Hi Lucy,

Just a couple of years ago, when the number of employees in the UK was
measured between zero or two, unpaid volunteers like me used to go
along and sit in on and give views in parliamentary discussions, meet
and share ideas with other unpaid volunteer representatives from
advocacy groups such as the Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative
Commons etc. This no longer seems to happen, nor does it seem
expected. It is still the norm for open knowledge groups apart from
WMUK to have unpaid volunteers as their leading advocates and main
points of contact.

Considering that the FDC has already stated that:[1]
A. "The FDC is concerned about very low targets for WMUK’s program work."
B. "The FDC believes that WMUK's advocacy work and work on influencing
policy towards Open Knowledge in the UK and EU has potential."

Would you consider keeping the staff focus firmly on delivering more
ambitious outcomes in programme work, and stepping back from
controlling advocacy work yourself? You could try approaching or
encouraging volunteers, such as the couple of trustees that are seen
at wikimeets, to take responsibility to push our advocacy for open
knowledge forward and enthuse some of their fellow UK Wikimedians.
With volunteers taking an active role, this brings relevance and
urgency to our volunteer groups and restores the organization to one
where the volunteers are central and leading change, rather than
joining projects where employees are the default top of the hierarchy.

In terms of meaningful metrics, if hardly any volunteers are
interested in finding out more or getting directly involved with
suggested political or legislative advocacy even with supporting WMUK
employee time, then it seems a poor strategic choice to just proceed
with that work regardless.

Links:
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2015-2016_round1#Wikimedia_UK

Thanks,
Fae (past trustee and chair for WMUK, no longer a member of WMUK)

On 30 November 2015 at 13:00, Lucy Crompton-Reid
<lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
...
> on hold while we were awaiting the FDC's recommendations for our annual
> grant from the Wikimedia Foundation; however I'm now hoping to advertise for
> a new Communications Co-ordinator in the new year. This post will be at a
> lower level than Stevie - mainly for financial reasons - and will have a
> slightly different emphasis. The advocacy work that Stevie was managing
> brilliantly will now be led by me, but will also involve staff from our
> programmes team as well as an advocacy working group that is being set up.
...
> Lucy
--
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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