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 )