recommendation on cultural heritage (the TAROC initiative). Among other things we will explore whether we can use our established contacts within UNESCO to put this on the agenda.

Main objective: Taking steps to formalize the Content Partnerships Hub initiative to support content partnerships globally

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 11.4, 11.5 and13.3 and14.A and 15.5 and 16.10 and 17.6, 17.8, 17.16, 17.17, 17.18.

One of the key outcomes of the Global strategy recommendations for the Wikimedia movement was the intention to develop a number of different hubs across the world. Two types of hubs were envisioned: Regional hubs that support organizations and volunteers in a certain geographical area (for example, a Central and Eastern European Hub), and Thematic hubs that support organizations and volunteers in a certain area of expertise (for example, a hub that supports content partnerships globally). An example of the latter is the Content Partnerships Hub (often referred to as the GLAM Hub). Wikimedia Sverige has been working on establishing it for several years.

The idea of the Content Partnerships Hub is that it will provide the infrastructure needed to strengthen the collaborations between the Wikimedia movement and organizations that have valuable material for educational purposes, and who want to share their knowledge with the public through the Wikimedia platforms. This includes, for example, museums, archives, libraries, academia, public agencies and intergovernmental organizations such as UN agencies. The development of this Thematic hub is part of the association's contribution to fulfilling the global strategy recommendations for the Wikimedia movement. Our hope is that, as a well-organized medium-sized Wikimedia affiliate, this groundbreaking initiative will make it cheaper and easier for other affiliates to plan, design and implement effective content partnerships.

The different programmatic areas of the Hub are building on preparatory work initiated in 2019, following a needs assessment that led to experimental projects in a few selected areas. These experiments helped us develop a clearer understanding of opportunities for both our organization and the broader Wikimedia movement. As a direct response to the Wikimedia Foundation’s changing priorities and needs, we changed the main areas of focus for our experimentation two years ago. The work has allowed us to successfully investigate a number of areas, see for example:

1. The White paper developed as a final deliverable of the project Content Partnerships Support 2021.
2. The final report for Capacity building in the Content Partnerships Hub.

We have now reached a milestone in our multi-year plan where we are ready to initiate work around governance issues and start to structure how the future hub will be governed together with other Wikimedia affiliates, including the formation of an international steering committee.

However, we anticipate further delays in securing significant funding for the Hub, as donations to the Wikimedia Foundation have decreased and the Movement's financial development is facing major financial challenges. In response to this challenge, we will have to work actively with external financing and push our own funds to cover the costs in the coming years.

Focus in 2025

In the second half of 2024, it became clear that the Wikimedia Foundation is shifting its priorities in regards to the types of hub projects it will fund. The experimental projects that were the focus of last year are no longer within their scope. As a result, the Content Partnerships Hub's capacity boost initiative, which was proposed by WMSE on July 4, a few days before this change was communicated, did not receive funding. The application process itself has also changed, now requiring two or more affiliates to apply together as a hub, rather than individually. This means that before an application can be submitted, a steering committee has first to be established to jointly decide about submitting the application and its focus. We expect that forming a steering committee and jointly deciding the focus of the new application for hub funding will take time. The goal is to deliver an Hub application to WMF in Q2, aiming for a project launch in Q3. In the meantime, WMSE will fund a few experimental programmatic initiatives that have been initiated as suggested parts of the future Content Partnerships Hub. We are planning to use funds from Wikimedia Sverige’s own newly established Strategic Fund (consisting of returns and savings from our strategic reserves as directed by the board). We also received a supplementary grant from WCF to hire a staff member or a consultant to work on the governance work.

The WCF-funded work will focus on establishing a governance structure for the Hub and the money from the strategic reserve will be used for continued experimentation in the three areas listed below. We are focusing on these areas as they have been very successful to date according to both our own evaluation and the feedback received, and because we see significant opportunities for external funding. We strongly believe that it is essential to continue experimenting in key focus areas. Pausing now could harm progress, as it would waste opportunities, make us lose momentum, or incur high costs to restart the work at a later point. These experiments will allow us to establish a concrete plan for the Hub as we can build routines, demonstrate the real value of our initiative, and get a realistic estimate of the costs, as well as connect other organizations and volunteers to the project. Work on other aspects of the Hub will be put on hold and we will prepare documentation for the new steering committee outlining the opportunities and limitations identified in all areas where we have experimented to date. During the year, we will continue the governance work for how the Content Partnerships Hub will be managed. We will organize workshops and working groups for this purpose and, based on the concepts we have developed, create detailed plans and establish the necessary structures. We hope that the areas of work that we have experimented with during the last few years can serve as a basis for developing a vision, mission and goals as well as a framework for how the management of the hub should be done. This includes making decisions on power distribution, designing a democratic engagement/decision-making system, funding structures (how financial resources should flow to and from the hub from both other Wikimedia organizations and external funding sources, including WMSE’s potential role as a fiscal sponsor) and on cooperation with other hub initiatives on e.g. policy development. To support the work we intend to utilize our strong network of universities and research institutions. They will both provide us with interns for translation work as part of their translation studies programs (we have already initiated a partnership with the WikiFranca hub around this) as well as to investigate possible joint research projects to better understand specific needs or opportunities around content partnerships.

The three areas of continued experimentation are focusing on:

1. Providing practical support with content partnerships to other Wikimedia organizations and volunteers. We have launched a service function, what we call a Helpdesk, where members of the Movement can request our staff's help with implementing successful content partnerships. The Helpdesk is supported by an international Expert Committee that provides guidance and helps us decide what to prioritize. In 2025, we will relaunch the Expert Committee and prepare the establishment of so-called Working Groups consisting of experts from other Wikimedia affiliates. A detailed funding plan for this will be developed with other affiliates, which will be useful for the MSIG application and for different external grants.
2. Developing materials to enable capacity building focused on content partnerships. We are building a stronger Movement by developing and compiling resources that support Wikimedia communities, especially those that are new and still developing. Requests to the Helpdesk are guiding our priorities. We will actively contribute material to the Learn.wiki platform and the Let’s Connect initiative. We see great progress with the possibility to compile existing material in a structured way on our experimental platform Metabase.
3. Developing content partnerships with UN agencies and other intergovernmental organizations. We support global collaboration and content partnerships with international organizations, such as the United Nations. Many of the organizations have enormous amounts of highly valuable content and knowledge. We choose to focus on so-called high impact topics to create interest and link our work to the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals: gender, biological diversity and crises. Using the WCF funding, we will focus on developing concrete joint initiatives with the UN agencies that we have partnered with. This includes mass upload of content from the agencies, training for their staff, participation at UN conferences and events, formalizing partnerships with e.g. MoUs, contracts and agreements. We will also work to link more affiliates to local efforts with UN agencies and to raise the possibilities of collaborating on various Wikimedia events.

To supplement the work of the Content Partnerships Hub we will actively use WCF funding to seek project funding from external funders.

Use

The main work in the Use program is funded through a large multi-year external grant. The grant will allow us to work in a number of ways to improve the usability of the Wikimedia platforms for people with disabilities. The WCF funding is used to co-fund the project and thus instrumental in securing the external funding. While WCF funding only accounts for approx. 5% of the funding, the project will nevertheless be one of the largest parts of our operations in 2025–2027. As such, we feel that a basic familiarity with our objective for the project is essential to understanding our overall plans for this period. The application will be available at this link when the project formally starts.

Main objective: Opening up for more people to contribute to and use Wikispeech to improve engagement and improve digital accessibility

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 4.5, 4.A and 10.2, 10.3 and 16.10, 16.B.

The work on Wikispeech has been on hold for a few years due to limited external funding. However, we secured the necessary funds to restart the work in the last quarter of 2024. The external grant is the largest one Wikimedia Sverige has ever secured, totaling more than 1,050,000 USD for a 36 month long project. The project brings together partners from academia, companies and, most importantly, the leading disability organizations in Sweden who will help guide the work. The funding will allow us to continue working on Wikispeech for years to come. WCF funding serves as our required co-financing in this project.

