Hi Sue, Thanks for this great and detailed report. Although that I thinks it was worth to publish it a month before this current FDC round, I understand that you didn't want your comments to influence the chapter's proposals. Let's talk about growth - when you grove from zero employee to even one, especially if he is a ED (and a good one) – the influence of this step on a small chapter budget could be a very big one. You are talking about the grove of the chapters, but the WMF isn't really different on this issue. Right, it's not really fair to compare the foundation to chapters in the matter of the core daily work the foundation deal with and her responsibility for the entire movement, but it worth to look on that. I didn't did a real research on that (sorry that I don't have the time or the manpower to ask them for that), but from a quick looks on the WMF reports over the years - 2004 - 56,666$, 2005- 283,487$, 2006 - $1,066,785 (376%), 2007 - 1,696,569, 2008 - 5.6M (335%), 2009 - 8.6M (152%), 2010 - 15.4% (178%), 2011 - 26M (170%), 2012 - 37$ (141%). So if according to the FDC 120% growth is the rational growth for organization, the WMF never wasn't even close to fit this growth. Now, when during her ten years existence the foundation started to focus on *HER* evaluation? When they had one staffer or 40? And let not forget - the foundation in her daily program don't deal daily with volunteers working as part of their core programs of operate from their office, something that it's different from the chapters. I admire evaluation, I admire audit and failure reports. I think we should know what we are doing and learn from the past. But I'm also realistic, knowing that good evaluation require knowledge. Most of our volunteers are great editors, some of them even great developers, some of them even know how to run a great projects and creating amazing partnerships. Only few of them like to make reports, only few of them know how to evaluate correctly their work. And it's totally ok. You have big expectations from the chapters, and this is totally ok also. But you have also a huge doubt on their true impact. And this is not new for none of us. Even before the FDC, and even before the staff grove that you mentions on your report, you liked to show what the "community" thinks about the chapters from a surveys that we agreed that are not fair (Wikimania 2012?). So yes, we need evaluations, and we need more reports. I totally agreed. The questions is how and when. It's different to ask from an organizations with 40 staffer the same evaluation level and knowledge that you require from a chapter that just got his first staffer. Especially with chapters that their staff are doing less programs work and this been done mostly be the volunteers. Expectations and results are harder, although they are needed. When a volunteer arranging a Wikipedia Academy conference with 150 people attends without staff that involve with all the organizations, his success is probably much worth for us than a same conference been arranged by a full time staffer. And its work for the two-side. I can expect and demand higher targets from my employee, but not from a volunteer who does the same thing. So, because I cannot surly measure the volunteer's success – from now we will decide about if project is going to exist or now only if I 100% can measure him on the level of how many women editors was at the room and how many of them had laptops (not far away from a question that we been asked by the WMF of how many people with SLR cameras came to our photo tours)? Should we start chasing just after numbers? Over the past month I personally and all my board dedicated one face-to-face meeting every week, alongside with at least 2 hours daily work on team to build together with our new ED our annual plan, budget and strategic goals. This is huge amount of time for volunteers. This huge amount of time for board that didn't has the time deal with nothing else and asking his partners and volunteers to wait due the lack of their time for others things. I will be honest – we not sure all of our targets are really realistic. We didn't measure till now most of our work because of lack of time, manpower, and knowledge. And probably some of the numeral targets we set to ourselves this year we will not achieve at all and some of them we will achieve more that we planned. But it's not because we did a good or awful job. It is also because lack of knowledge and experience the volunteers have to reach such level of evaluation – but more than that - the difficulty in the measurement we faced. I can do in one month 200 editing workshops and brings 10,000 editors to Wikipedia. But I can also reveal one month after that only five remained active editors - because the community's internal procedures make it hard for them to be accepted, because the editing interface problematic, because of limited knowledge in areas they can contribute against the areas already covered in Wikipedia and hundreds of other parameters that require a great deal of experience and learning. The FDC is a great success, but also let's not forget what you mention on your report – that the consultancy fees was US$294,186 (more than half of an average chapter budget according to your report), not including the amount of time and staff that was spent on this process from the WMF side – making this process a really expensive one. I don't mean to say that's not ok or that it was waste of money, not at all. I only meant to point that even a large organization like the WMF, with many experts and more than 100 staff need outside support sometime. Support that costs a lot of money, and require a big knowledge and time. Can you honestly say the WMF till today give 100% of the support the chapter's needs in order to reach for the great stage you dream of when the money is 100% used in effective ways and when we know exactly how to run programs and deal with volunteers? Or maybe *each* one of the chapters also need to spend quarter million dollar of donors money to hire kind of Bridgespan for each strategic step that that faced with? I posted this comment also on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/… Regards, Itzik Edri Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:

Hi Itzik, thanks for your analysis and your thoughtful mail. I'd like to echo it! I also had some discussions with my peers in several countries about this report. Comments were made on the time of publication and the aggressiveness towards chapters, the volunteers who worked their "as*** off" to get their FDC proposal properly done and the FDC itself which is described to be part of some mafia-like conspirancy. "slap in the face of the volunteers", "pure hatred against chapters" were named. I don't want to go into any more details, I'd like to have this conversation to be constructive and polite. I wonder what others say about this? It was surprisingly quiet here. A remark I want to make, to add to Itzik's thoughts: There were several times when the definition of "community" - concerning the "Wikimedia Movement" - was discussed. If WMF and WMF staff are part of the movement or the community. WMF people - and I am sure this included Sue especially - always fought for an inclusive approach of the term community, including WMF people which are hard working for the support and advancement of our community. In the report it is criticised, that people from chapter take away the seats from the community on the FDC, making sure that the chapters receive more funding. Lobbying at its best! Apart from the fact that these people have neen elected by the community, did anyone ever question that comment? In a country with a working chapter it is an obvious fact that the majority of *active* volunteers will in one way or another work with the chapter. Because this is exactly why they exist in the first place: Because volunteers themselves made them to happen, in order to support themselves with a legal framework, some local infrastructure to help them to achieve more than they could as individuals. Still almost all of the chapters have active volunteers as their board members. Being part of a chapter doesn't mean that one isn't part of the community anymore and that is true also for most of the people holding positions in a chapter. They should be even more thanked, doing two jobs - their volunteer project work and holding a position in a chapter - at once. I'd also like to see comments from FDC members on that issue as well. /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>