In 2024, the term of 4 (four)Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on theWikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end. The Board invites the Wikimedia movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.
TheElections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff.
6000 community members from more than 180 wiki projects have voted, and the following four candidates were the most voted:
While these candidates have been ranked through the vote, they still need to be appointed to the Board of Trustees. They need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. New trustees will be appointed at the next Board meeting in December 2024.
Below is aSankey diagram that visually represents the vote transfers
TheElections Committee and Wikimedia Foundation staff verify the candidates based oncandidate criteria.
The following candidates are verified eligible:
Single Transferable Vote onSecurePoll will be used in this year's election.
In the 2024 election, there will be four open seats. In a previous cycle when there were four open seats, there was an overwhelming number of candidates for voters to review. The Elections Committee and Board of Trustees determined 12 candidates would be a reasonable number for voters to review. If there are more than 15 eligible candidates as determined by the Elections Committee, a shortlisting process will occur. The process will aim to shortlist 12 candidates, and these 12 candidates will be running in the community voting phase. If there are 15 or fewer candidates, there will be no shortlisting process. The process would be a lot of work for Affiliates only to eliminate three or fewer candidates for community voting round.
In each selection process, the community has the opportunity to submit questions for the Board of Trustees candidates to answer. The Election Committee selects questions from the list developed by the community for the candidates to answer. Candidates are only required to answer these selected questions. This year, the Election Committee will select five (5) questions for the candidates to answer. The selected questions may be a combination of what’s been submitted from the community, if they’re alike or related. Once selected, each question is broken into a subpage to help with readability.
For a quick verification of whether you are eligible to vote or not, please use theAccountEligibility tool.
Election Volunteers are a bridge between theElections Committee, the support team and the movement. If you would like to support this,please sign up here.
| Phase | Milestone | Timeline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidacy Process & Campaigning | Announcement of upcoming election process | March 12, 2024 |  Completed |
| Call for Candidates (3 weeks) | May 8, 2024―May 29, 2024 | Completed | |
| Call for Questions (5 weeks) | May 8, 2024―June 12, 2024 | Completed | |
| Verification of candidates based on legal and candidatecriteria | May 30, 2024―June 7, 2024 | Completed | |
| Shortlisting candidates (if applicable) | June 2024 |  Unnecessary | |
| EC shortlists thequestions for candidates from community members | June 13, 2024―June 19, 2024 | Completed onJune 21, 2024 | |
| Candidates answer shortlisted questions from community members | June 20, 2024―July 1, 2024 | Completed | |
| Pre-onboarding and campaign period | June 25, 2024―August 26, 2024 | Completed | |
| Wikimania 2024 session:"Meet the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees candidates" | August 10, 2024 | Completed (recording) | |
| Voting & Results | Vote launches | September 3, 2024 at 00:01 UTC | Completed |
| Vote closes | September 17, 2024 at 23:59 UTC | Completed | |
| Scrutiny, tally, verification, and preliminary announcement of voting results | September 18, 2024― | Completed | |
| Preliminary announcement of results | Completed | ||
| Confirmation | Background check and confirmation of selected candidates; Board of Trustees discusses candidates | October 2024―November 2024 | Completed |
| Board of Trustees vote on selected candidates | December 2024 Board meeting | Completed |