What we are learning from hub pilots

1. Executive Summary

In late 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the Hub Fund and updated the hub piloting guidelines to support movement-wide experimentation and learning. Hubs are understood as regional and thematic support structures that strengthen coordination, contextualisation, and subsidiarity. One year on, we are reflecting on what hub pilots have achieved so far and what we are learning along the way.

This work is taking place as the Movement reviews its broader ecosystem of organisations, including their roles, value propositions, and funding models. Within this context, hub pilots offer a practical way to test new approaches to coordination and decentralisation, grounded in real community needs and experience.

One year into hub support, six pilot hubs, two regional and four thematic, are active, bringing together more than 200 affiliates and organisers. Early signals indicate hubs are beginning to assume responsibilities that are difficult for affiliates to address alone, such as coordinating resource distribution, supporting the growth of emerging communities, and building shared capacity to respond to global trends and challenges, including declining volunteer participation and threats to human-generated knowledge.

In the coming fiscal year, the Foundation will work closely with hub pilots to assess their impact, clarify their role within the Movement ecosystem, and use these insights to inform future decisions about funding, recognition, and support.

2. The Hub Pilot Model

What defines a hub pilot?

Hub pilots test services with clear, measurable outcomes for the communities they serve. As collaborative bodies, hub pilots are experimenting with representative, efficient, and service-oriented governance structures that prioritise decision-making and accountability in support of services.

These are six key areas where hubs can add value, based on current pilots and the services they have prioritised, as well as community and Foundation discussions over the last year on Movement priorities and opportunities for decentralised approaches. Piloting a hub does not require addressing all these areas. Instead, it requires prioritising specific services within these areas for testing, aligned with community priorities.

Diagram: 6 key service areas 

Wikimedia Foundation support:

Hub piloting support is now a cross-team effort within the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to funding, this support includes readiness assessments, collaborative proposal development, and regular check-ins. Monthly engagements with hub teams help track progress, surface challenges, document learning, and identify emerging impact. 

3. Overview of Hub Pilots

Here is a summary of the current hub pilots, their services related to the 6 key areas, and their current stakeholders.

4. Hub Achievements

Regional hubs

Thematic hubs

I’ve attended several VSN sessions, including skillshares and peer-to-peer meetings, and what struck me is how practical and human they are. Whether it’s discussing volunteer burnout, working with young contributors, or navigating challenging topics around diversity and inclusion, everyone is given real space to speak — not just to present, but to truly share what they feel and what they are dealing with in their communities. (VSN member from the South Asian community, identifies as a newcomer organiser)

“Ideas we learn at conferences become powerful when mentorship helps us apply it.” The EduWiki Conference ends in days, but the EduWiki mentorship extends its impact in years…” (Oby Ezeilo – EduWiki hub member)”

5. What We’re Learning 

Through monthly check-ins with hubs, peer sharing between hubs, and cross-team learning within the Foundation, a few learnings have surfaced. We hope these learnings support the GRDC and Affcom in answering key questions about the role of hubs within the Movement Ecosystem, and support current and future pilots in defining and refining their service, operational, and governance models. 

Movement-Level Learning 

Pilots to date have shown that hubs can help address gaps that individual groups or affiliates often struggle to fill on their own. At the regional or thematic level, hubs connect advocacy and programmatic work to enable growth and adaptation to local contexts. They also act as a bridge between community needs and Foundation support, while creating space for fairer representation, especially for communities that find it harder to participate in movement-wide discussions.

To provide a few concrete examples: 

• Helping emerging communities access funds, either by managing context-specific funding programmes (e.g., CEE Hub) or by providing capacity-building spaces and translation services to bring communities closer to funding opportunities (e.g., ESEAP Hub).  
• Providing well-structured mentorship programmes that are tailored to specific programmatic work across regions (i.e. EduWiki Hub and Language Diversity Hub). Ongoing research shows the importance of mentorship models for newcomer growth. 
• Providing regional platforms to define technical priorities and coordinate Foundation and volunteer efforts (i.e. the CEE Hub, EduWiki Hub).
• Providing a platform for small and emerging communities to showcase their work, network with experienced community members, participate in regional or global conferences, and be given a voice in regional advocacy efforts (i.e. ESEAP and VSN Hubs)

Organisational and Process Learning

Early learning shows that hubs perform best when decision-making remains simple and flexible in service delivery. Spending too long designing structures can slow progress, while real insight comes from delivering services and learning along the way. Testing services early helps those driving the hub understand which skills and resources are truly needed. 

Clear roles and expectations between steering groups, working groups, and staff help keep the work moving and prevent burnout or stagnation. Problems can arise when responsibilities are unclear, communication is messy, or a small number of people end up carrying too much of the load.

Working together across different cultures, styles, and levels of availability isn’t always easy, but clear management structures and processes that are regularly reviewed, along with external facilitation, can make collaboration healthier and more effective.

Creating space for wider community participation through working groups or advisory circles helps build shared ownership of the hub and its services. These groups work best when people are invited openly, onboarded properly, and given a clear idea of how they can contribute.

Experiences from initiatives such as VSN and EduWiki show that it’s possible to build on existing governance while creating meaningful opportunities for community members to participate.

Across all pilots, a strong focus on people, relationships, and care has been essential to building trust. While this work often takes time and can be hard to measure, communities consistently see it as central to what makes hubs valuable. Finding better ways to recognise and reflect this in future evaluations will be important.

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Role

Beyond funding, the pilots have highlighted the need for additional support systems, such as consistent engagement with Foundation staff and the flexibility to iterate. Early and responsive feedback has improved proposal quality and alignment. The Foundation adds the most value by supporting service refinement, facilitating peer learning across hubs, and connecting hub work to broader movement learning. Technical input is most effective when it addresses expressed hub needs and involves multiple areas of expertise within the Foundation.

6. Looking Ahead

In 2026, we anticipate significant progress as hubs accelerate their service delivery plans. As the CEE Hub begins managing Rapid Funds for the region, we will gain insight into how this new resource distribution model advances equitable access to funding and strengthens funding impact. It will also be valuable to assess how the ESEAP Hub’s community translation programme expands engagement among specific communities within regional and Movement spaces.

We will observe whether the expansion of the Content Partnerships Hub’s help desk results in increased large-scale content uploads to Wikimedia platforms, and how the EduWiki Hub and Language Diversity mentoring models contribute to community growth, deeper engagement, and the development of practices that can benefit the wider Movement. Finally, VSN’s new node is expected to enable experimentation with additional peer-learning formats and foster stronger global connections.

In the coming fiscal year, the Foundation’s Hubs team will begin evaluating hub effectiveness, focusing on service outcomes, contribution to affiliate work, and the fitness of governance and staffing models. This evaluation will serve as key input for future funding decisions. The Wikimedia Foundation will also work with the GRDC and AffCom to discuss next steps around the Hub Fund and overall Hub support in the context of the Movement Ecosystem Strategy process.

7. Follow Along

Updates on hub learning and progress will continue to be shared on Meta-wiki every two months. Additional information on hub funding and individual hub activities is available on the hub Meta pages. Questions and feedback can be directed to the Hubs team: strategy2030@wikimedia.org.