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/Questionn…
*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(a)wikimedia.org>rg>.
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
--
*Anasuya SenguptaSenior Director of GrantmakingWikimedia Foundation*
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