As you may have seen from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions, the Board has approved the creation of a number of new committees: Financial, Technical, Executive, Events, Communications, Special projects, Board expansion committee, and Chapters.
The pages linked from the resolutions page gives some very brief details about these, and so far there has been no public discussion of them.
I would like to open up discussion of the Executive Committee since internally, opinions are very divided on how this committee should be set up, and I think some additional views might be useful. The two lines of thought are:
1) small committee: the committee should be made up of between 2 and 4 existing Board members only 2) large committee: the committee should include the current Board as well as representatives from other committees and people outside the other committees.
Does anyone have experience or knowledge of how Executive Committees in other non-profit organizations are organized? Is there any benefit of one approach over the other?
Ideas are also welcome on how the Executive Committee should fit in with the other committees, and whether additional committees are needed.
Angela.
Angela wrote:
Does anyone have experience or knowledge of how Executive Committees in other non-profit organizations are organized? Is there any benefit of one approach over the other?
I've been a member of a number of organizations, 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527, charitable, educational, political, etc. Most of them had a three-tier command structure:
Board/Executive Officers - a fairly small number (4-12) of people, each with a defined role in the organization, have authority to act in the scope of their role and as authorized by the broader org (see EC and CC below), little role as a group beyond their individual jobs and often some charter requirements. Tend to stay in frequent contact and take on a lot of urgent things that can't be dealt with in committee in time.
Executive Committee - consists of the Executive Officers plus a number of directors, representatives of different subunits within the organization, the means of selection varies depending on the nature of the organization and its relative orientation (top-down or bottom-up; whether the org is a project of the Board and the rest of the org members are just those they've enlisted to help them in it or whether it's an association of people with a specific cause/interest/goal and the officers are chosen by the body of those to represent them). The EC can set rules, change policy, etc. Often the EC and the Board become conflated in people's minds, and often they're effectively the same entity, but the Board is the body with actual power under the rules and bylaws.
Central Committee - A much larger body of org members, nearly always a superset of the EC. In small organizations, this may consist of all members; in larger organizations it consists of elected representatives. It's not unusual for a CC to be a hundred people; in very large orgs with a lot of subunits, this may be several hundred. Its power varies greatly depending on how the body is organized. In some, the CC has no actual power and serves largely as a discussion place and sounding board for the EC, being informed as to the EC's activities and then being the ones, in turn, to share it with non-committee membership. (This is most common in top-down orgs.) In others, the CC has the full power of the organization and sets bylaws, elects EC members, and the EC can't do anything outside is granted authority without recieving authorization from the CC.
It's not unusual for an org to require all financial expenditures be authorized (not necessarily approved individually) by the CC.
Going back to your mail, now that I've drifted greatly... I've never seen an org with a smaller EC than Board. I know they exist, I just haven't been involved with any. One I can think of had a 30-person Board... when they decided to found an EC, they cut the Board down to 8 members and made the EC 40 members. The EC had most of the authority the Board had had previously; in effect, you could say that the Board expanded slightly and was renamed the EC, with a new Board being made of only the highest-ranking members (in this case, chair, vice chair, finance director, executive director, communications director, research director, personnel director, properties director).
That probably wasn't too clear, but maybe it's helpful.
-- Jake Nelson
Angela wrote:
Ideas are also welcome on how the Executive Committee should fit in with the other committees, and whether additional committees are needed.
Almost forgot in the other mail. In the orgs mentioned, special-purpose committees are permanent subcommittees of either the Executive Committee (if it's an organization with a large EC or most of the power vested in the EC - which nearly always end up being the same thing) or the Central Committee (if most authority is vested in the CC). Generally, they've been granted a certain degree of autonomy within their field, and the power to act within certain boundaries. Most matters that pertain to one will get referred to them from a larger committee, and they'll report back with recommendations (often required to be a draft motion which the larger committee should adopt), which are usually approved.
-- Jake Nelson
Dear Angela, dear list,
thank you for publishing this, and thanks to the Board and everyone else involved for taking these steps, which I hope will help to decentralize the organization and empower and encourage users to participate in everyday work such as the establishment of partnerships, the coordination of fundraising campaigns, the management of press releases, the handling of libel cases, and so on. I'd like to get involved a bit to help this process along as much as possible.
