Dear all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met for their final meeting of 2022 on December 7. Two members of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) – Érica Azzellini and Manavpreet Kaur – were invited to join the meeting as Board Visitors.
== Board Business ==
Quite a bit of regularly scheduled Board business was covered, including:
Appointing Mike Peel [1] to the Board and reappointing Shani Evenstein Sigalov to her second term [2]. Their terms will run from December 7, 2022 until December 31, 2025. You can read more about Mike and Shani here on Diff [3].
Most of the work of the Board is done via its committees. Each year each Trustee’s committee assignments are approved to serve on individual Board committees, either as full members or as alternates. The new membership is listed here [4].
The Board also approved the September 8 Board meeting minutes [5].
== Governance Reforms ==
During the meeting, the Board also approved changes to the Affiliations Committee Charter [6]. Also, the Community Affairs Committee (CAC) is to oversee the Affiliations Committee on behalf of the board from now on, and will be responsible for any future revision of the Affiliations Committee Charter, and for appointing Board Liaisons. CAC will likewise be providing oversight to the Language Committee [7]. These changes will help CAC to work more directly with the advising Board committees, to assess and provide support, and to make changes quicker if needed.
== 2022 Board Selection Review ==
The Board also received an update from the Governance Committee on their recent meeting with the Elections Committee in November. The past selection process was challenging because of the lack of clarity on the roles of all the bodies involved. The Board acknowledges that the process became overcomplicated, and changes mid-process added more confusion and frustration. For the next Board selection process, there would be more clearly defined roles for the Elections Committee, the Governance Committee / Board Selection Task Force, and Foundation staff, to avoid slowdowns and lack of clarity on process. These updated roles and responsibilities will be made public to help voters and candidates understand how decisions are being made. The Board agreed with the recommendation from the Governance Committee to seat Trustees in 2024 at the December board meeting, so that there is enough time to plan the next selection process, and make all necessary changes to the SecurePoll software etc.
== Foundation Updates ==
During the meeting the Board also received a report from staff on the current financial outlook as well as an update on year-end fundraising revenue: the first week of the revised banner campaign on the English Wikipedia shows a roughly 50% decline in donations. As this was information for only one week, the Board needs more data to understand the implications, and will therefore be meeting again with staff in January to discuss next steps.
After the Board meeting there was an open Q&A session with Foundation staff, to discuss the meeting outcomes, and the fundraising data.
== 2023 Meeting Dates ==
The regular 2023 Board meeting dates have been set and the Board will be meeting:
March 9-12, New York, USA
June 21 (Virtual)
August (Wikimania, Singapore, the exact date(s) TBD)
December 6 (Virtual)
== Open Conversation with Trustees on December 15 ==
I hope to see you at the upcoming CAC Open Conversation with Trustees, happening December 15, at 12:00 UTC, on Zoom (write to ask.cac@wikimedia.org if you would like to register). As usual, the call will be recorded, and there will be a live YouTube stream. This call will have interpretation into Arabic. As communicated before, the aim is to provide interpretation for any language where there are five or more interested community members, but as mentioned on the page, the requests should have been made at least 5 days before the event.
[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Appointing_Mike_Peel_to_the_Board_of_Trustees
[4] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Committee_Membership,_2022
[6] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Updating_Affiliations_Committee_Charter,_2022
[7] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Updating_Language_Committee_Oversight,_2022