The funding body, the Swedish Inheritance Fund (Swedish: Allmänna arvsfonden), is one of Sweden’s largest civil society funds. They primarily support projects that benefit people with disabilities, children, youth and young adults, as well as senior citizens. Historically, our projects have not been aligned with their stated focus areas, and this funding represents our first project with them. If successful, the project could pave the way for ongoing funding opportunities in the future, allowing WMSE to tackle different accessibility issues on the Wikimedia platforms and in the Wikimedia movement.

Through this project, we will put a major focus not only on technical development, but also on the launch of the equally important “Wikimedia Accessibility Academy” initiative. Within this framework, we will implement actions to raise awareness and foster engagement around digital inclusion – starting with the Wikimedia platforms. This work includes training, development of learning resources, public events and volunteer engagement, but also as more long-term and strategic initiatives. Those will focus on public policy advocacy concerning legislation concerning both digital inclusion and AI and text and data mining.

The work is partly focused on improving the accessibility of the Wikimedia platforms, especially for people who for some reason cannot read. We will therefore continue developing Wikispeech, the open-source speech synthesis tool we first started working on in 2015. The work includes efforts to leverage recent AI advancements to enhance the listening experience and increase learning; to expand to more languages; to increase the stability and usability of our tools; and to enhance efficiencies to lower the cost of running the service.

The associated Speech Data Collector tool will allow us to use crowdsourcing to build a valuable dataset of speech recordings and annotations, needed for developing free and open-source software (FOSS) solutions in the field of text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies, as well as a dataset to support various AI applications. For the AI datasets, we plan to develop methods to secure data from underrepresented groups. We will also investigate ways to finance the long term-maintenance of the tool by organizing targeted collection efforts as a service.

If the development work is successful, we expect using WCF funding to connect the work to other Wikimedia initiatives in the coming years. This could for example include:

• The Wikispeech – Speech Resource Collector, which has the potential to lay the groundwork for a specific set of tools which are necessary to collect and structure knowledge from oral sources (so-called Oral Citations). This is something that the Wikimedia community has been discussing since at least 2012, but has not yet made any progress. While Wikimedia Sverige does not intend to lead the work on oral citations, we hope to initiate discussions with other Wikimedia affiliates and hopefully provide some of the technical solutions needed.
• Focused work with Wikidata Lexemes as a basis for lexical resources, creating an opportunity to link our initiative to the Wikimedia Foundation's new platform Abstract Wikipedia.
• Exploring the potential of the different types of speech resources brought together as important tools for language preservation.

Focus in 2025

In 2025, we plan to continue developing the speech synthesis infrastructure so that it works in more parts of Wikipedia than the main text, can be enabled in more languages and becomes both more user-friendly and resource-efficient. The development of the Wikispeech Speech Resource Collector will continue to engage the community and start contributing speech data during the year. This will not only allow us to improve the Wikispeech extension, but also to improve lexicographical data on Wikidata, as well as add pronunciation info to Wikipedia articles. The first step in 2025 will be producing a number of reports, detailed plans for our work with our partners, preparing our project communication and working on developing different types of basic learning material.

Following that, we will deliver additional functions in the speech synthesis, as well as explore and possibly implement new technological breakthroughs in the fields of machine learning and speech synthesis. In the second half of the year, the focus will shift to speech data collection tools with the goal of soft-launching them at the end of the year. The development of the speech synthesis will continue throughout the entire project.

The early prototypes of the Speech Data Collector tool will be developed and launched. Once the tools are activated, we will organize speech data collection events and develop a toolkit for other Wikimedia affiliates to run similar events. The focus in 2025 will be on preparatory work: developing our network and producing documentation and training materials.

During the year, we will coordinate with initiatives of several organizations with complementary goals and communities. This includes, for example, Lingua Libre, Mozilla's Common Voice as well as Språkbanken Tal, which collects language data in Sweden, mainly for research purposes. The European Commission, interested in language data for its internal translation and interpreting projects, will also be contacted about various issues and cooperation opportunities. In collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation, we have also started discussions with Google about releasing speech resources that can contribute to Wikispeech. In addition, we will deepen our collaborations with actors such as various cultural associations and interest organizations for people with disabilities, and in some cases establish new partnerships from scratch. We will discuss the development opportunities and priorities with the Wikimedia Foundation product team.

However, the technical work is part of a broader strategy, where we plan to actively foster engagement around issues related to digital accessibility. This work will take place within the framework of the Wikimedia Accessibility Academy, which will be launched as part of the project. Our methods and tools will be implemented and used to engage the public in the collection of speech and language data, as well as other accessibility issues. Through training and various activities, we will increase both public and expert understanding and engagement on these issues, increasing the awareness of how everyone can contribute to making the internet more accessible. We will also engage in public policy advocacy regarding digital accessibility and AI that could impact our work. All of these efforts will be linked to the Wikimedia platforms in various ways.

Community

The main objective of the Community program for 2025 is to ensure that we continue to develop our organization into a strong democratic and broad people’s movement that reaches all across the country.

Main objective: Taking further steps to become a people's movement to create engagement and new opportunities

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 5.1, 5.B and 6.6, 6.B and 11.4, 11.5 and 13.3.

Wikimedia Sverige strives to become a people's movement. Such a movement is built by its members and consists of their engagement. It is built from the bottom up, and provides opportunities for involvement for everyone, regardless of their background.. Wikimedia Sverige intends to become a people's movement that fosters both digital and physical engagement, with a community that offers meaning and purpose to those involved. It should be easy to get in, and fun to stay.

We believe a strong membership base has significant value for the organization in a number of ways. For example, a large membership base increases our voice and reach, as organizations with a high membership count are viewed as more important and influential, both politically and amongst funders. The network of members opens doors, as the members frequently introduce us to new opportunities and contacts. Our members are excellent candidates for volunteer roles, both within the organization and possibly also on the Wikimedia platforms. Last, but not least, a larger membership, one that understands and actively communicates our values, can act as a catalyst for changing norms at a national level.

We will actively work to improve our communication and organize various engagement-building activities for our members, as well as recruit new members. We have seen strong evidence that regularly organized campaigns play a key role towards achieving this, and we see many opportunities for improvement and experimentation. These active efforts will lead to increasing our social visibility, making us better known among the public, which will, in turn, contribute to successful donor and membership recruitment efforts (see the Enabling section below).

The work of developing the association into a people's movement requires focused efforts on how we recruit new members, engage them, and create opportunities for them to develop and enrich their lives, ensuring that they choose to remain members and stay engaged with open knowledge. We need to find ways to enhance the value of our already existing initiatives, as well as open up to new innovative ideas and initiatives from our members. We know that our membership base has an underrepresentation of certain groups, and targeted efforts are needed to ensure diversity amongst our communities. Our new yearly diversity report is part of a structured approach to improve the situation across the organization and our activities.

The Wikimedia movement is nothing without the volunteers who are active on the platforms. Ensuring continued support to and from the active volunteers, both online (the Wikimedia contributors) and offline (people active in our association), as well as engaging new volunteers of both sorts, is thus a strategic priority for us, not least to improve diversity. The people who already are Wikipedia editors and other online volunteers are an initial focus, as their insights are key to our work and they should be given strong say about what we are doing.

We will increase the support for our online and offline volunteers, and work to grow the volunteer communities. The work on increasing volunteer engagement will help us to get extra reinforcement both for the Hub and for the projects we run in Sweden. We see a strong need to expand our training capabilities through e-learning to reach a larger and broader audience, an area in which we continue investing. Last year, we prepared ourselves by developing and adopting a new document outlining what the organization stands for (Swedish: Idéprogram) based on a survey conducted with around 100 of our members. We also established detailed guidelines for how to improve the membership and volunteer involvement in the association, along with the many steps needed for that to happen.

The Wikimedia movement is by its nature internationally oriented and revolves around borderless, often language-based free knowledge platforms. Therefore, it is important that the steps we take towards becoming a people's movement also enable and support international involvement. These steps also have the chance to increase our ability to create interest and commitment among immigrant groups, who are currently underrepresented in our association.