As you requested, in this response I focus specifically on the Executive Committee. I am sending a separate message with some general concerns.
The situation in the past has been that the Board was the single executive body of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was obviously not scalable. There are, essentially, two competing problems: * the Board is too small to deal with the amount of decisions that need to be made. * the Board is too large and distributed to immediately make a decision when one is needed.
This relates to the problem Angela has pointed out of two competing goals of a small and a large committee. As Jake has explained, the solution is probably a compromise.
It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a highly participatory community.
The CEO needs to be a person who understands the community, the goals, the technology, and the organization. They also need to be particularly good at electronic communications, which is our main means of getting things done. I'd much rather see someone like Daniel Mayer or James Forrester in this position - both individuals with great organizational talent - than someone who has never edited a wiki.
I would support the current Board or a subset thereof serving in an interim role as a multiple personality CEO while this position is being defined and a suitable candidate is sought. However, I strongly believe there need to be more people on the Executive Committee.
We have subunits in the organization (chapters) which could provide some of the members of the EC: each head of a chapter would automatically be a member of the EC. In addition, we have the existing officers like the CTO, CFO and CRO, who should serve on the committee.
Now, if we stick to all these people, we still have a few problems: - They are all quite busy in their existing roles. - Some of these positions are appointed, others were elected to a specific chapter. I think we should try to avoid a situation where the executive body is stagnant and seen as bureaucratically distant from the community, like the European Commission. - In all likelihood, these people, through their existing roles, will be forced to focus on our largest project, Wikipedia.
Therefore, I suggest that in addition, we have an annual or biannual open election of about 10 members, one or two for each Wikimedia project. These could be elected by their project communities, or by the entire Wikimedia community - I have no strong opinion on that.
The members of the EC would meet at least weekly (but also be present much of the time on a designated IRC channel). Realistically, in a volunteer organization, you'd probably find that of the relatively large committee, only a subset of maybe 10 people really show up and participate regularly. So you'd need to state that decisions can be made by such a subset.
Any decision that can be postponed until the next meeting would be made in consensus or through a vote by the members present then and there (with the CEO having the power to override a split vote). In addition, the CEO would be required to consult with the Executive Committee whenever possible (in practice, through the aforementioned IRC channel).
The Board would primarily exercise strategic oversight: ensure the openness of the organization, prioritize long term goals, evaluate the work of the officers, and so on. The President (Jimmy) would also be the main person identified with the organization at large to the outside world, i.e. the guy who gets the Nobel Prize in the end ;-).
Whether there needs to be a "Wikicouncil" as has been suggested before (similar to the Central Committee Jake mentioned) is a separate question. Personally, I do not see the need at present, since we also have the other committees which hopefully will be open enough to enable wide participation. A very large representative body does not really strike me as appropriate for an organization like ours - if you can have a large group of people, you might as well make it completely open and participatory.
I see one key role of the Executive Committee and the CEO as the authorization of outside contacts and partnership proposals. Anything that doesn't fall within a defined and agreed upon strategy needs to be authorized a priori or a posteriori.
Ideally, in the next few years, I think we should gradually work towards making these executive positions full-time positions (some paid for through the chapters), as they will have to do quite a lot of work when it comes to the organization and oversight of the committees, and we need to be able to rely on them being available during meetings. Of course, this will not be nearly possible without a very substantial increase in our budget (i.e. multiple millions), so we could continue as we do now, starting with the most necessary official positions.
These are my thoughts for now and I'm very interested in what others have to say. Most importantly, I hope that all non-confidential discussion about these issues will take place in open forums and on open pages from now on.
Best,
Erik
While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think that is a critical thing for the board to consider.
Daniel Mayer
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Dear Angela, dear list,
thank you for publishing this, and thanks to the Board and everyone else involved for taking these steps, which I hope will help to decentralize the organization and empower and encourage users to participate in everyday work such as the establishment of partnerships, the coordination of fundraising campaigns, the management of press releases, the handling of libel cases, and so on. I'd like to get involved a bit to help this process along as much as possible.
