Hey folks,

I've posted the Chief Program Officer job here http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Chief_Program_Officer - and want to invite you to share it widely with friends and colleagues.

The purpose of this role is to provide leadership for the Foundation's program (non-technical, non-finance & admin) staff, and to support and facilitate the work of the volunteer community. I have always planned to hire the CPO, which is a critical position for us - but I needed first to address our basic financial & administrative stability, and start adding some capacity to the tech team.

This is a highly unusual role that's going to require a lot of creativity and innovation: I can't imagine another job like it. I'm confident there are amazing, appropriate candidates out there, but because the role is so unusual, I think it may take a while to find the right person. Therefore, I've put up the advertisement super-early: the posting doesn't close until end of December.

So until then, I would love if you could share it widely, so we can surface fabulous candidates. Please be aware as well that I'm super-busy from now until the second week of November: I have no plans to speak even informally with potential candidates until at least then, and possibly December. For now, I'm just collecting CVs :-)

Thanks, Sue

Here is the full text of the posting:

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The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Chief Program Officer. This is a unique leadership position at a highly creative volunteer-driven organization. This job will be posted for several months, to allow a rich and diverse candidate pool to develop. Please feel free to share this posting widely.

The successful candidate for this role could come from a variety of different backgrounds, such as educational non-profit work, the free culture movement, digital media, product development, etc. Please read below for the detailed job description and instructions for applying.

JOB TITLE

Chief Program Officer

JOB PURPOSE

The purpose of this role is to provide leadership to the Wikimedia Foundation program staff, and to support and facilitate the work of the international Wikimedia volunteer community, in collecting, developing and making available free educational resources for people all around the world.

REPORTS TO

Executive Director

JOB SUMMARY

You will have responsibility for all mission-furthering program work of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a broad scope, covering all areas of organizational activity except finance and administration, and technology.

The Wikimedia Foundation aims to increase the overall reach of its projects, to broaden participation, and to increase quality. As Chief Program Officer, you will be the person primarily responsible for moving these goals forward. You will also be responsible for media relations and other communications activities, both externally and internally.

The Wikimedia Foundation is an unusual organization, with an extremely small staff supporting and facilitating the work of a global community of tens of thousands of active volunteers. This role requires a high degree of flexibility and creativity, and a collaborative and inventive orientation. The successful candidate will be mission-driven and passionate about the idea of creating free, multilingual educational material for people everywhere in the world. A desire for real-world impact is critical to success.

RESPONSIBILITIES

* Develop and implement a strategic plan for the program area, with the goals of increasing reach, broadening participation and increasing quality in Wikipedia and its sister projects;

* Lead the program team, including goals development, coaching, performance assessment, and the identification and filling of skills and capacity gaps;

* Develop and implement scalable mechanisms for encouraging, facilitating and rewarding the work of the Wikimedia volunteers. This will include the development and administration of an experimental small-grant-making process;

* Identify and recruit key institutional partners who can help us reach our goals;

* Work closely with the fundraising team to develop project concepts;

* Oversee the execution of projects including those funded by grants, working closely as required with the program staff, volunteers, technical team and others;

* Participate in the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning processes, including program budget development and management.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

* A history of leadership experience in increasingly responsible positions, ideally including management of teams of 10+ people;

* Experience developing and implementing strategies and plans, and ideally also overseeing large initiatives;

* Experience hiring and developing staff, coaching, evaluating performance, setting goals and measuring success;

* Experience in the non-profit sector, ideally including experience developing grant proposals;

* Basic technical understanding is a requirement, ideally including experience with online production principles and practices;

* Exceptional verbal and written communication skills and interpersonal skills are a must;

* Experience working with or as part of large volunteer communities is a major plus;

* Understanding of the open source and free culture communities is a major plus;

* Experience with any of the following is a plus: user testing, audience research, events management, marketing, product development;

* International work experience is a major plus, as is the ability to speak languages in addition to English;

* Must be able to work well with people with a very wide diversity of demographic and cultural characteristics;

* Must be capable of achieving results while maintaining an inclusive, collaborative leadership style.

TO APPLY

This position will be filled in January 2009. To apply, please send us your CV, along with a cover letter explaining why you are interested in the position, and qualified for it. Applications must be submitted to <jobs at wikimedia dot org> before December 31, 2008, and must include "Chief Program Officer" in the e-mail subject line.

Please be aware that due to the large number of job applications we receive, only candidates selected for interviews will be contacted. We will probably not reply to any candidates prior to December, so please do not interpret our silence as a lack of interest.

ABOUT WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia containing more than 11 million articles in over 250 languages. Consistently ranked among the top 10 most popular websites worldwide, Wikipedia is evidence that mass collaboration for educational purposes works: that people will, of their own accord and without compensation, work productively together to create high-quality educational materials to be distributed, for free, to others around the world. As of August 2008, the largest Wikipedia language editions are English (2.5 million articles), German (795,000 articles), French (700,000 articles), Polish (530,000 articles), and Japanese (515,000 articles). Across all languages combined, more than 10 billion Wikipedia pages are viewed every month. Each Wikipedia is a unique creation, developed by volunteers working in that language, based on what they think would be useful and interesting for readers.

ABOUT THE WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in San Francisco, California. It is fully audited and has 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world.