Minutes 2012-09-08

These minutes are in draft. They have not yet been formally approved, and they may not accurately reflect the discussions and decisions from the meeting.

Strategy day

This day has been recorded here, but was not a formal meeting, and as such it has not been minuted as one.

Everyone introduced themselves, and a few ground rules were laid down. Fae wanted more of the notes about the meeting to be captured than last year - this will be Richard's role. Steven, the facilitator, went over the idea of a 'feedback sandwich' - having a positive, then a negative, then a positive. He encouraged everyone to be as positive as they can, rather than focusing on negativity.

The outcome from today should be an activity plan!

We reviewed our shared vision, at Vision, and also reviewed the Strategy Day minutes from last year (on the office wiki)

Hoped-for Outcomes

Everyone wrote down what they wanted from today, both personally, and for the group.

Mike

• Set out a realistic, comprehensive activity plan for 2013, and understanding of how 2012 activity plan will lead into that.
• Reduce stress levels by having consensus and common understanding between staff and trustees.

Richard

• Formulate an activity plan that gives me and the rest of the staff a good plan to work around for the next year ("Get a plan that works, and is clear from my viewpoint")
• Understand where each of the board members are coming from with their opinions

Jon

• Gain consensus for a plan
• Find clarity
• Creates something ambitious but achievable
• Create something that the community will endorse and love

Roger

• "I want a horse, not a camel" - a plan that will work well, rather than be an incomplete jigsaw of a plan
• Remind us that we have a mission
• Heal some wounds

Others

• 'Focus on Forward'
• Stop reporting statuses. Instead, report proposals, issues, and risks.
• Ensure all trustees have training as a requirement
• Place education outreach in a central position in future plans
• Agree the activities plan (nearly!)
• Think strategically
• Take a step back from some <illegible>
• Start simple - one page. Dashboard rather than reports.
• Board to focus on important, not urgent.

We then discussed the various problems we're coming across: particularly civility. An uncivil environment makes it difficult for us to function. It'd be a good idea to have 'civility' as a value, perhaps? Or civil discourse? Doug says that the important thing is to create an environment in which people feel that they can contribute. Meeting people in real life is a good idea and helps solve the issue, a little.

Problems this generates:

• how can we develop new volunteers if they take their first step into Wikimedia UK and see people shouting at each other?
• Also communications on the Board and between board and staff?

Our values

• Should 'niceness' be a value for Wikimedia UK?
  • We want to create a welcoming and supportive environment in which effort is appreciated
  • Promote a welcoming community
  • Establish a welcoming and convivial environment
• Therefore, we want to be promoting a welcoming or convivial or congenial or supportive environment.
• "To be congenial, supportive and welcoming."

What do we value? We value:

• Openness
• Volunteers
• Efficient use of donor funds
• Consensus
• Collaboration

Brainstorming session

Things slowing down the mission

This is a list of things which various people felt were harming the mission. It doesn't reflect whether or not these were minority or majority views.

• Opaque and inconsistent reporting of finances and activities
• Lack of strategic scalability
• Forgetting targets from last year (or last quarter) and not reporting against them
• Lack of recruitment process for volunteers or standard support
• Lack of conversion process between online and offline volunteers
• Hassle on standardization of how to execute partnerships
• Community of Wikimedians who might be paid professionals is apparently small (is it really, or is this a lack of identification? Or do they all work for the WMF now?)
• Board turnover and changing roles causes destabilization
• It seems incredibly hard to employee people who have expertize (what sort of expertise?)
• Lack of developer resources in the office
• Lack of admin capacity in the office
• not enough volunteers
• not getting enough new volunteers
• lack of consensus about aims and strategy
• not enough capacity to exploit all opportunities (e.g. staff)
• not getting scalability
• unclear about boundaries between staff/volunteers/partner orgs
• no stability and consistency of the board
• not developing the community
• no usability of Wikipedia and other projects (when we train newcomers)