As you requested, in this response I focus specifically on the Executive Committee. I am sending a separate message with some general concerns.
The situation in the past has been that the Board was the single executive body of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was obviously not scalable. There are, essentially, two competing problems:
- the Board is too small to deal with the amount of decisions that need
to be made.
- the Board is too large and distributed to immediately make a decision
when one is needed.
This relates to the problem Angela has pointed out of two competing goals of a small and a large committee. As Jake has explained, the solution is probably a compromise.
It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a highly participatory community.
The CEO needs to be a person who understands the community, the goals, the technology, and the organization. They also need to be particularly good at electronic communications, which is our main means of getting things done. I'd much rather see someone like Daniel Mayer or James Forrester in this position - both individuals with great organizational talent - than someone who has never edited a wiki.
I would support the current Board or a subset thereof serving in an interim role as a multiple personality CEO while this position is being defined and a suitable candidate is sought. However, I strongly believe there need to be more people on the Executive Committee.
We have subunits in the organization (chapters) which could provide some of the members of the EC: each head of a chapter would automatically be a member of the EC. In addition, we have the existing officers like the CTO, CFO and CRO, who should serve on the committee.
Now, if we stick to all these people, we still have a few problems:
- They are all quite busy in their existing roles.
- Some of these positions are appointed, others were elected to a
specific chapter. I think we should try to avoid a situation where the executive body is stagnant and seen as bureaucratically distant from the community, like the European Commission.
- In all likelihood, these people, through their existing roles, will be
forced to focus on our largest project, Wikipedia.
Therefore, I suggest that in addition, we have an annual or biannual open election of about 10 members, one or two for each Wikimedia project. These could be elected by their project communities, or by the entire Wikimedia community - I have no strong opinion on that.
The members of the EC would meet at least weekly (but also be present much of the time on a designated IRC channel). Realistically, in a volunteer organization, you'd probably find that of the relatively large committee, only a subset of maybe 10 people really show up and participate regularly. So you'd need to state that decisions can be made by such a subset.
Any decision that can be postponed until the next meeting would be made in consensus or through a vote by the members present then and there (with the CEO having the power to override a split vote). In addition, the CEO would be required to consult with the Executive Committee whenever possible (in practice, through the aforementioned IRC channel).
The Board would primarily exercise strategic oversight: ensure the openness of the organization, prioritize long term goals, evaluate the work of the officers, and so on. The President (Jimmy) would also be the main person identified with the organization at large to the outside world, i.e. the guy who gets the Nobel Prize in the end ;-).
Whether there needs to be a "Wikicouncil" as has been suggested before (similar to the Central Committee Jake mentioned) is a separate question. Personally, I do not see the need at present, since we also have the other committees which hopefully will be open enough to enable wide participation. A very large representative body does not really strike me as appropriate for an organization like ours - if you can have a large group of people, you might as well make it completely open and participatory.
I see one key role of the Executive Committee and the CEO as the authorization of outside contacts and partnership proposals. Anything that doesn't fall within a defined and agreed upon strategy needs to be authorized a priori or a posteriori.
Ideally, in the next few years, I think we should gradually work towards making these executive positions full-time positions (some paid for through the chapters), as they will have to do quite a lot of work when it comes to the organization and oversight of the committees, and we need to be able to rely on them being available during meetings. Of course, this will not be nearly possible without a very substantial increase in our budget (i.e. multiple millions), so we could continue as we do now, starting with the most necessary official positions.
These are my thoughts for now and I'm very interested in what others have to say. Most importantly, I hope that all non-confidential discussion about these issues will take place in open forums and on open pages from now on.
Best,
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Daniel Mayer:
While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think that is a critical thing for the board to consider.
