A "member-led" organisation - imagine that? In simple terms, an organisation that trusts the 5,000-strong UK Wikimedia community more than a handful of people who currently sit on the board.
My goodness how far away has the chapter gone from those original values.
Hi Andrew,
Just wanted to respond to your email. I could reply at great length (indeed, I started drafting several replies, some of which tried to deal with everything about Wikimedia UK's values) but as I am running out of time to finish this email I want to focus on just one specific issue - the main one covered in this EGM - which is about the co-option of Trustees.
The ultimate goal, to which this proposal is an end, is broadening the skills and experience available on the Board. In the light of the experience of the last year, I personally think that's an important goal and it is important that we do that. Indeed, if we'd had a couple more voices on the Board in the last year with more prior experience of charity governance then I think we might well have approached some issues differently and saved ourselves, the membership, and the community a lot of trouble.
It's quite possible to argue that it ought to be possible to elect people with an appropriately broad range of skills and experience from on and off Wikipedia, and that is a viewpoint I respect. Our members are very intelligent people and certainly have our mission, values and ethos at heart. My own view, however, is that it would be very helpful to be able to co-opt to fill not just casual vacancies but gaps in experience. Not just in terms of making life easier for the Board - or the Chair or the Chief Executive - but in improving the performance of the Board, and thus helping the whole organisation.
It's also worth pointing out that this recommendation from the Governance Review is adopted by the membership (and, of course, it's the members' decision) the whole Board will remain accountable to the membership - including of course the provisions of s168 of the Companies' Act which mean the membership can if they so wish remove directors. So if the membership really did want to "sack the lot of them" it remains possible. Speaking personally, I'd like to think I would step down voluntarily long before there was any feeling of "you have sat here too long for any good you have been doing".
Regards,
Chris
First step down the slippery slope was the move towards two-year terms. Now we have these bonkers changes drempt up by a consultancy who took no consideration whatsoever of our particular values and want to model ourselves on other board-led charities. Guess what, we know how other charities are run and make a conscious decision at the start to do something different. After all, no other encyclopedias are written by non-specialists. Wikipedia was the first major website to give its entire content away under a free license. No other major website is run by a charity. Of course we're different. That's the bloody point.
For goodness sake, they even want to change the articles to get some complex provision in there that means there would never be a majority of directors up for election in a single year - because god forbid that the community would actually wanting to kick out a poorly-performing board en mass. God forbid the board should be subject to any accountability for their performance.
All I can say is thank goodness we don't have a board that is poorly performing, divided, poorly led, losing control of the direction of the charity, losing their major source of income or anything like that.
Because who knows what would happen then?
Obviously it will be for the membership to decide whether to accept or reject these particular recommendations but it would be great if you could review the draft amendments at this stage.
Please do read, consider and comment, here:
PS. Just to clarify, these are resolutions as drafted by our lawyers: they have not yet been reviewed by the Board - obviously it remains important that we draft things in public where we can!
Chris
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Andrew Turvey
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