Things pushing forward the mission

• Staff supporting logistics
• Good staff
• History of successes (EduWiki, BL WIR...)
• Better board meetings
• Financial situation
• People queuing up to give us money - financial abundance
• Wikipedia is massively popular and respected
• 85 active volunteers (no passive volunteers?)
• ample funds and the ability to spend them
• extending our network of contacts
• like-minded organizations
• support from the staff (including new staff to be hired)
• Staff and office providing logistical support
• successful recruitment of talented people that share our values
• strong brand
• strong relationship with partners
• stable relationships internationally
• policy environment broadly favourable (to open content etc)

How to fix these problems

We then used stickers to 'vote' on the most important problems or important strengths. Everyone was given seven stickers. Not all trustees voted. We then split into teams and worked through how we could fix these problems (or capitalise on the strengths), focussing on the most voted for ones. A table of the ideas follows:

Strength	Number of votes	Rank (in bold if chosen)
Financial abundance & the ability to spend	13	1
Goodwill	8	3
Good staff	6	6
Strong brand	8	3
Favourable policy environment	3	9
80ish active volunteers	9	2
History of success	5	7
Support from staff	2	10
Expanding staff	4	8
Partnerships	8	3
Extending our network of contacts	2	10
Better board meetings	2	10

Weakness	Number of votes	Rank (in bold if chosen)
Not enough volunteers	13	1
Not recruiting quickly enough	5	6
Opaque & inconsistent reporting	5	6
Lack of strategic scalability	6	5
Lack of staff capacity	7	2
Not reporting against targets	0	18
Lack of board stability	2	15
Unclear boundaries between staff and volunteers	3	11
Poor communications with the community	2	15
Budget holders have too many budgets, causing a bottleneck	3	11
Lack of process	3	11
Lack of people in the right Geographic areas	5	6
Don't know how to share good experiences with partners	5	6
Can't find anything on our wikis	3	11
Lack of conversion between online and offline volunteers	2	15
Community members who can't be paid (don't have recruitment process)	5	6
"We're scared"	7	2
Hours in the day	7	2

85 volunteers vs Not enough volunteers

• Survey/talk to them them - ask what their expectations are, what they would like to do for us.
• Train the trainers, cascade recruitment
• What do they want to do with £1k/£10k?
• Assistance writing proposals
• Recruit new volunteers from partner organisations, "one step removed"
• Advertise/good media coverage
• Outreach events
• Meetups
• Engage online volunteers more (talk pages, geonotices)
• Shop (discounts for members?)
• Membership reward/joining pack

There was a fair amount of discussion about how we can manage a budget of this size and complexity. We don't have enough 'thought leaders' to do this - it's not just an issue of money. We will probably need to hire volunteer "thought leaders"! There was lots of discussion about changing government policy - is this worth a £5k budget line, perhaps? Roger thinks we need to talk about the top two or three ideas that came out of today, and see if they're in the plan!

These ideas were:

• Increasing volunteer grants. Travel grants were suggested to go up from 15k to 25k. Fae suggested up to £40k in 'program and project grants'. Possibly hiring someone to manage the projects and come up with objectives, outcomes, 'kill points' (Fae's term) etc - a project manager for six months to a year, including helping people write proposals. Fae suggests, based on his professional experience, a six month post to set up a proper project and grant management process. Possibly, in future, we would hire a full time permanent project manager.
• Helping volunteers more. We'll therefore be hiring a volunteer developmernt and support person. Already decided. Job description to be written in next few months.
• "short term projects", eg hiring John Cummings. Has to be done openly if the idea is ours: but can also be done if someone approaches us with a project.
• WMUK landing page. Fae very against this idea because of the use of 'Wikipedia' next to 'Wikimedia UK'. Chris thinks this is a result of needing to improve the usability of our website. We'll start a discussion about this on wiki.
• 87 volunteers: Stevie will set up a blank page to discuss what questions we should ask in a volunteer survey.

