Talk:Volunteering strategy

Hi, please leave any comments you have or suggested rewording here for discussion. Thanks -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 12:38, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot of waffle in this; it would benefit from being cut down to concise, bullet-point style recommendations, but I'm not seeing anything in this that hasn't come up in every previous discussion that went nowhere. Perhaps it will gain some traction now you're in-post, Katie... Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:48, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Harry - I don't want to step on Katie's toes with this page, but it's probably useful if I explain some of the context from my own point of view. (This might be mainly familiar stuff for you but it's also aimed at other people reading this page!)

Wikimedia UK is in an interesting position in that we want to do remain close to the volunteer ethos that drives the Wikimedia projects (perhaps closer than the only two organisations in the Wikimedia movement that are larger in terms of budget and staffing levels - WMF and WMDE). Why do we want to do that? As well as our values as an organisation, there are several practical reasons, which have never really been enumerated, but let's give it a go - to stay in touch with the editor community and avoid some pitfalls that come in staff-led outreach projects; to retain a flow of ideas and perspectives from the community; because volunteers are more cost-effective; because any Wikipedian with the right confidence and support is quite capable of setting up an outreach project if they are willing to make the time and effort to do it.

This means that we have a unique challenge of finding a way of handling the relationship between Board, staff and volunteers that works for us. Over the last 2 years we have gone from having 0 staff to 9 and 1 Wikimedian in Residence to 5ish (I ought to know the figure really ;) ). We've employed staff to co-ordinate our outreach programmes for GLAM and Education not because we don't want volunteers to do these things but because the number of leads and inquiries was far greater than the volunteer time we had; also because we had volunteers who had ambitious goals for projects and could kick them off but then found they couldn't make the time to follow them through (I'll offer myself and the WWI project as an example here though there are many others).

I think - and I think this view is widely shared on the Board (it certainly doesn't originate with me!) - that we need to think carefully about how this relationship is working and how it can work out over the next few years to result in having lots of passionate, inspired volunteers taking part. The Volunteer Organiser role is certainly key in that but this is something we need to work out as an organisation, not make it one staff member's job to deal with.

Thanks for your contribution to the page, by the way. And if there are previous discussions that have covered similar ground would you mind linking to them, as there might be more useful insights in them... The Land (talk) 21:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris. Thanks for the background; I've heard most of it before, but it's good to have these things written down somewhere so that people can refer to them. The previous discussions that come to mind are the board meeting I attended where we had a Midas-facilitated discussion that came to many of the same conclusions, which were reinforced by the volunteering discussions at the open day. I'm sure write-ups of both exist somewhere, but I'm not sure where offhand. Best, Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:44, 7 June 2013 (UTC)