Wikimedia Sverige has had a strategy in place for 2021–2025, requiring us to develop a new one in 2025. Our experience from previous strategy processes has shown that they are an excellent opportunity to engage the community in our work, as well as to connect with different partners and experts to develop a path into the future together.

Focus in 2025

The overarching focus of the year will be on implementing the guidelines on association involvement. Despite intensive work in 2022–2024, we are currently lacking a great deal of the organizational capacity and maturity needed to effectively manage a larger membership base. We are actively continuing to work on this in 2025 and strive to find the forms for how we establish, support and maintain local engagement, in different parts of the country as well as internationally.

One of the key elements of our work in this area will be the establishment of the new CRM system to coordinate association involvement. This system will enable us to personalize the communication and engagement opportunities presented to volunteers and members who are getting involved in our work. We will also develop learning materials for our members and other volunteers and improve our communication with them to ensure that they are aware of those opportunities. Additionally, we plan to engage them through more events during the year and to make sure we celebrate their successes and anniversaries etc. on the platforms. As the CRM system will make it possible to store information shared by the members regarding their expertise, training events they have participated in and other relevant details about their engagement, we will be able to identify the right people to reach out to when planning different types of initiatives.

During the year, we are going to work on investigating and defining which groups are underrepresented in our association. Based on the available data, we will continuously adjust our approach to increase the participation of these underrepresented groups. These insights are important for the priorities we make during the year. In order to achieve this, we will continue working on our diversity report.

The data and insights gathered will also be one valuable and important piece in the development of our new five-year strategy. This process will be inclusive, with our members supported by the staff and board. We will evaluate the benefits and limitations of our current strategy and form a number of working groups to develop different aspects of the new strategy. We believe that the process of strategy development has the potential to prove valuable for both member and volunteer involvement, and we will do our best to design the process with this in mind.

In the first half of 2025, we will be working on launching an extensive digital, modular training program. The modules will be flexible and possible to combine to suit different types of association involvement (both offline and online) as well as for the training of staff and elected representatives. We plan to use our Strategic Fund to self-fund an external contractor to support our development of the e-learning resource on learn.wiki. The staff time needed to support the contractor and develop the basic material for the modules will be covered by WCF funding. The main focus for the year will be to develop learning modules that allow us to provide training for new members of the association and for organizational members. If time permits, we will also develop modules for different target groups such as GLAM staff and students. Additionally, we will adapt some of our older learning resources – aimed at new Wikipedia and Wikidata editors, as well as uploaders on Wikimedia Commons – and integrate them into our learn.wiki portfolio.

We already know that the diversity among leaders in our organization can be improved. To support women in leadership positions and to foster the creation of content they find relevant, we will support a wiki camp for women and gender-diverse groups. We have organized such camps for a number of years by supporting a group of volunteers, but they have more limited availability and the camp was canceled last year. This is a real loss, as the wiki camps have been highly successful in creating not just new online editors, but a new group of non-male leaders active in the association. We are therefore planning to offer a short-term paid position to support the organization of the camp.

We will be working to further develop, or refocus, the content-gathering campaigns organized by the association – such as WikiGap, Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. We will take steps towards developing a cohesive concept that builds on the three campaigns, with an emphasis on generating opportunities and engagement to help digitize threatened cultural and natural heritage through crowdsourcing. We hope that this approach will not only boost engagement in Sweden, but also create opportunities for internationally-oriented projects with external partners and funding. Overall, we will ensure that the contests are not organized in a vacuum and that their value extends beyond the thousands of great photos uploaded every year. We aim to position them as engines that create engagement and interest for the association.

Our support for the active Wikimedia community in Sweden will change form. In the past, much of this support has been managed and implemented by our staff. While this office-heavy setup has many advantages and has been much appreciated over the years, it also has limited scalability and has not fully benefited from the commitment of the association's members. Going forward, we will experiment with empowering volunteers from the Swedish community to take a more active role in organizing, leading and developing the work. They will be given the authority to approve or decline the applications for the Community's projects (microgrants), to decide what to invest in to improve our technology pool and reference library, and to determine which events to send volunteers to. Our staff will provide administrative support and follow-up as needed, as well as remain responsible for a number of areas. These include support with press accreditation, expert support within the staff's expertise, capacity development through training initiatives, development support of digital tools, providing technical solutions/services and organizing events for the members.

Volunteers from the global movement will be given clearer entry points for involvement in the projects we run, including the establishment of the thematic hub for content partnerships, various international campaigns, and work on events and training with international partners such as UN agencies.

The ​online​ volunteers will be encouraged to actively engage with the materials we are making available through our content partnerships. To support their participation, we will offer assistance in a number of forms, such as addressing technical needs and through grants, training programs to enhance their skills etc.

Enabling

The main focus in the Enabling program is to improve the long-term financial stability and independence of the association.

Main objective: Scaling up fundraising and member recruitment in Sweden to be able to deliver free knowledge long-term

This objective supports the following Global Goals: 10.2, 10.3.

We're continuing our work with the association's long-term financial and organizational sustainability. As the projects that the association organizes or contributes to grow more ambitious, long-term and are increasingly directed towards becoming part of the digital infrastructure, it becomes even more critical that they are financially sustainable in the long term.

Sweden is a prosperous country with great opportunities to secure funding for both national and international work. Therefore, national fundraising work has great potential both for operations in Sweden and in support of Wikimedia organizations internationally. Having said that, this is a change that will take time to fully implement, and support from the Wikimedia Foundation and other Wikimedia organizations is essential for it to happen. This work will be accelerated and significantly prioritized as the financial challenges are expected to increase in the future and the association needs to secure sources of income other than the Wikimedia Foundation to continue our important work with free knowledge.

The fundraising work is guided by the financial plan that the staff and the board update twice a year. We have identified ten main areas to work in, so that the association's financial situation can continue to improve. For several years, Wikimedia Sverige has used some of the funding from the Wikimedia Foundation to apply for project grants and do some experimental activities around fundraising.

Membership recruitment is not mainly focused on the economic aspects in the short term, but on establishing a people’s movement. In the longer term, however, the assessment is that a large and committed member base will open new opportunities and lead to more and larger donations. A larger member base can also increase the chance for the association to be appointed to become a so-called “beneficiary” (Swedish: “förmånstagare”) of the Swedish Postcode Lottery.

Focus in 2025

The main focus remains on establishing the organizational foundations for a much larger member-centered organization where not only the numbers, but also the commitment and democratic participation of the members increase. An important piece of this puzzle is the implementation of our new system for member and donor care (a so-called CRM system). The system will store information about our members, donors and volunteers, enabling us to communicate effectively and reach the right people at the right time, leading to a positive experience for these groups and thereby improved retention rates. The system will automatize a lot of the work currently done manually, freeing up valuable staff time and allowing us to continue to scale. There is a lot of work ahead of us in 2025 to fully establish our routines, documentation and best practices with the system and to train the relevant staff members how to use it.

There is not much point in having a fancy CRM system if you do not put it to good use. In order to successfully increase both our membership base and donation revenue in the coming years, we are planning to continue our experimentation with recruitment through canvassing/face-to-face (F2F), alongside different types of digital fundraising campaigns. In particular, we will try to combine these channels of donor and member recruitment to see if targeted digital fundraising campaigns to a specific area where we have active canvassers can help us improve the numbers for either one, or both campaigns. If there is interest, we also hope to coordinate with the WMF fundraising team either this year or next. Additionally, we will continue investigating the best approaches to fundraising via our websites, which includes experimenting with fundraising banners.

We are hoping that this work will increase our visibility and number of followers, as well as attract a large number of new members. The goal of membership recruitment is not just securing a steady funding source; these efforts are deeply connected with our aim of establishing a people’s movement (as outlined above). We are not content with members just paying their yearly fee – we want to engage them in the Wikimedia movement, understand its underlying philosophy and spread its values. A larger membership base also strengthens our ability to influence the issues around openness and free knowledge that we are pushing. Combining the active recruitment with a first-class onboarding experience with high quality communication and the offer of different training and events designed for new members is something we think is crucial to improving retention rates in a very competitive fundraising landscape. Increased visibility and follower numbers are also of key strategic importance for us, as this would allow us to become beneficiaries of the Swedish Postcode Lottery in the future.