Joining pack: We are now moving towards getting as many members as we can, even if they are not as active. Previously, we only wanted members if they were going to be active and involved. Part of this is getting a joining pack, with leaflets - how to run an editathon, how to start a wikipedia town - how to edit, even.

DECISION 6.8: The board have decided that we should be getting as many members as we can, even if they are not as active.

ACTION 6.1: SB will set up a blank page so that the community can discuss what questions we should ask if we were to do a general volunteer survey.

ACTION 6.2: KB (& others?) to work on a joining pack for new members.

Good Will vs lack of staff capacity

Good will

• We'll repurpose the fundraiser to gain editors and tell people about what we're doing, not just generate funds.
• We'll ask every GLAM to give one article to the project (COI taken into account)
• Wiki Prizes (Core Contest)
• Run Funding <unintelligible>
• Geovation-like contests

Staff capacity

• Hire people for short term projects
  • Why? Doing things properly.
• Lack of understanding
• Another office

Money

• Spend money wisely and productively!
• Empower and support volunteers with:

Travel grants

Project grants

Assess the outcomes

Clear process for project grants

• Grants to other open knowledge buddies
• Staff

Admin support? Project Manager?

Fill our skill gaps

'Free parking' - other ideas

There were a few other ideas:

1. How do we make civility supportiveness mainstream?
2. Ombudsman?
3. Regional offices - population of Scotland/Wales compared to West Midlands

Board meeting, Meeting № 6

Sunday 9 September

Attendees

Board (voting):

• Chris Keating [CK] (Chair)
• Doug Taylor [DT] (Vice chair)
• Mike Peel [MP/MWP] (Minutes - backup)
• John Byrne [JB]
• Roger Bamkin [RB]
• Ashley van Haeften [Fæ]

Staff (non-voting):

• Jon Davies [JD]
• Richard Symonds [RS] (Minutes - lead)

Volunteers (non-voting):

• Rock drum [RD]
• Harry Mitchell [HM/HJM]
• Robin Owain [RO]

Board meeting

10.05 Housekeeping

MP - Review of past meetings and approval of Minutes (5 minutes)

• Minutes 12May12 Not approved due to missing info.
• Annual Conference 2012 AGM Minutes Not approved as not yet complete.
• Minutes 30Jun12 Approved.

MP - Review of email and on-wiki decisions (5 minutes)

• 30 July, Decision to support the Digital Past 2013 conference [Fæ, RB, MP, CK] Decision on office wiki All approved.
• 1 August, Decision to approve new members [RB, JB, CK, DT, MP] (see in-camera minutes) All approved.
• 1 August, Decision to appoint Martin Poulter as an Associate for the board Decision on office wiki All approved.
• 14 August, new membership approvals (3 new members)

RS/MP - Approval of new members (3 minutes)

DECISION 6.1: All new members as of 9 September 2012, were approved. RB suggested that a membership report would be a good thing to have at future meetings.

ACTION 6.3: RS and KB to write a membership report for future meetings.

10.20am Policy proposals

Fæ / JD - Staff recruitment, including discussion and adoption of new process (20 minutes)

http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Draft_Recruitment_Policy_August_2012#Appointment_procedures

Fae raised concerns about a communications problem between the board and the staff, in that Interns were hired without the board being kept fully informed. MP was concerned that we had several unanswered questions on the talk page for the draft recruitment policy. The minutes for 26 July were approved and 30 June approved, but not the May minutes.

JD explained the reasons why trustees were involved, and there was discussion between JD and DT about the problems about keeping trustees involved. There was an in-depth discussion about how involved the board should be in the process. Fae objected strongly to the first three sections in the Draft Recruitment Policy, which he felt were in there to discourage trustees from being involved in the process at all. JD said that he had put the three sections in because the charity's governance advisor suggested placing them in. He removed them, as per Fae's request.

