Hello,
This email is mainly addressed to Affcom and WMF but I would like to hear
others' comments also.
Some background information regarding the context for this email: the
recently published annual reports from user groups reminded me of some
issues that I first considered a few years ago. I believe that user group
annual reports are currently not standardized, and I think that the public
and WMF might like to have standardized quantitative and comparable ways to
understand affiliates' work, including use of volunteer hours and
per-program benefits, while minimizing the burden on volunteers for
administrative tasks.
I would like to suggest that Affcom and WMF require that all affiliates'
annual reports include:
1. A list of programs which the affiliate supported in the past year. For
each program the affiliate should state the financial costs to the
affiliate including overhead costs and overhead person-hours attributable
to the program, how much time the organizers and participants spent on the
program, the Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results of each program, and
results for any custom-defined measures of success. Auditable performance
information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
regarding their participation.
2. A financial summary for the year that states all sources of income and
amounts from each source, how funds were spent, funds payable, funds
receivable, debts, reserves, assets, etc.
3. Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic
activities.
4. Total annual Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results for the year, and total
annual results for any custom-defined metrics. Again, auditable performance
information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
regarding their participation.
This information is important enough that I would support reasonable staff
or contractor expenses to produce reports with these details. I am mindful
of how precious volunteer time is, and I do not want to burden already
generous volunteers with administrative work that could be done by
contractors or staff. Some cooperation and support for reporting from
volunteer organizers may be necessary, such as when gathering information
from participants at individual events. Some affiliates may have such
generous volunteers that they can do all of the reporting with volunteer
time. But for many affiliates I would support reasonable expenses for
producing standardized quantitative information in annual reports while
minimizing the administrative burden on volunteers.
Regards,
--
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )