Thank you for this initiative and all the hard work that went into creating these tools and resources! I'm really looking forward to the results and learnings of the next steps.
At the moment, from our perspective the biggest challenge of the planned process is to overcome the language barrier: If we want to include our volunteers, especially the non-Board members, we'll have to translate the questionnaire and some general information first. While this is probably doable for German or French quickly enough to meet the deadline on December 21, it might be a major challenge for smaller langugage communities.
Would it be possible for interested organizations to get in touch with the Foundation in order to get help in this regard?
Best Claudia -- Executive Director
Wikimedia Österreich - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Siebensterngasse 25/15 1070 Wien Austria +43 699 141 28615 www.wikimedia.at http://www.wikimedia.at/
Am 01.12.2014 um 22:56 schrieb Anasuya Sengupta:
tl;dr Request for Wikimedia organizations to take a survey on organizational effectiveness, that will help us understand and support each other better: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OEQuestionnaire
Dear friends and colleagues of the Wikimedia movement:
The Wikimedia Foundation's Grantmaking team has initiated a project with TCC Group - a consulting firm focused on social impact - and the larger Wikimedia communities, to help Wikimedia organizations of all shapes and sizes (including user groups, chapters, and thematic organizations), to improve their effectiveness and their ability to have impact for the movement. The project was initiated in response to growing interest and conversations by volunteers and organizations, to better understand how organizations in particular have impact in the Wikimedia movement, which is unique in that it is online, growing extraordinarily fast, and created and supported almost entirely by volunteers.
The project seeks to help Wikimedia organizations better understand 1) how impact is defined from an organizational perspective in their contexts, 2) what strategies Wikimedia organizations use to achieve that impact, and 3) what resources and skills Wikimedia organizations may need to be more effective in the strategies they choose to pursue.
In the first “impact” stage of the project, TCC interviewed several organizations, administered an impact survey to all organizations, and attended Wikimania 2014 in London where the project was discussed with AffCom, an informal organizational effectiveness working group, the FDC and other grantmaking committees, as well as many other individuals in the movement. TCC also conducted in-depth research on three organizations, resulting in case studies illustrating different organizational models leading to impact. Many thanks to those of you who took your valuable time to participate in one or more of these exchanges; Wikimedians around the globe created the foundation for this work.
The second and third stages of the project involve development of an online organizational effectiveness questionnaire, a user guide to help organizations interpret their results, and an organizational effectiveness learning center, which may help organizations think about the different strategies they are using and how they could build specific capacities to be more successful with those strategies.
*Learning center: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organizational_effectiveness/Learning_center.
*User guide: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organizational_effectiveness/Tool/User_guide
*Questionnaire text: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organizational_effectiveness/Tool/Questionna...
*Link to take questionnaire (can be used once per IP address, but more links can be requested): https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OEQuestionnaire
The learning center is intended to be a base from which Wikimedia organizations can grow their knowledge and share their own experiences and best practices. TCC worked closely with a handful of Wikimedia volunteers from different organizations to design the Questionnaire you are about to take.
Wikimedia Foundation has provided funding for this project and has consulted closely with TCC over the course of the engagement. Please note that the questionnaire is not intended to be a test of individual organizations in any way; the Foundation will not be provided with individual organization results. As part of this consultation, TCC will aggregate findings from the movement-wide Organizational Effectiveness Questionnaire and provide them to the Foundation’s grantmaking team, along with a “capacity building roadmap” to help the team - and the wider movement - think about how organizations can build capacity for specific program strategies.
*We request that you respond to the questionnaire by December 21st*, so that TCC can collate the results and share it with all of us early in the new year. Please let us know if you have any difficulties or questions: the WMF contact for this process is Winifred Olliff. Please contact us with questions or suggestions at orgeffectiveness@wikimedia.org.
Many thanks to all who offered their time and expertise to the different stages of this project. We hope this tool will be useful to you in your work, and we welcome your continued feedback.
Warm regards and looking forward to our continued work together! Anasuya