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,
Hoi, Wonderful that you want to burden people with new standards. I have had dealings with funding of the WMF. I delivered on time and for what I delivered to work, the WMF had to do its stuff on time. They did not, my project petered out and THEN they required me to jump through hoops demonstrating that my project was "appropriate".. It was no longer and from the WMF there was no self reflection.
When for whatever good reason you want OTHERS to deliver according to your standards / WMF standards, be advised that such a requirement need to be bidirectional. What I have noticed is that funding and organisational stuff has become increasingly bureaucratic and for simple small projects it stopped functioning. Thanks, GerardM
On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 04:11, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic activities.
- 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 ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Pine,
Standardising reporting across affiliates is an attractive-sounding idea in theory but turns out to be very difficult in practice.
A few issues that spring to mind: - User Groups are meant to be a low-barrier-to-entry, lightweight form of affiliation. Basically you need 10 people and a good idea. Creating in-depth expectations around reporting by User Groups would defeat the object of having them. [Of course there are plenty of User Groups these days that are incorporated entities with five or maybe six-figure budgets, full-time staff, and so on... but that's because the WMF Board decided that User Groups were the only option available for new affiliates.] - Where an affiliate has significant programmes and is incorporated, there are a whole bunch of expectations on them that depend on how they register. The way a UK-registered charity has to prepare its annual accounts is different to how a nonprofit anywhere in the world has to. Dual-reporting everything according to local laws and the WMF's expectations already creates issues and extra work, gold-playing the WMF's expectations would significantly increase this. - There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter. Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive metrics would be a step backwards. - Also, we are still very much in the middle of the movement strategy process. What you've suggested is very much a "This is what WMF should require affiliates to do" approach, hopefully on the other side of the strategy process we will not be in a situation where we solve problems in the movement by the WMF telling people what to do. (I mean, in practice the WMF doesn't do much issuing diktats any more, but hopefully we will end up with some more formal creative solutions...)
Chris
On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 3:11 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic activities.
- 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 ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
Gerard:
* I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down with unreasonable administrative overhead.
* I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may have accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness is going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
Chris:
* I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that user group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report. A user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements. I think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution of programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant time and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
* I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
* Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter. Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree. I think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources, and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics goes a long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way to think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always sufficient.
* I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also, Affcom currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports. So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer leadership from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some good developments. But I don't think that the ongoing development of long-term strategy is a reason to wait to require standardized financial and performance information in affiliates' annual reports, or to wait to provide staff or contractor time to produce and analyze financial and performance information. Ideally, affiliates and WMF will both benefit from these enhanced requirements by using the information to make decisions about what types of programs to run, so that volunteers make good use of their time and so that everyone makes good use of funds. In my unpaid capacity, one of the most demoralizing and frustrating experiences that I have is my time being wasted, which has happened on too many occasions. I am hoping that the actions that I am proposing here will lead to improved effectiveness of volunteers' time, and more effective use of WMF and affiliate financial resources.
Dear Pine,
Just as a thought experiment try to think through how your proposal would work for an all-volunteer organisation: A small group of volunteers starts some programme, and at the same time they hire a contractor (issue an ad, check CVs, hold interviews, draw up a contract, monitor and pay invoices, pay any applicable taxes and social security contributions) whose job it is to keep track of the hours and money the volunteers spend on the programme and on the administration of it (including the resources spent on hiring, managing and overseeing the contractor), plus the global metrics. (The situation is not much better if the contractor is hired at the end of the project and his job is to interview everyone, and for the volunteers they need to keep records in order to be able to reply to the questions.)
In the end, you have to retain proportionality of invested resources vs. level of reporting burden.
Best regards, Bence
On Fri, 30 Nov 2018, 01:12 Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
Gerard:
- I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down with unreasonable administrative overhead.
- I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may have
accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness is going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
Chris:
- I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that user
group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report. A user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements. I think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution of programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant time and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
- I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
- Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree. I think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources, and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics goes a long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way to think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always sufficient.
- I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to
affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also, Affcom currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports. So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer leadership from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some good developments. But I don't think that the ongoing development of long-term strategy is a reason to wait to require standardized financial and performance information in affiliates' annual reports, or to wait to provide staff or contractor time to produce and analyze financial and performance information. Ideally, affiliates and WMF will both benefit from these enhanced requirements by using the information to make decisions about what types of programs to run, so that volunteers make good use of their time and so that everyone makes good use of funds. In my unpaid capacity, one of the most demoralizing and frustrating experiences that I have is my time being wasted, which has happened on too many occasions. I am hoping that the actions that I am proposing here will lead to improved effectiveness of volunteers' time, and more effective use of WMF and affiliate financial resources.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
As a learning organization, it is already the case that the reporting burden is often higher than the invested resources. It's been that way for years. Fortunately, we have had the luck over the years to attract dedicated volunteers all over the world to help out with the burden or give feedback and tips how to cope, and most hired hands by now are used to the WMF changing the reporting rules with each passing year. I think that is inherent in a mostly volunteer-staffed worldwide multi-lingual network of people trying to comply both with local community needs/desires, local tax authorities, and the WMF.