We will also launch an initiative to train volunteers in how they can best work with membership recruitment by providing them with training sessions based upon the training that we provide to our newly recruited canvassers.

In 2022, the association began work around the possibility of receiving bequests and compiled some introductory material. In 2025, we will continue to develop this material and we will communicate about the possibility, first to the association's members and later, after careful evaluation, to the general public. As this is a sensitive subject to many people, it is central that the communication about such an opportunity takes place in a very thoughtful and respectful way.

In 2024, we started looking at how a so-called “Openness certification” can be developed – Deloitte offered to support the initial development pro bono. We will examine the possibility of designing a process and criteria for organizations to be able to receive a "quality stamp" for their openness work, similar to that of e.g. LGBTQ certifications that are commonly used in Sweden. The criteria could be, for example, that a certain amount of material is released under a free license, that the systems for the dissemination of knowledge are open and accessible, that their staff are trained to understand free knowledge and open licenses, and that they use freely licensed image material in their publications. We have already identified some areas that will require both technical development and extensive communication work.

All these initiatives tie in together and build on the groundwork laid during prior years.

Annual Goals

Goals reported within the Wikimedia movement

The association has a number of goals and metrics which are reported to the Wikimedia Foundation, allowing comparisons between different initiatives within the Wikimedia movement.

Wikimedia metrics

Program	Participants	Contributors	Organizers	Content pages	Comments
Access	1,180	45	77	Wikipedia: 1,600 Wikimedia Commons: 71,000 Wikidata: 72,550	Participation is expected to come through one of two main sources, international activities such as the Heritage Guard Network and the Content Partnerships Hub, or through the advocacy work conducted in improving the copyright situation in Sweden. Additional participation is expected from presentations and workshops at e.g. GLAM events. The content improvements to Wikipedia are expected through activities focused on engaging the international community with increasing the usage of content already made available by existing content partners. Wikimedia Commons contributions are expected to be split between SDC improvements to pre-existing material and newly uploaded contents from content partners. The Wikidata improvements are expected through "A network of places" and other GLAM collaborations, as well as through Helpdesk requests.
Use	30	5	10	Wikipedia: 0 Wikimedia Commons: 0 Wikidata: 0	None of the projects in this program have a focus on content production this year. Our work in the project Wikispeech in 2025 is expected to focus mostly on internal and technical issues, with speech data collection events planned only for 2026.
Community	550	130	23	Wikipedia: 1,400 Wikimedia Commons: 5,000 Wikidata: 200	The main impact here comes from the regular WLE and WLM competitions and associated side events. Additionally we expect a large part of the Wikipedia improvements to come from the Wikipedia Camp. The community initiated events supported by the association also have an impact here and a focus in 2025 will also be on improving how these are measured.
Enabling	275	0	15	Wikipedia: 0 Wikimedia Commons: 0 Wikidata: 0	This program does not aim to produce content. The participants are involved mainly through the F2F fundraising work and through the work on establishing a new 5 year strategy.
TOTAL FOR ALL OF THE PROGRAMS	2,035	180	125	Wikipedia: 3,000 Wikimedia Commons: 76,000 Wikidata: 72,750

Other metrics

Metric	Description	Target
Funds generated for free knowledge through the WCF funding	This is a measure of the enabling effect that the WCF funding has by providing the operational basis by which further funds can be raised through either grant applications, fundraising or sponsorships. As Wikimedia Sverige raises funds for more than the organization itself this looks at the total funds raised for free knowledge through Wikimedia Sverige’s efforts. The value is provided as the proportion (in %) of WCF funding to all raised funding, meaning that effectively each dollar of WCF funding is multiplied by this percentage.	400%
Enabling knowledge to be produced and shared freely in new ways through public policy advocacy	This is a qualitative metric capturing the impact of our Public Policy Advocacy work of enabling new legal avenues for producing or sharing free knowledge. It also includes defending existing legal means of producing or sharing free knowledge when legislation is proposed which would hinder this. The impact is measured by e.g. collecting real-life user stories from affected users and organizations. The target number indicates the number of such new, or defended, ways.	1
Content contributions to free knowledge projects beyond Wikimedia	Wikimedia Sverige's bylaws define its purpose as making knowledge freely available to all people. While the main venue for this is the Wikimedia platforms, we are not limited to them. This metric, therefore, tries to capture content contributions to other platforms. This includes, but is not limited to, commits to OpenSource projects, OpenStreetMap change sets, contributions to Metabase and educational material shared on open platforms.	4,000
Increased association involvement	An increase, compared to the previous year, in the number of members or volunteers involving themselves in the chapter by taking on some responsibility within a project, an event or in the chapter itself. The target indicates the total number of individuals during the year.	50
Increased number of organizational partners	An increase, compared to the previous year, in the number of organizational partners. A partnership being defined as a collaboration with an organization, rather than an individual; where there is an active choice from both sides to work together; and there is an intention of longevity of the relationship. The partnership need not be formalized as such. The target indicates the total number of partners during the year.	100

Projects

The projects that we're planning to work on during the year are described below. They have been grouped by program and the strategic goal (or goals) they mainly contribute to. Naturally, a project can also contribute to other strategic goals, including goals within other programs.

Keep in mind that some of the projects outlined here are based on funding from a grant application that has not yet been confirmed. The focus of these projects may therefore change based on the requirements of the funder; they can also be canceled altogether if they do not receive funding. If the project has not yet been funded, the project description names this.

New projects may also be added if funding opportunities arise and we have the capacity to do them.

The document Budget 2025 specifies how much resources each project has allocated as planned.

Access

The Access program includes 16 different projects in 2025. In March 2025, 12 of them had financing. Seven of them are regarding advocacy, which is a new record. Access is our largest thematic program in terms of budget (just under 3.9 million SEK) and the largest when it comes to the number of projects. Several of the projects have as their full or partial focus supporting increased access to free knowledge internationally. These are listed separately.

Access 1: The chapter shall work to ensure that information that is of broad interest is made open and easily accessible, linked together and refined.

Content partners 2025

The main target group in the project is content partners in Sweden, i.e. the organizations that have, for example, data, media files, documents or the like, with whom we work to jointly make material available and useful. This includes, for example, museums, archives and libraries, which we often call GLAM institutions. In the draft of the Swedish National Heritage Board, the starting point is that "interlinking of data sets is a prerequisite for meeting user needs. It is therefore ideal for cultural heritage institutions to use semantic links to assemble their data sets at the metadata level, so that different user services can retrieve the information requested by users.” This is in line with the association's strategy in this area and operations are adapted to meet this focus. This technical work is a further development of the multi-year partnerships we have had with Swedish GLAM institutions where their digitization work has become increasingly strategic.

Work with linked open data, mass uploads of media files and enrichment of previous mass uploads with structured data is a main focus for the year. The focus is on material related to democracy, official minorities in Sweden, a strategically prioritized area and audio files, which contributes to insights for externally funded projects we are investigating. The project will also include participation and presentations at various conferences and events. A number of meetings will also be organized to explain and anchor the impact of the changes in copyright legislation on the activities of cultural heritage institutions, for example on Article 14 and out of commerce works. We will organize a series of monthly online contests focusing on increasing the usage of uploaded images from different partnerships. This could include material from Sweden and other countries. We will strive to work with other Wikimedia affiliates to create intesters to engage in the contests.

The project also includes consultancy projects funded by individual GLAM institutions, where they want help with a certain task within a limited period of time, which is preferably expected to be various mass uploads of material they focus on in particular for various reasons (for example, if they have exhibitions or received targeted funds from a funder). This includes a larger initiative together with Nordic Museum in the first half of the year, and most likely at least one other larger initiative in the later half of 2025.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on Wikimedia Sverige's wiki: Projekt:Innehållspartner 2025.

