Hi Ravi,

Thanks for asking this question. As I said when we had our IRC conversation, our understanding with all those we have visited during this past year has been that we will not do official site reports at this time beyond a financial review for the Audit Committee, instead creating shared notes with each organisation that serve as a framework for current and future work together. We have visited nine organisations (not all of them full fledged site visits) so far, and believe that this process has helped us build a much stronger rapport and shared understanding of strategy and impact.

To elaborate on the reasons for doing it this way: for Garfield and me (as well as other staff and FDC who have accompanied us) the site visit process is about understanding each organisation's context, leadership, financial and other systems, effectiveness, program design, execution and so on. But at the core of it, it's about building trust, and creating a much more supportive atmosphere in which we can ask tough questions of each other (yes, we certainly get our share about WMF), at the same time as build a solid and constructive working relationship together. I know you will appreciate that in order to do this, we need a level of transparency and openness between the organisation and the visiting team - so from the start of the visit, we build our notes together. The organisation is then welcome to share any portion of these collaboratively created notes with whomever they'd like to, including community. In turn, our notes are shared with the FDC, with a financial report going to the Audit Committee. 

To be clear, this past year was new, and an exploration for all of us in the process: each organisation, WMF staff, the FDC and the community members we interacted with in the process. During such an evolving process, it felt unhelpful to create 'official' reports that could undermine the trust and openness we were seeking to build. In addition, what we did not want to happen is for issues and conversations to be taken out of context and for unhelpful and incorrect comparisons to be made between organisations. It may well be that from next year on, it will feel much more appropriate and helpful for us to create shared public documentation with each organisation of our visits, and I'd be happy to do so. 

What I think is most useful for all of us right now - and which I intend to do at the end of this fiscal year - is a 'reflections' document that looks at the overall trends and learning from all the site visits in a way that can support movement-wide learning. 

I hope this helps,
Anasuya



On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 10:11 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams@gmail.com> wrote:
Any updates on this?

I asked Anushaya about this during IRC with Indic Wiki IRC in Feb 2014 and she said I should ask WMIN and CIS-A2K :)


//

Hey,

Any reports from Wikimedia India chapter / CIS - A2K regarding the plans after WMF grants' team visit?

Thanks,

Ravi//

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--
Anasuya Sengupta
Senior Director of Grantmaking
Wikimedia Foundation


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