[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Funds Dissemination Committee: Report on first year of operations

[Itzik Edri]

Hi Sue,

Thanks for this great and detailed report. Although that I thinks it was
worth to publish it a month before this current FDC round, I understand
that you didn't want your comments to influence the chapter's proposals.

Let's talk about growth - when you grove from zero employee to even one,
especially if he is a ED (and a good one) – the influence of this step on a
small chapter budget could be a very big one. You are talking about the
grove of the chapters, but the WMF isn't really different on this issue.
Right, it's not really fair to compare the foundation to chapters in the
matter of the core daily work the foundation deal with and her
responsibility for the entire movement, but it worth to look on that. I
didn't did a real research on that (sorry that I don't have the time or the
manpower to ask them for that), but from a quick looks on the WMF reports
over the years - 2004 - 56,666$, 2005- 283,487$, 2006 - $1,066,785 (376%),
2007 - 1,696,569, 2008 - 5.6M (335%), 2009 - 8.6M (152%), 2010 - 15.4%
(178%), 2011 - 26M (170%), 2012 - 37$ (141%). So if according to the FDC
120% growth is the rational growth for organization, the WMF never wasn't
even close to fit this growth. Now, when during her ten years existence the
foundation started to focus on *HER* evaluation? When they had one staffer
or 40? And let not forget - the foundation in her daily program don't deal
daily with volunteers working as part of their core programs of operate
from their office, something that it's different from the chapters.

I admire evaluation, I admire audit and failure reports. I think we should
know what we are doing and learn from the past. But I'm also realistic,
knowing that good evaluation require knowledge. Most of our volunteers are
great editors, some of them even great developers, some of them even know
how to run a great projects and creating amazing partnerships. Only few of
them like to make reports, only few of them know how to evaluate correctly
their work. And it's totally ok. You have big expectations from the
chapters, and this is totally ok also. But you have also a huge doubt on
their true impact. And this is not new for none of us. Even before the FDC,
and even before the staff grove that you mentions on your report, you liked
to show what the "community" thinks about the chapters from a surveys that
we agreed that are not fair (Wikimania 2012?). So yes, we need evaluations,
and we need more reports. I totally agreed. The questions is how and when.
It's different to ask from an organizations with 40 staffer the same
evaluation level and knowledge that you require from a chapter that just
got his first staffer. Especially with chapters that their staff are doing
less programs work and this been done mostly be the volunteers.
Expectations and results are harder, although they are needed. When a
volunteer arranging a Wikipedia Academy conference with 150 people attends
without staff that involve with all the organizations, his success is
probably much worth for us than a same conference been arranged by a full
time staffer. And its work for the two-side. I can expect and demand higher
targets from my employee, but not from a volunteer who does the same thing.
So, because I cannot surly measure the volunteer's success – from now we
will decide about if project is going to exist or now only if I 100% can
measure him on the level of how many women editors was at the room and how
many of them had laptops (not far away from a question that we been asked
by the WMF of how many people with SLR cameras came to our photo tours)?
Should we start chasing just after numbers?

Over the past month I personally and all my board dedicated one
face-to-face meeting every week, alongside with at least 2 hours daily work
on team to build together with our new ED our annual plan, budget and
strategic goals. This is huge amount of time for volunteers. This huge
amount of time for board that didn't has the time deal with nothing else
and asking his partners and volunteers to wait due the lack of their time
for others things. I will be honest – we not sure all of our targets are
really realistic. We didn't measure till now most of our work because of
lack of time, manpower, and knowledge. And probably some of the numeral
targets we set to ourselves this year we will not achieve at all and some
of them we will achieve more that we planned. But it's not because we did a
good or awful job. It is also because lack of knowledge and experience the
volunteers have to reach such level of evaluation – but more than that -
the difficulty in the measurement we faced. I can do in one month 200
editing workshops and brings 10,000 editors to Wikipedia. But I can also
reveal one month after that only five remained active editors - because the
community's internal procedures make it hard for them to be accepted,
because the editing interface problematic, because of limited knowledge in
areas they can contribute against the areas already covered in Wikipedia
and hundreds of other parameters that require a great deal of experience
and learning.

The FDC is a great success, but also let's not forget what you mention on
your report – that the consultancy fees was US$294,186 (more than half of
an average chapter budget according to your report), not including the
amount of time and staff that was spent on this process from the WMF side –
making this process a really expensive one. I don't mean to say that's not
ok or that it was waste of money, not at all. I only meant to point that
even a large organization like the WMF, with many experts and more than 100
staff need outside support sometime. Support that costs a lot of money, and
require a big knowledge and time. Can you honestly say the WMF till today
give 100% of the support the chapter's needs in order to reach for the
great stage you dream of when the money is 100% used in effective ways and
when we know exactly how to run programs and deal with volunteers? Or maybe
*each* one of the chapters also need to spend quarter million dollar of
donors money to hire kind of Bridgespan for each strategic step that that
faced with?

I posted this comment also on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Wikimedia_Israel/Progress_report_form/Q2#I_would_like_to_response_to_some_of_the_points_you_raised


Regards,
Itzik Edri
Chairperson, Wikimedia Israel


On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> As you know, in July 2012 the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees asked
> me to set up the Funds Dissemination Committee, a volunteer-driven advisory
> committee created to make recommendations to the Board allocating funds for
> chapters and other Wikimedia movement entities. I did that, and the FDC has
> now been fully operational for a little more than a year.
>
> As part of the FDC framework, I committed that after the FDC’s first year
> of operation I would create a report for the Board that documented the
> state of the FDC at that moment in time, and told the Board about any
> revisions we had made to the process as a result of stakeholder input
> during its first year.
>
> The purpose of this note is to tell you that report is now posted. It’s
> here:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Annual_report_on_the_Funds_Dissemination_Committee_process_2012-2013
>
> If you’ve got comments on the report I’d suggest that rather than replying
> to this list, you leave them on the talk page. And, my thanks to everyone
> who contributed to the FDC's first year of operations, and also to the
> report :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
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