Hi Daniel,
one thing that would help me a great deal is something like "The typical day of the CEO". What is their interaction with the committees going to be like? When someone proposes "Let's have a cooperation with the European Union's environmental terminology community in order to get their databases licensed under the GFDL for Wiktionary", what are they going to say? In a stagnating project decision like Wikiversity or Chinese Wikinews, are they going to play a role, or will this fall back to the Board? What will their involvement be in pushing a project like "English Wikipedia DVD by 2007"?
Now, I realize that there are a lot of organizational issues to work out: hiring staff, making sure the budget is in order, dealing with legal problems, and so forth. But then again, we have qualified legal and financial committees to advise the CEO on those matters. We do have qualified committees as well to advise them on the other matters above, but will they be listening? Will they understand the nature of the wiki, and the importance of a particular project that is proposed to them? Will they be accepted by the community if they are essentially an outsider to it? Will they try to push things through when they should be consulting with the community?
My ideas may be very far off from what the Board is thinking about what the role of the CEO should be, and what you are thinking, so clarification would be helpful. This is what an open discussion is good at, bringing out different perceptions, and helping to arrive at useful definitions.
Oh, and please, can I have some brownie points for keeping the hypothetical CEO gender neutral? ;-)
Thanks,
Erik
Daniel Mayer wrote:
While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the board to not consider me for a post as CEO. I'm not qualified and don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of an organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with an MBA and years of non-profit experience. While it would be nice to have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think that is a critical thing for the board to consider.
I think that's exactly right. What I'm standing up and saying is that while I'm very very good at what I do very very well (nice tautology, eh?), *I* am not the right person to handle the job of Executive Director going forward.
There are people out there with decades of experience with public-facing international charities with a strong community focus who can very quickly be trained in our community norms. And if they already know about Wikipedia, and have edited, then so much the better.
But we aren't hiring a new Jimbo, we've already got one of those. :)
What we need to be hiring is someone to help the _organization_ live up to the incredible potential before us.
This is not a community position, this is a position on the organizational front.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a highly participatory community.
I think that the title "CEO" is probably misleading, because in general the CEO provides a great deal more guidance to the overall vision and mission of the organization than the position which is being contemplated here.
I think that "Executive Director" or "COO" or "Business Manager" is a more appropriate title.
We have amazing opportunities before us to achieve our charitable goals, and in order to take advantage of them we have to do a much better job going forward of behaving like a serious professional organization on the business end of things.
A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes, decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity with a strong volunteer component. An ideal candidate should have extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory compliance, international chapters, donor relations management, staffing, budgeting, etc.
Upon being hired, it is absolutely true that this person needs to be thoroughly and extensively trained in how the website functions, how the volunteer community works, and they absolutely must understand that without the community, there is no success. But hiring and training someone in this area is not difficult -- the best Wikimedians are able to pick it up in a week or two of editing, and after a few months can understand it all quite deeply.
--Jimbo
On 1/29/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes, decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity with a strong volunteer component. An ideal candidate should have extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory compliance, international chapters, donor relations management, staffing, budgeting, etc.
What kind of salary do you think someone like that is going to get? You bring up the Red Cross as an example in another post, the top executives at that organization make around half a million a year. Hiring from the outside is probably going to be expensive, though if there's no one competant on the inside it might be more expensive not to do so.
On 1/30/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/29/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes, decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity with a strong volunteer component. An ideal candidate should have extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory compliance, international chapters, donor relations management, staffing, budgeting, etc.
What kind of salary do you think someone like that is going to get? You bring up the Red Cross as an example in another post, the top executives at that organization make around half a million a year. Hiring from the outside is probably going to be expensive, though if there's no one competant on the inside it might be more expensive not to do so. _______________________________________________
That is indeed something to be considered carefully. It recently happened in the Netherlands when the salary of the chair person of the heart foundation was revealed. (which was a lot). He finally resigned and the heart foundation lost a whole lot of money (and good will) in their following fundraising activities. Not that I think wikimedia will ever pay as much as that though.
Garion
For those of us not directly involved in foundation matters, why precisely do we need a COO (from inside or outside wikimedia) and what precisely would they do? I'm not trying to suggest that we don't, just that to the average editor/donator/reader the case has not been made at all why we should spend the editor's/donator's/reader's money this way.
paz y amor, -rjs.
