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 ) _______________________________________________ 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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 ) _______________________________________________ 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(a)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. 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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 &lt;wiki.pine(a)gmail.com wrote: have is user A I of time and I goes a to Affcom leadership from _______________________________________________ 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>