Hi Balazs,
I'm quite puzzled and wondering what are you basing your opinion of the FDC
members' zero initial experience. I can speak only for myself, but I was an
ED of an NGO for 6 years (and successfully applied for grants and ran a
~50k annual budget), and I've been on the funds dissemination board for
Nida Foundation for over 10 years (smaller amounts, but many more projects
each round); also for some years I was on the funds board for Interkl@sa
program at American-Polish Freedom Foundation. I am currently an advisory
board member for the largest scientific center in Poland (and besides
regular advisory board duties, consult them on innovation management and
strategy). I have experience in consulting on strategy to other NGOs and
businesses. I also regularly teach strategic management to MBAs end execs,
including programs specifically profiled towards IT and the Internet
business. Of course you can always say that it would be better to have
someone with more experience, but I believe the principle was that we also
need people from within the movement, and able to make a significant time
commitment. In any case, I find the statement about little or zero
experience seriously unfounded.
best,
dariusz "pundit"
On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Balázs Viczián <
balazs.viczian(a)wikimedia.hu> wrote:
In regards to the original problem brought up by
Gerard, FDC is more
or less on its maximum I think.
Its members never did such (or similar) job(s) before FDC (the closest
would be credit checks, but that is like and IEG grant review - it is
pretty far from such a comprehensive grant - technically a
full "business plan" - review)
Despite the little to zero initial experience of its members,
all-volunteer setup and the ever changing circumstances (global goals,
focus points, etc.) and how in general awful it sounds if you say it
out lout that an all-amateur (in the good sense) and inexperienced
group of people are handling
out USD 6 million every year in their free time and for free, it works
pretty well.
Not perfect but you can not demand or expect perfection from such a setup.
That is why there is a whole process now to correct the mistakes that
arise from this "non-professional system", including a dedicated
ombudsperson for the case(s).
I think this is fair enough, the quality of the reviews are visibly
improving from year to year and for the first time there is a real
possibility to fix the mistakes and errors made, like the
"incoherentness" of reviews.
Things from this point could be better only through radical changes to
the system imo.
Balazs
2014-11-25 9:41 GMT, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli(a)gmail.com>om>:
In my opinion the work of the FDC cannot be
limited to compare three
years,
to evaluate three budgets and to evaluate three
impacts.
I would say that it's *out of context*.
I have had this feeling when I have read that the FDC consider that
Amical
is the best example to follow.
How "to follow"? Amical operates in a different context than other
chapters. The question that a good example can be *cloned* is
surrealistic.
Ok, nothing to say but:
a) Amical operates in small community where the language is a strong glue
within the community
b) Amical has a strong inter-relation Wikimedia projects = organization
c) Amical has no big internal conflicts generated by external or internal
questions (may be the opposite)
d) the territory where Amical operates is relatively small
A good example to compare Amical is with Wikimedia Israel.
I would not speak in the specific case of WM DE but I suggest to look in
the history of the German projects and in the German chapter and to check
how many external decisions have had an impact in the German community to
generate a bias. I don't think that these decisions have been a good
solution to improve the community participation to the projects.
What I see is that the numbers of editors is decreasing a lot in the
biggest projects.
It may be caused by a wrong strategy where is privileged the diversity
and
the Global South but without paying attention
that the historical
communities and to the "usual" editors. May be I am wrong but there are
more online projects becoming attractive for the "potential" editors and
the change of the target is not producing a real impact.
So it's not a question of comparison of three budget.
If the problem is critical the solution to limit the decreasing is not
beneficial.
regards
Il 24/Nov/2014 19:14 "Sydney Poore" <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> ha scritto:
> Hi Patrik,
>
>
> During this round of the FDC evaluating the requests, the majority of
the
> organizations that we were looking at had
submitted requests to the FDC
> for
> the past 3 years. While we have seen improvement around strategic
> planning,
> budget planning and evaluation, there is still a great amount of room
for
> improvement from everyone in the wikimedia
movement (including the WMF.)
>
> If you read the recommendations, FDC is primarily asking the largest
> organizations to re-evaluate their current capacity to deliver impact to
> the movement in line with the funds that they are using. In many
instances
> it involves looking at the organizations
overall capacity to develop and
> execute a strategic plan. Because the FDC is making recommendations
about
> unrestricted funds, rather than focusing on a
specific project or
program,
> often the reductions in funds is linked to
concerns about an
organizations
capacity
to grow (eg., hire and manage more staff, do more complicated
projects.)
Warm regards,
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Member FDC
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--
__________________________
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An
Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego
autorstwa