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Garion1000 wrote:
On 1/30/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/29/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes, decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity with a strong volunteer component. An ideal candidate should have extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory compliance, international chapters, donor relations management, staffing, budgeting, etc.
What kind of salary do you think someone like that is going to get? You bring up the Red Cross as an example in another post, the top executives at that organization make around half a million a year. Hiring from the outside is probably going to be expensive, though if there's no one competant on the inside it might be more expensive not to do so.
That is indeed something to be considered carefully. It recently happened in the Netherlands when the salary of the chair person of the heart foundation was revealed. (which was a lot). He finally resigned and the heart foundation lost a whole lot of money (and good will) in their following fundraising activities. Not that I think wikimedia will ever pay as much as that though.
This is best overcome by making all salary arrangements public and easily accessible. Salary arrangements include any perks that might be paid directly or indirectly.
Ec
Jimmy:
A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes, decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity with a strong volunteer component. An ideal candidate should have extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory compliance, international chapters, donor relations management, staffing, budgeting, etc.
Yes, I am quite comfortable with an outsider ED position that focuses primarily on administrative issues rather than on those which, as you say, would make them "another Jimbo". I much prefer the idea of decentralized committees with a reasonable amount of authority and some high level oversight to that of a single position of which we expect immeasurable ingenuity, permanent availability and infinite wisdom. After all, we have you for that. ;-)
What concerns me is that we make sure that a) the ED does not stand alone, so they cannot screw up too badly and are at least surrounded by members of the community, b) we leave those areas of work which require true innovation to the community to the largest extent possible, c) the Board exercises constant oversight to make sure that both the committees and the chapters are as open and participatory as reasonably possible.
As for b), take fundraising and donor relations management as an example: No area has been transformed more radically through the use of the Internet than this one since Howard Dean pocketed $40 million through his online campaign. While our Christmas cards are nice, we also need to systematically measure and improve our online campaign efficiency (Daniel has already done excellent work in this area), and develop fundraising methods completely new and unique.
I think your case is indeed strongest in the area of setting up chapters, obtaining non-profit status, complying with the associated regulations, making sure that our trademarks are in order, and so forth. Day to day legal issues are a bit more complex and I'm not convinced decades of experience will help in an area that is as ever-changing as international Internet law.
Ideally, the ED position should not matter all that much if we design the committees properly, and make sure that no single person can make too big mistakes. And, on the positive side, an "outsider" Director can hopefully be removed without too much of a fuss if he or she turns out to be a problem.
I understand that the plan is to wait with hiring the ED until we have the surrounding structures in place and working. That makes sense, because it allows us to see more clearly what role they should have in the organization, and very precisely define it, preferably also in the form of workflows and use cases. This might also lead us to using a different title, such as "Administrative Director", or, as you suggested, "Business Manager".
Best,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Ideally, the ED position should not matter all that much if we design the committees properly, and make sure that no single person can make too big mistakes. And, on the positive side, an "outsider" Director can hopefully be removed without too much of a fuss if he or she turns out to be a problem.
That sort of thing needs to be spelled out in his employment contract. If the contract makes it clear that there would be no big severence package it makes it a lot more difficult for him to argue for one in court.
I understand that the plan is to wait with hiring the ED until we have the surrounding structures in place and working. That makes sense, because it allows us to see more clearly what role they should have in the organization, and very precisely define it, preferably also in the form of workflows and use cases. This might also lead us to using a different title, such as "Administrative Director", or, as you suggested, "Business Manager".
That's a better name.
Ec
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:49:53AM +1100, Angela wrote:
As you may have seen from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions, the Board has approved the creation of a number of new committees: Financial, Technical, Executive, Events, Communications, Special projects, Board expansion committee, and Chapters.
Hmm! So how about we open a discussion about those on the meta wiki and get some input. After all, if it isn't written down, it doesn't really exist.
Another thing you could do is maybe have an irc meeting, and get some input that way. I know it's always noisy, but hey, that's what logs are for.
read you soon, Kim
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