A network of places

The project aims to facilitate researchers and other stakeholders to find, understand, analyze and deploy relevant information about geographical objects spread across collections in several cultural heritage institutions. This will be achieved by transforming institutional enclosed data to linked open data. One of the primary platforms used will be Wikidata. Through several pilot studies the data’s potential to facilitate and enrich historic research will be examined.

The project runs from 2024 to 2025 and will investigate whether geographical information as linked data stimulates new data-driven research on collections from different institutions. By linking the collections' data using controlled vocabularies, a method will be developed to make information about geographical locations and buildings from different institutions compatible, opening up the collections to new research and new questions.

The project will make it easier for researchers and the general public to find, understand, analyze and use relevant information across institutional collections. This will be achieved by transforming institution-specific information into linked open data. The linking takes place via the platforms Kulturnav, K-samsök and Wikidata. By compiling case studies, the value of the new links as a basis for historical research will be tested. The project includes using visualizations of connections between places and buildings from different periods to facilitate our understanding of otherwise intangible and abstract datasets. A further goal is to raise awareness of linked data and its potential in the cultural heritage sector.

In 2025, the project focuses on large scale uploads. The work will be described in case studies that will be actively communicated to the GLAM sector and preparatory work for these takes place during the year. The insights will be shared at at least one international conference. Training will also be organized for the project group in how they can work with the Wikimedia platforms, with a particular focus on OpenRefine as both a data-cleaning tool and an interface to interact with Wikidata. The results of the work will be presented in a series of visualisations, making the data and the value of the Wikimedia platforms more accessible to other GLAM actors and the general public.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Ett nätverk av platser.

CommonsDB registry

As part of a consortium we aim to pilot an interoperable public registry of rights information (metadata records) for public domain and openly licensed works. This registry will allow users to verify the rights status of content from multiple sources including Wikimedia Commons and Europeana. Importantly the goal is to develop a prototype to understand the opportunities and limitations. For Wikimedia Sweden the technical work will focus on integrating Wikimedia Commons with the prototype. The prototype and the analysis of the benefits to Wikimedia contributors and the reach of the Wikimedia projects will serve as a starting point for discussions with both the Movement and the WMF around a future full implementation.

The project is funded by the European Commission and all other partner organisations are located in the Netherlands. We have contracted a consultant living in the Netherlands to work on the project.

Access 2: The chapter shall work towards a societal change, where increased access to free knowledge is facilitated by practical means and thus becomes the norm.

Political decision makers 2025

The main target group of this project is politicians who can influence the legislative process. The main focus is on the Swedish legislative process. However, efforts also take place regarding coordination around European legislation, as well as various international agreements. It may also apply to initiatives to produce various resources of particular importance to the Wikimedia movement, such as copyright issues which are dealt with by a special standing committee at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

In addition, we will continue (within the project) to coordinate our national work with Wikimedia Europe (WMEU) and also contribute to WMEU in various areas where the association has special expertise or interest. The project also includes the cost of involvement as an organizational member in Wikimedia Europe (e.g. reading and commenting and taking a position on different types of material and requests from WMEU). The coordination work internationally also includes our work within the TAROCH initiative, spearheaded by Creative Commons, where we are one of the members. One staff member from WMSE is participating in the working group for developing an advocacy strategy.

We expect to continue the work of being accredited to WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright Matters (SCCR) this year as China repeatedly blocked our participation. In addition, there is a participation within the project in several different networks, such as in Europeana's task force for Article 14, the Wikimedia Foundation's network for Wikimedia associations that work with advocacy work, as well as OGP consultations and the like. The project may also carry the work with possible consultation responses/proactive political interventions outside the KR21 framework, for example around the protection of children on online platforms.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Politiska beslutsfattare 2025.

Communicating AI and TDM insights

The project aims to develop an academic paper based on the AI and TDM seminar that was organized in 2024. The insights from the article will then be communicated through a number of channels.

Compilation of Wikimedia positions on AI and TDM

The project will help to deliver insights about the current position within the Wikimedia movement regarding TDM and AI. The work will help to clarify the connection between ethical AI, crowdsourcing and open resources which will underpin the importance to legislate in a way that builds on open norms. A network amongst European Wikimedia chapters will be formed to deliver a position paper, increase coordination amongst the free knowledge movement and create interest about the issue amongst stakeholders.

Development of learning resources about copyright

This small and focused project aims to develop a learning module in English for the wiki.learn e-learning platform around current copyright issues. The material will be distributed to increase capacity in the Wikimedia movement.

Better open science policies

The project focuses on advocacy that supports open science. In 2024, a report on rights preservation policies was developed based on discussions with Swedish stakeholders. In 2025, this report will be further improved with insights into both the institutional changes required as well as legislative changes required to promote open access to science.

Promoting Knowledge Rights in Sweden

The multi-year project, led by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) with funding from Arcadia Fund, aims to develop national networks promoting the right to knowledge through lobbying efforts and activities to increase public awareness and interest in copyright issues. We have been invited to take the lead in developing the Swedish network. In the project we will focus our work on copyright exemptions in Sweden. Other possibilities include work around creating learning materials and events.

The focus for the year is to continue the work with the government report on copyright restrictions resulting from a government-appointed committee, where Wikimedia Sverige between 2022 and 2024 was one of thirteen organizations represented. The report reviewed the second chapter of the Swedish copyright law, i.e. the exceptions and limitations to copyright, in the light of several judgments from the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice, the technological development, as well as the continuous need to incorporate EU directives (notably the 2001 Infosoc Directive and the 2019 Copyright Directive).

The next step in the legislative process is for the government to turn the inquiry report into a government bill, which might happen during the spring. After that, the political process will begin. Our efforts will then include direct contacts with politicians at various levels, input to the Ministry of Justice as well as building and maintaining networks to increase visibility and focus on the association's issues.

The activities include lobbying to decision makers and activities to raise public awareness and interest in copyright issues, as well as reports and awareness-raising activities.

The main focus and priority in 2025 is thus to strengthen exceptions and limitations in Swedish copyright law. While waiting for the government bill, we will also focus on working for a legal process to introduce legal provisions around parallel publishing and in other ways to promote open standards, open science and open access to science. In this regard, we will collaborate closely with the Swedish Library Association.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Främja rätten till kunskap i Sverige.

Increased access to free knowledge internationally

The projects under this heading focus on supporting increased access to free knowledge on an international level. They mainly contribute to fulfilling one or both of the strategic goals of the Access program.

Cultural heritage at risk and crowdsourcing

The pilot project is funded by the Swedish Institute and aims to explore how the Wikimedia movement can work together to gather knowledge, share insights and iteratively explore ways in which the public can be engaged, through crowdsourcing, to document and describe endangered cultural heritage in Central and Eastern Europe. The project deepens the collaborations between the Content Partnership Hub and Wikimedia organizations in Eastern Europe and the planned regional CEE Hub.

In 2025, the project is wrapping up the work done in 2024 by developing a new application for funding a larger multi-year project.

We also hope that the preparations for a possible new campaign with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Swedish embassies and consulates can be taken forward and launched. The campaign will organize events that digitize and spread knowledge about threatened cultural and natural heritage in different ways.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Hotat kulturarv och crowdsourcing.

Open GLAM in Ukraine

A project focusing on preserving and promoting Ukraine's cultural heritage by collaborating with Ukrainian GLAM institutions to share digitized cultural content on the Wikimedia platforms. The project aims to counteract the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage due to the war and combat disinformation by making high-quality cultural content widely accessible. The initiative includes training Ukrainian GLAM professionals, fostering partnerships, and securing future funding to support large-scale digitization efforts. The long term aim is to contribute to a normative change in Ukraine’s GLAM sector to increase openness, sharing of knowledge and public engagement through the Wikimedia platforms.

International content partners 2025

Within the framework of the project, preparations continue to establish a number of support structures for content partnerships, which are needed to achieve the strategic recommendations adopted by the Wikimedia movement. Some or all of these structures may be integrated into a future thematic hub for content partnerships.

