[Foundation-l] Draft charter of the Wikimedia Chapters Association

[Nathan]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Chris Keating
<chriskeatingwiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> >
> >
> > This could be much more usefully addressed with a cooperative assistance
> > group, rather than some sort of super-governance association. Somehow
> lots
> > of chapters managed to form themselves without the existence of an
> > international governing body. If technical assistance is what you are
> > looking to offer, develop a technical assistance group and resource that.
> >
>
> Yes, this is a co-operative assistance group. And equally, if there weren't
> any other needs to fill, then  it could be only such a group. But there
> are.
>

This is an interesting problem. Technical assistance requires expertise,
but the type of expertise necessary for founding a chapter can be very
specific to the particular jurisdiction and culture in which it is
founded.  For instance - its stated on the discussion page of the proposal
that the expertise and opinions of European chapter members (who,
incidentally, dominate the discussion and the proposal) are less applicable
to Brasil, which has chosen a quite different model and philosophy for its
chapter. I'm curious how this organization (logically abbreviated as
ChapAss, you might want to make it ChapCo instead) might address this
problem.

>
>
> > In what way will this new organization be able to "de-chapter" an
> > organization,
>
>
> It won't (and just to be clear, I didn't suggest it would).
>
>
>
You're right, you didn't. You made the point that there is a paucity of
tools for the WMF to provide oversight or performance assessment to the
chapters, with "de-chaptering" as the main cudgel. That's an interesting
point, but I'm not completely clear on how it supports creating a Chapter
Association that will have, as its main cudgel, the option of removing a
chapter from the association. And, of course, the WMF does have other tools
- it can provide or withhold funding from individual chapters, a power that
the Association will not possess.


> > So your solution is to have the chapters argue amongst themselves,
> pursue a
> > bureaucratic process to arrive at a common decision, and then present
> that
> > to the WMF.
>
>
> Yes, though minus your loaded language, and restricted to areas where there
> is a reasonable degree of agreement.
>
> From my point of view this will be very helpful. It's certainly more useful
> for communication than diffuse angry thoughts.


Here's a thought. Chapter members are seeking both greater autonomy and a
larger piece of the funding pie, under the argument of subsidiarity or
decentralization. Implicit in this argument is the idea that a U.S. based
non-profit controlling all the strings unbalances the distribution of
influence in the movement and leaves diverse local talent and cultural
expertise untapped. But you appear to merely shift the problem to Western
Europe. The proposed charter includes no protections or guarantees, and
indeed no mention at all, of global balance. The document is silent on the
different needs and resources of chapters in different areas of the world,
and provides no assurance against regional dominance. As it stands, the
primary author of this document is a German editor of the German Wikipedia
who proposes incorporating the entity in Berlin.

It's worth noting that the European chapters are typically well managed,
well financed and well established. The chapters most in need of the
assistance and representation offered by the association would appear to be
in other parts of the world. While several non-EU chapters have signed on
to the chapters council idea, perhaps the draft could be modified to deal
more explicitly with the global nature of the proposed association.  It
might even be worthwhile to consider locating it in South America or India,
rather than the E.U.

There is also the question of due diligence. The proposal has no suggestion
for where the entity will be incorporated, nor what sort of legal status it
will need. These are not minor questions, and the decisions will have
serious implications for the organizational model and it's ability to
receive and transmit funds. The drafters have chosen to defer consideration
of these issues until after the chapters vote to create the association,
but given the possible consequences that is a questionable decision.

More generally, I think you should re-evaluate your choice of models. The
proposal would create a government-style model, heavy with committees and
involved processes and embedded costs. This isn't necessarily the best way
to address the needs that have been identified, perhaps because those needs
could usefully be more clearly defined. To facilitate communication and
representation, a much simpler and easier (and cheaper) solution might be a
"Chapter Steering Committee." Composed of board members from all chapters
and others as desired, it need not have employees, offices or fancy titles.
Meetings (in person or otherwise) and joint statements or actions don't
require joint bank accounts or a legal entity.

Further, the role of representing the chapters to the world and to the WMF
is not naturally tethered to the role of providing technical assistance. A
technical resource group could easily be established by volunteers and
funded by donations to provide insight and assistance to new or struggling
chapters. This may not satisfy the appetite of some to create an opposing
governing organization or fulfill fantasies of bureaucratic achievement,
but it should get the job done with far less chance for conflict and
dysfunction.

Finally, and with apologies for tl;dr, I'd like to restate my earlier point
- this association should be self-funding, and should not make use of any
funds from the WMF or the WMF's annual fundraiser. You've already tied
yourself to the WMF by allowing it to decide which organizations are and
are not eligible to join your association. To retain meaningful
independence and to avoid diverting donor funds from their intended use,
the association should rely on independently raised funds from
participating chapters.

Nathan