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

[Itzik Edri]

I feel so stupid. Sorry, I came back after an exhausting day at work and
spent few hours reading the report and response to him that I didn't even
noticed that I posted my response or the wrong meta page :)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Annual_report_on_the_Funds_Dissemination_Committee_process_2012-2013#I_would_like_to_response_to_some_of_the_points_you_raised

Itzik


On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Itzik Edri <itzik at infra.co.il> wrote:

> 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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