In 2025 the project will have a particular focus on developing the governance for the Hub. It will also fund the work with the work done within the support structures, which include developing international partnerships and a WiR program for the UN, running the Helpdesk and reestablish the Expert Committee, expanding Metabase and engaging more affiliates in the work, developing presentations and training material to increase capacity, providing strategic uploads of structured data on Commons and about GLAM institutions and to a limited extent offering software support for key tools. The project complements the work of externally funded projects concerning the hub. The project builds on the lessons learned from the previous experiments.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Internationella innehållspartner 2025.

Cultural heritage at risk and crowdsourcing 2

This is a continuation of the previous project with the same name. While similar in nature the exact scope of the project will evolve as the application is completed.

Content Partnership Hub 2025

The International Steering Committee will decide on the focus of a joint application to the Wikimedia Foundation to implement a thematic hub for content partnerships. The project will take over the work done as part of the project International content partners 2025.

Open GLAM in Ukraine 2

This is a continuation of the previous project with the same name. While similar in nature the exact scope of the project will evolve as the application is completed.

Use

The Use program consists of two projects. The program area is dominated by A Wikispeech for everybody, a major externally funded multi-year project. This one project covers multiple parts of the strategic focus outlined under Use 2 and Use 3, both with user experience and with creating equal opportunities to use and contribute. The project equals just under 30 % of the entire budget in 2025. This is our second largest program in terms of budget (just under 3.5 million SEK totally). We are applying for external funding to work on qualitative information, as outlined under Use 1.

Use 1: The chapter shall provide volunteers and users with tools and opportunities to contribute to and ensure qualitative information.

Qualitative environmental information

Within the framework of the very large research initiative Mistra Environmental Communication (M-EC), we, as a project partner, can jointly apply for funds for smaller sub-projects during the four-year project period of M-EC. Researchers and expert organizations participate in these targeted efforts and contribute in various ways to improving the environmental information on the Wikimedia platforms. Within the framework of various smaller research projects, experimental methods, processes or tools around environmental communication are developed. These are developed, tested and evaluated together with the various universities and other project parties.

In early 2025 the first submitted application for a sub-project was rejected. We will continue developing the idea together with our partner organizations and submit a new application later this year. We will also submit proposals for research and student tasks to the universities involved in this project.

Use 2–3: The chapter shall contribute to improving the user experience on the Wikimedia platforms and The chapter shall work to ensure that all volunteers have equal opportunities to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms.

A Wikispeech for all

With significant multi-year funding secured from the Swedish Inheritance Fund we are continuing the work with Wikispeech on several fronts. The project has three main interconnected aims: (1) Making the Wikimedia platforms more accessible, especially for people who cannot read by continuing the development of Wikispeech, our speech synthesis tool, leveraging recent AI developments. (2) Developing and launching the Speech Data Collector tool which will allow crowdsourcing of language data, e.g. speech recordings. The data can be used by open source solutions and the training of ethical AI. (3) The project will also launch the Wikimedia Accessibility Academy initiative to raise awareness and engagement around digital inclusion – starting with the Wikimedia platforms.

The project started at the very end of 2024 with the administrative work and with the hiring of a new developer to join the team.

In 2025 we will focus on: (1) developing the speech synthesis to handle more types of content, support modern voices and validating functionalities with the target audience; (2) developing the functionalities needed for Wikispeech to be enabled with all parts of Wikipedia, so that editors can fully benefit from it as well; (3) the different components of the speech resource collector will be completed to enable an active collection of speech data, lexical resources and various types of enrichment of existing data.

We will work on tying this effort closer to the initiatives that the Wikimedia Foundation runs, e.g. Abstract Wikipedia, by working with lexemes, and possibly Oral Citations. We are also investigating how we can contribute to or benefit from initiatives run by Google, Mozilla, KTH, the European Commission and others such as Lingua Libre. A large number of collaborations with other organizations, not least interest organizations for people with disabilities, will help us to engage new volunteers in the collection of speech data.

We will actively communicate the service to a wider audience and organize events to create awareness and engagement. This will take place within the framework of the planned Wikimedia Accessibility Academy. Within this framework, we will work more broadly and highlight digital accessibility from different points of view, with a focus on the Wikimedia platforms.

Community

The Community program includes 2 different projects in 2025. Both of them are funded by the Wikimedia Foundation. This is our second smallest program in terms of budget (just under 0.9 million SEK totally).

Community 1: The chapter shall support existing communities.

Existing communities 2025

The main target group is the existing Sweden-based Wikimedia community. Within this project, they are provided support to do their work and realize their ideas. This is achieved through grants, practical support, documentation and by developing and supporting various networks of people in the community.

In 2025 the project focuses on continuing to provide active support to the community through project and conference grants, loans of equipment and reference materials (including access to research databases), support for media accreditation, organizing events for members, organizing events for Wikimedians from other countries who have moved to Sweden, etc. Maintenance of tools we have developed to support the community will be done as part of this project. A priority this year is establishing a member-driven decision-making process where priorities are made by a committee, rather than by the staff.

Within the framework of this project, we will run the photo competitions Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments. We will discuss with the community on how to best update and maintain the data on which the two competitions are based. The plan is that we will take a new approach to the competitions in 2026 when they will be included as a central part of a planned, larger, externally funded project, with a focus on engaging volunteers to digitally document and describe cultural and natural heritage under threat as effectively as possible through crowdsourcing.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Befintliga gemenskaper 2025.

Community 2: The chapter shall help create new communities.

New communities 2025

The main target group are the demographics that currently are underrepresented on the Wikimedia platforms. This project aims to improve diverse participation in Wikimedia’s activities and platforms by targeting underrepresented communities and lowering the barriers for them to become involved, e.g. through supporting local communities and/or training.

In 2025 the project is focusing on two things: (1) on developing more e-learning material to lower the threshold to participate; and (2) supporting and funding a Wikipedia Camp for people identifying themselves as women to be organized.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Nya gemenskaper 2025.

Enabling

The Enabling program includes 3 different projects in 2025. All of them are funded. This is our smallest program in terms of both budget (a bit under 0.9 million SEK totally) and the number of projects.

Enabling 1–3: The chapter's work shall be operationally sustainable, and The chapter's work shall be financially sustainable, and The chapter shall collaborate with new partners and actors.

Development of the association 2025

This project aims to improve the functioning, size, financial strength, diversity and innovation of the association. This is done through improving the efficiency of its work through targeted activities against identified bottlenecks and through increased transparency. But also by increasing the number and participation of its donors, members and volunteers and by broadening the type of partnerships the association enters. To achieve this, the association will:

• Streamline the work through targeted efforts to identify bottlenecks and increase transparency.
• Increase the number of members, donors and volunteers, as well as their commitment.
• Broaden the types of collaborations that it participates in.

In 2025, the project mainly focuses on work around fundraising and member recruiting, which includes the full implementation of the new CRM system, further experiments with F2F fundraising (especially at fairs) and work around both major donors, corporate sponsorships and a new certification system for organizations showing their commitment for free knowledge.

A major priority this year is developing the association’s new five-year strategy.

Furthermore efforts will include updates of the risk analysis and of various types of governing documents, reports and guiding materials. This material will be adopted or further developed to explain the association's activities and create commitment. The staff will also be provided opportunities to train and actively work to see how different AI tools can facilitate and streamline their work. The project also includes the work with engaging interns in the association’s work.

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Föreningsutveckling 2025.

Presentations 2025

This is a consultancy project. The project includes different one-off presentations by WMSE staff that are paid for by an external organization. The project exists to simplify taxation of our work.

Enabling 4: The association's work shall be based on and contribute to learning and monitoring what's happening in the world.

International free knowledge movement 2025

The main target group is Wikimedia affiliates and organizations in the free knowledge movement. The project aims to share our experience with, and learn from, these organizations by participating in events and contributing to various collaboration platforms.

