Talk:2012 Five Year Plan/First draft

Tango's comments

First of all, I'd like to say how fantastic it is that work has started on a 5 year plan. I remember the board meeting just over a year ago when we agreed the 2011 budget and we were just making it up as we went along trying to come up with something vaguely sensible that made the books balance (and I think we actually did a pretty good job, under the circumstances). Now we are seriously thinking about what we're going to be doing not just next year, but in 5 years. This is a really big step for the chapter and I'm really pleased to see it.

I am also really pleased to see how many of the items in the first draft have specific, clearly measurable targets ("SMART targets", as they are known). That is something we have historically not been very good at (both in WMUK and in the wider Wikimedia movement). It is really important that, in a year's time, 3 years' time and 5 years' time, we can go through and say "Yes, we succeeded in that." and "No, we didn't quite manage that, what went wrong?". The way this draft has been set out, that will be really easy to do. So, thank you, staff!

Now for the criticisms! I see two potential problems with this draft plan. Firstly, it looks too ambitious. Each individual target is realistic and achievable, but I think if our attention is split between so many different things we'll end up not managing any of them. I think we need to come up with a relatively small number of priorities (4 or 5, say), each with one or two targets (at each time period) to measure success against. Off the top of my head, inspired by the targets already in the plan, I think good priorities would be: "Financial stability and sustainability", "A large and engaged membership", "Strong and transparent governance (as measured by the PQASSO marks)" and "Large scale member-led activities in GLAM and education".

Secondly, I'm concerned by the financial growth you are projecting. WMDE may have been able to achieve that kind of growth, but that was a very different time in the movement. I think we need to clearly separate out funds raised through the annual fundraiser on the WMF sites from funds raised elsewhere (the plan already says we should be diversifying our revenue streams, but it doesn't give any numbers for that yet). We then need to make sure we're not intending to spend more than our fair share of money from the fundraiser. (I suggest we not worry about how much we're raising in the fundraiser and how much we're sending to the WMF, since that is very much up in the air at the moment - let's just focus on how much we actually spend. Once the future of Wikimedia fundraising is a little less foggy, we can figure out the details.) I would advise against any plan to get more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the annual fundraiser. I think we will struggle to justify any growth higher than that at the expense of other chapters and organisations (who mostly have budgets less than 10% of ours at the moment). I'm not sure what growth is intended by the numbers in the current draft, because it isn't clear where that money is coming from or how much (if any) of that money is intended to go to the WMF. It may well be that the intention behind those numbers doesn't involve more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the fundraiser, in which case please just clarify the numbers. --Tango (talk) 19:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Timetable

What's the timetable for writing and agreeing this plan? The page says it will be discussed at the board meeting in late April. Is the plan to then agree it at the AGM in May? Or will it be discussed at the AGM and then agreed at some later date? I think the latter is preferable - planning 5 years in less than 2 months is a big ask! I'm not quite sure how we would agree it, though - waiting until the next AGM is too long, written resolutions require 50% of total membership to actively support it, which might be difficult to achieve, and EGM sounds like a lot of hassle, and anything which doesn't involve formal approval by the membership sounds like a bad idea to me. What thoughts have the board and staff had on this subject? --Tango (talk) 19:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)