On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 8:40 AM Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Pine,
Just as a thought experiment try to think through how your proposal would work for an all-volunteer organisation: A small group of volunteers starts some programme, and at the same time they hire a contractor (issue an ad, check CVs, hold interviews, draw up a contract, monitor and pay invoices, pay any applicable taxes and social security contributions) whose job it is to keep track of the hours and money the volunteers spend on the programme and on the administration of it (including the resources spent on hiring, managing and overseeing the contractor), plus the global metrics. (The situation is not much better if the contractor is hired at the end of the project and his job is to interview everyone, and for the volunteers they need to keep records in order to be able to reply to the questions.)
In the end, you have to retain proportionality of invested resources vs. level of reporting burden.
Best regards, Bence
On Fri, 30 Nov 2018, 01:12 Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
Gerard:
- I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down with unreasonable administrative overhead.
- I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may
have
accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness
is
going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
Chris:
- I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that
user
group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report.
A
user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements.
I
think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution
of
programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant
time
and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
- I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
- Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer,
and
for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree.
I
think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources, and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics
goes a
long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way
to
think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always sufficient.
- I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to
affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also,
Affcom
currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports. So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer
leadership
from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some good developments. But I don't think that the ongoing development of long-term strategy is a reason to wait to require standardized financial and performance information in affiliates' annual reports, or to wait to provide staff or contractor time to produce and analyze financial and performance information. Ideally, affiliates and WMF will both benefit
from
these enhanced requirements by using the information to make decisions about what types of programs to run, so that volunteers make good use of their time and so that everyone makes good use of funds. In my unpaid capacity, one of the most demoralizing and frustrating experiences that I have is my time being wasted, which has happened on too many occasions. I am hoping that the actions that I am proposing here will lead to improved effectiveness of volunteers' time, and more effective use of WMF and affiliate financial resources.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Pine, I totally agree with "I would like to see more peer leadership from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and trademarks." I would hope that this type of thing is starting to show up in the larger chapter/thorg/user group plans. I like the idea of custom metrics, especially in light of this statement. An org the size of WMF is not likely to be leading in this respect. The smaller groups are where you would expect leadership in this aspect too. I also agree that custom metrics should not be instead of the WMF metrics requirements - the one is more for global reporting, and the other is more for local reporting.
Jane
On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 1:12 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
Gerard:
- I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down with unreasonable administrative overhead.
- I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may have
accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness is going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
Chris:
- I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that user
group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report. A user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements. I think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution of programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant time and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
- I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
- Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer, and for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree. I think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources, and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics goes a long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in various cases be good to have in addition to Global Metrics. Maybe a way to think about this is that Global Metrics are necessary but not always sufficient.
- I have very mixed feelings about WMF and Affcom issuing edicts to
affiliates. I want affiliates and WMF to make good use of money and volunteers' time. For better and for worse WMF owns the trademarks and is the most significant source of funds for Wikimedia affiliates. Also, Affcom currently sets the reporting requirements for affiliates' annual reports. So WMF and Affcom have significant ability to use their authorities for good purposes. In the longer term, I would like to see more peer leadership from affiliates and less reliance on WMF for both grantmaking and trademarks. Perhaps in the course of the strategy work there will be some good developments. But I don't think that the ongoing development of long-term strategy is a reason to wait to require standardized financial and performance information in affiliates' annual reports, or to wait to provide staff or contractor time to produce and analyze financial and performance information. Ideally, affiliates and WMF will both benefit from these enhanced requirements by using the information to make decisions about what types of programs to run, so that volunteers make good use of their time and so that everyone makes good use of funds. In my unpaid capacity, one of the most demoralizing and frustrating experiences that I have is my time being wasted, which has happened on too many occasions. I am hoping that the actions that I am proposing here will lead to improved effectiveness of volunteers' time, and more effective use of WMF and affiliate financial resources.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I 100% agree with Pine. I have read very impressive annual reports without any factual data. This 4 point as a small spreadsheet will specify the reports and make there comparative.
With regards
On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 4:11 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic activities.
- 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 ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Some further thoughts about reporting:
* Many affiliates already produce quantitative and qualitative information for their grant reports. I would like to see much of that same information about inputs and outputs included in annual reports, both for Global Metrics and for custom metrics.
* I agree that small affiliates might find it to be a more efficient use of their time for volunteers to complete all reporting requirements than to find and delegate a contractor or part time staff person to do the reporting for them. That is a choice that I would be very willing to leave to small affiliates. Perhaps a good option to offer to small affiliates would be that WMF staff or contractors, or staff or contractors of other affiliates that could be shared with the small affiliates, could handle much of the reporting work once the small affiliates have made their raw data available to the administrative staff or contractors. In any case, my hope is to increase the usefulness of affiliates' annual reports while minimizing the administrative burden on volunteers. WMF has ample funding to hire more staff or contractors to handle this reporting work, and I think that volunteers often have other important activities to do with their time than administrative work.
* In my willingness to criticize the WMF Community Resources staff I should point out in fairness that I too have made mistakes in the past, and I will likely make mistakes in the future. I hope that I am open to accepting good-faith criticism and making changes. I hope that I adhere to the same standards of accountability that I would expect from anyone else.
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