In 2025, the project focuses on participating in a couple of international expert events organized by the Wikimedia movement such as Wikimania and physical meetings between the group of Executive Directors within the Wikimedia movement. Please note that within the framework of various external project grants, we are also planning to participate in several other events, such as conferences organized by the Wikimedia movement or other free knowledge organizations. In addition, the project will fund external monitoring in the form of reading what other Wikimedia affiliates are working on (their operational plans and reports).

You can read the details of the project and follow the ongoing work on our wiki: Projekt:Internationella fri kunskapsrörelsen 2025.

External analysis and how it affects our work

Here, we describe the context in which we operate and major events in the world that we believe may have an impact on our work and our priorities.

Societal trends and changes in the Wikimedia movement

Here, we describe the context in which we operate and major events in the world that we believe may have an impact on our work and our priorities.

Implementing the strategic recommendations

The strategic recommendations for the Wikimedia movement were drafted between 2017 and 2020. In 2021, work started on implementing them, with the hope of rapid and comprehensive changes. Now, with half of the time passed and only five years remaining to implement the strategy, only few of the central structures needed for long-term change have been established – such as a universal Code of Conduct and a failed attempt to establish a Global Council.

The focus on thematic and regional hubs continues to be strong and the Wikimedia Foundation has changed and clarified its focus for the near term. Instead of the experimental work to develop concepts and showcase what can be done taking the next natural step into implementation of these ideas the Wikimedia Foundation pivoted and changed the focus to governance work. A key change this year is that affiliates can no longer apply for funding independently; instead, a small consortium of affiliates must apply together.

In 2025, work has been initiated with developing 18 Thematic hubs or Regional hubs in the Wikimedia movement. Of these, 11 are thematic and 7 are regional. As it stands now, however, some will remain at the concept stage. All of these are potentially relevant for us to interact with as there will be an overlap of interests and work that needs to be coordinated and distributed. There are also good reasons to share experiences and resources to speed up the work of establishing hubs, as well as to speak together with one voice in discussions with the Wikimedia Foundation. Some aspects of our hub work, including our work with https://metabase.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Main_Page Metabase], also have a direct connection to other initiatives adopted, most notably initiative 36 to develop a knowledge base for the entire Wikimedia movement.

The resources allocated by the Wikimedia Foundation to the various hub initiatives continue to be limited with only 700,000 USD available for all initiatives for the period of July 2024 to June 2025. The progress in developing the hub structures is slow.

Fast-paced changes in the funding landscape

A major concern for the Wikimedia Foundation is how the rapid development of AI might impact the use of Wikipedia and, by extension, the number of donations. The logic is that if fewer people find the information on Wikipedia – opting instead for answers from AI tools like ChatGPT – they won't see the value in donating via banner campaigns on Wikipedia. This is despite the fact that AI ​​services heavily rely on Wikimedia's extensive, updated, well-structured and multilingual content to be able to answer the questions. Our basic funding is secured until 2027, but after that, there might be changes that will affect our work, requiring us to prepare for alternative means of funding. This might also affect the funding available for the work with thematic hubs. However, some indications point to that hubs might receive an increased share of funding and not-yet established affiliates might be the ones losing out.

At the same time we see massive changes in how governments fund civil society organizations and the types of funding available. The most shocking example is USAID, which was closed down nearly overnight under the new Trump administration. As USAID accounted for around 50 billion USD of global aid, this swift change will affect how funds are distributed across the world, significantly increasing competition for those funds. Further changes that affect available federal funding for civil society are expected, leading to increased competition among different causes. In Sweden, changes around funding opportunities for projects in East Africa mean that some of our planned projects will have to be put on hold.

As politics often swings like a pendulum, this might reverse in a few years and preparations should be done for that. The reduced funding has resulted in talented professionals abruptly losing their jobs and seeking new opportunities. As such, these changes do provide us with an opportunity to hire seasoned experts who can help us prepare for important international work in the future.

These changes highlight the need for the association to further diversify its fundraising streams to ensure financial and operational stability. This is reflected in the association's planned initiatives for the coming years.

An updated copyright law and regulation of the tech industry

A major review of copyright legislation has been underway in Sweden and other European countries for several years, as the Copyright Directive is to be implemented in national legislation. However, no government bill on reforming exceptions and limitations in the Swedish copyright act was finalized in 2024, nor was it tabled for the spring of 2025, meaning that the initial proposed date for reforms to take effect, that is, 1 September 2025, will be postponed. The delay will continue to limit the ability of Wikimedians in Sweden to take part in digitization activities and make cultural heritage and knowledge available via the Wikimedia platforms. Key issues include the outdated freedom of panorama legislation and poor possibilities for GLAM institutions to digitize and preserve their collections. We will continue working hard throughout 2025 to ensure that the legal reform will take place and that the inquiry report is not just locked into a drawer somewhere.

Intensive legislative work is also underway in Europe regarding the tech sector, including AI regulation, content moderation on digital platforms and children’s access to information online. All these topics can have significant direct and indirect impact on the Wikimedia platforms and the association. They can affect both revenue and visits to the platforms, as well as how content is created, translated, enriched or distributed.

These developments can create opportunities and new areas where crowdsourcing can contribute in a unique way, but they can also impose strong limitations. For several years, the association has had technical projects in which e.g. AI plays an integral role and thus keeps up to date with technological developments. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to both continue that work but also look at how we can contribute to legislation that takes the needs of the Wikimedia movement into account. We see a long-term development in the EU and in Sweden, where additional legislation and new requirements impose a heavier financial burden on smaller and non-profit actors compared to large multinational companies, which have far greater economic means to deal with the new requirements. We want to continue to be a voice that offers a different perspective.

The work on how the tech sector should be regulated will be coordinated with Wikimedia Europe, a regional hub for the Wikimedia movement that has been established in Brussels. The work carried out there will be of great importance to our efforts, and the association will therefore continue to co-finance their activities. This year, the association's advocacy efforts are more extensive than ever before, and we are better positioned.

The relevant political issues that we are tracking are highly technical and require a lot of knowledge to fully grasp. The time to respond is often short, demanding significant time and effort. These factors have led to a need to professionalize our work, and we have multiple staff members actively involved in these efforts. The professionalization does however mean that volunteers risk being left out and that the issues are not anchored well in the democratic foundation of the association. To avoid this, there is a need to work actively with both communication and training, and to intentionally connect the advocacy topics with our internal democratic processes.

War close to us, civil defense and threats

The ongoing war in Ukraine has had a major impact on the public debate and affects the association's activities in a number of different ways. Wikimedia Sverige has had a strong collaboration with the local Wikimedia association in Ukraine, Wikimedia Ukraina, for several years, including collaboration on a number of international initiatives such as WikiGap and Wiki Loves Earth. In 2023, we implemented several major initiatives together, including working with data on Ukraine's cultural heritage, and we successfully designed an application for project grants together. Several joint projects have been, or are in the process of being, developed since. With the government’s strategic focus on Ukraine and neighboring countries, there are significant funding opportunities for the Wikimedia movement. Furthermore, the Swedish Employment Agency could potentially provide financial support to hire skilled Ukrainians living in Sweden to work within those projects. This type of support structure is something that we have not explored earlier, but are eager to look into deeper.

The association's work with Ukraine and other Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers across the world creates many opportunities and value, but it also increases the risk of retaliatory actions from opposing actors. This could include an increase in advocacy campaigns and digital attacks against our work. The association's risk analysis continues to evolve, and active preventive measures are being implemented in a large number of areas.

The association's strategy focuses on the need to work with source criticism, which ties in well with the increased societal focus on civil preparedness against different threats, including misinformation. This is an area where we need to be more active in communicating our work and challenges and provide training. The success of the Wikimedia movement in terms of content moderation needs to be highlighted, and we need to work with expert partners to add content about key topics that are targeted by malicious actors.

Global warming continues to be an area of ​​focus for policymakers and the public. The association is taking active steps to minimize our own environmental impact. Our commitment to this issue is also reflected in the collaborations we have initiated, where the availability of information linked to global warming and other environmental impacts has been prioritized, not least with various UN agencies. This area is closely connected to the section above about source criticism and misinformation. We are also actively working on ways to help guide volunteers in documenting cultural and natural heritage that is at risk from climate change or other factors.

Technical trends

Here, we describe the technical achievements and limitations that we believe may have an impact on our work and our priorities during the year.

Global access to satellite internet

Large parts of the world can now get relatively affordable access to a fast internet connection via satellite. For example, the Starlink satellite system is providing coverage to over 100 countries and territories (up from 70 countries reported in last year's Annual plan). The coverage is global, including on airlines, and the speed is expected to increase gradually over the next few years. In addition, several smartphone models include hardware for satellite connectivity, enabling global telephony coverage. This creates the opportunity for free knowledge to be disseminated through text messages, complementing Internet browsing.

When parts of the world's population that previously had limited or non-existent access to the Internet now have that possibility through satellite Internet, interesting opportunities can be created, for example, for the work of the thematic hub. Our efforts to collect knowledge from content owners all over the world are significantly simplified when they have better internet connections. More institutions will be able to contribute content once the connection is stable, and as a larger part of the world's population can access and use their material, they will be able to see the value of digitization more clearly.

Other parts of our work can also benefit from this development. For example, we would have more access to speech data in other languages ​​as we reach more language groups, which would allow us to develop Wikispeech in more languages more quickly. The association will need to discuss, plan and develop strategies around this opportunity.

Consumption of information in new contexts

With the rapid development of VR, AR and self-driving cars, our users are likely to consume the content on the Wikimedia platforms in new ways in the coming years, especially when coupled with global internet access as outlined above. It is therefore important that we keep track of these developments and analyse how we could contribute with Wikimedia content to be consumed and in other ways use these new tools and platforms to reach a wider audience. We will start designing forward-looking and exploratory projects to address this potential.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere and is needing more data

The development of products based on machine learning and large language models, such as ChatGPT, has continued at a tremendous pace over the last few years. This is typically what is referred to when the broader concept of artificial intelligence (AI) is discussed. The possibility of using these models to generate more qualitative texts, images, video, sound and 3D models creates enormous opportunities, as well as challenges, for society in general and for the Wikimedia movement in particular. These tools have the potential to improve the work of both the association staff and volunteers on the Wikimedia platforms. It is important to invest in training, as well as actively test and review the tools.

The understanding of the abilities and use of AI tools, as well as increasing concern, has grown in society; a topic that is also intensively debated in the Wikimedia movement. The association needs to clarify its positions and also actively explore the opportunities available in this area. Discussions about how ethical AI can be ensured and how crowdsourcing can contribute to this are important to initiate. Not least how quality control and source references can be improved in the AI-generated material.

There is also a broader discussion about "open source AI", where proponents argue that the source code of AI software should be freely available for all to view, modify and distribute. This includes both normative discussions in society, new mandatory or guiding legislation as well as what public funds should be used for. It is likely that regulation will be an important piece of the puzzle to achieve a democratized AI. The association needs to discuss and refine its positions in order to be able to participate effectively in this conversation.

The association will organize events and activities highlighting the ongoing discussions around AI legislation and related ethical issues, from the perspective of Wikimedia, and how these may affect free knowledge in a broader sense.

As the association actively develops tools such as Wikispeech, where speech data is collected, or ISA Tool, where machine learning for image recognition becomes an integrated part, the rapid technological development has an impact on the investments we make. The association needs to allocate the necessary resources to ensure that the technological advances that have also been made with open-source software can be implemented in the tools we develop and maintain.

Linked open data connects more and more information

We see an increasing interest and understanding of the opportunities and difficulties surrounding linked open data (LOD) among Swedish authorities and organizations. However, most of them are still in the early stages, experimenting and testing which tools to use or develop. The Wikimedia movement's experience with Wikidata has therefore become increasingly important to share.

There are also great benefits for society if the public authorities, instead of developing their own systems from scratch, contribute to the further development of Wikibase or other open software solutions. The association has undergone a reorganization to enable continued work on linked open data, which according to the association's adopted strategy is a priority area for the Access program.

As we have secured multi-year support for a staff member to work on developing our platform Metabase, and have a close relationship with Wikimedia Deutschland, we will be well-positioned to influence the future development work of Wikibase and provide ongoing support and feedback to the developers. This will also allow us to share our insights with other organizations.

Appendix 1: Applications planned for 2025

The list below is extracted from the Annual Report (Förvaltningsberättelse) 2024, and can be found on pages X-X of the Årsredovisning 2024, and describes the applications planned for 2025. These affect both this year's annual plan and also the coming year's activities. For convenience, it is provided here separately.

Wikimedia Sverige plans to seek project funding from a number of funders in 2025, including, but not limited to, the following:

• We have joined a consortium and, if funded, will contribute to the development of a case study within the framework of a larger EU application (ECHOLOT, previously called ECCHI).
• An application to Vinnova focusing on AI policies and guidelines. The application is being developed together with the Swedish Intellectual Property Office and Linköping University.
• At the end of 2023, funding was confirmed for the multi-year, multi-million initiative “Mistra Environmental Communication (MEC)”, in which the Association is a project partner (though it lacks a fixed budget). As a project partner, the Association will be able to apply for funding for targeted initiatives on a number of occasions up to 2027. The first attempt was unsuccessful, but the application will be revised together with the partners who led the application process. Maximum amount: Approximately 500,000 kr per targeted initiative, with 1–3 initiatives annually.
• An application to the Swedish Institute to work together with Wikimedia associations in Eastern Europe and, based on our pilot project, build a network around crowdsourcing information about endangered cultural and natural heritage. Maximum amount: 2 million kr, for a project of up to two years.
• An application to the Swedish Institute to work with cultural heritage organizations in Ukraine to increase the rate of digitization and sharing of cultural heritage. A training program will be developed together with Wikimedia Ukraine, the National Archives of Sweden and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. Maximum amount: 3 million kr, for a project of up to two years.
• We will continue serving as national coordinators for the new KR21 project starting in January 2025. We have also received an invitation to influence the direction of KR21's granted 5-year project (starting in 2025) and are likely to secure more funding for work up until 2029. It will be possible to apply for additional project funds for special initiatives within the framework of the project. Maximum amount: Unknown.
• The Association may apply for funding to cover e.g. travel expenses connected to our lobbying work. The American University, Washington D.C. is leading a project with funding from Arcadia. Maximum amount: Unknown.
• A new application to the Wikimedia Foundation for continued work on the Thematic Hub will be developed together with at least one other Wikimedia chapter. The project is expected to start in the second half of 2025. Maximum amount: Estimated at 500,000 kr in total.
• The first steps have been taken for an Erasmus+ application, to cover part of the costs of the “Grand Tour of Wikimedia” exchange initiative. Maximum amount: 4 million kr, for a project of up to three years.
• An application to Nordic Culture Contact for a joint Nordic cultural project will be developed during February/March. Maximum amount: 565,000 kr (50,000 euro) in total.
• Discussions have been initiated with a number of institutions regarding various types of consultancy assignments in 2025. This includes work with, among others, the National Collections of Music, Theatre and Dance and the Nordic Museum around mass uploads and events. Possible Wikimedian in Residence positions are being discussed with several UN agencies and with various GLAM institutions in Sweden.

In addition to the above, the following applications are also planned for 2025, with actual implementation starting in 2026 at the earliest:

• As an organizational member of ForumCiv, Wikimedia Sverige can receive support in developing an application to SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The project will have an international focus and include at least one other chapter or hub per project, but most likely 3–4 Wikimedia organizations. If successful, these projects will help cover some of the costs of running the hubs and developing specific tools, methods or networks that create opportunities for the Content Partnerships Hub and all associated affiliates. Maximum amount: 5 million kr.
• The UN Foundation supports collaborative projects between e.g. NGOs and UN agencies, and the possibility of submitting an application will be investigated.

Please note that these are estimated maximum amounts; the association may apply for significantly smaller sums and/or share the funding with several co-applicant organizations. Regardless, the grants applied for will fund work that benefits free knowledge.