MP felt that trustees should normally be on each panel. At the moment, in the formative phase of the organisation, he feels that trustees should always be on the panels. He suggested that DT and JD work on this over the next few weeks. DT disagreed, he felt that this was an issue that could be settled today.

DT suggested that the words 'or volunteer' in the first bullet point of the 'Shortlisting and recruitment process' be removed. Fae said that the key issue behind his complaint is that the board were not kept informed. MP said that although the board were informed through the weekly reports, there was not enough board involvement.

JD pointed out that with the exception of the Intern posts, which were short term positions and did include a key volunteer as no trustees had been available and on the other panels he had assembled since he took over recruitment processes a majority of the members had been trustees and volunteers. He believed in this very strongly.

ACTION 6.4: DT and JD to work on a revised version of the recruitment policy, for discussion at the next board meeting.

ACTION 6.5: JD to move this policy draft to the public wiki.

MP - Donation and grant acceptance policy (10 mins)

CK explained why we need this policy. RS explained that KB was particularly interested in this policy, it should be in place for the fundraiser. RB had a small concern about the £50,000 limit being too high. JB had a few concerns about how to refund donations, but the rest of the board thought that this was a technical issue for discussion if and when the need arose.

DECISION 6.2: This policy was approved.

MP - Representing Wikimedia UK policy (10 mins)

CK and JD had questions as to what the current problem with this policy was. The 'Trademark usage' policy was slightly changed for clarity after RB explained his experiences with the WMF and Monmouth/Gibraltar. The Chief Executive, or delegated staff, was chosen to be the person with authority to approve Chapter stationery.

ACTION 6.6: JD to add section to the policy about volunteer liability insurance.

ACTION 6.7: RS to start page listing everyone on office for checking and transfer to WMUK.

DECISION 6.3: the rest of the policy was approved.

11.10am Risks and risk management

JD / CK

Risk review (in particular, fundraiser readiness) (15 mins)

Risk Register (in camera)

Reserved by CK (20 mins)

MP - Declarations of Interest (5 minutes)

JD/MP - Conflicts of interest policy/2012 redraft (5 minutes)

JB - Resolutions arising from John's in-camera report - 10 mins

12.00pm Discussion - openness/financial controls

Openness - MP

30 mins total

Confidentiality, communication and information sharing - when should things be kept private on the office wiki/list, or even just in the office (excluding trustees), and when should they be public (for info/discussion/criticism)? (MP kick-off, open discussion - at least an hour required)

Finance policies and recommendation regarding depreciation- MP/JB/JD - 25 mins

DECISION 6.4: Capitalisation policy of 3 years and over £200 was approved.

DECISION 6.5: Accounts were approved, subject to a change of roughly £3800 regarding PayPal fees.

DECISION 6.6: To amend the Finance Policy 2012 to create section 6.4, which reads "The value of any such asset will be depreciated on a three-year basis for the purpose of monthly depreciation values. The specific value of the asset will be assessed each year prior to our financial audit taking place." [I'm sure I've objected before to the 2nd sentence - what does it mean? JB]

Trustee authorisation limits

MP explained his severe concern that financial decisions of the board are not being properly tracked, and that spending was not being kept within budget lines. As a result of his warnings, there were several decisions to amend our policy:

• Funds are specifically delegated to the initiatives that are explicitly described in the respective activity plan. Should an initiative not be specifically included in the activity plan, then the Board needs to be notified about the change of purpose of the budget line should the amount affected be equal to or greater than £500.
• The Board must be informed of any expenditure that exceeds £1,000, and the Board must be given a 24 hour period in order to raise objections to this expenditure. Should any trustee object to the expenditure, then a formal decision must be made about said expenditure.
• The Board must formally approve of any expense that exceeds £5,000, excluding recurring expenses (such as salary, pensions and rent).

ACTION 6.8: All Board and staff to check this [trustee authorisation limits policy change].

ACTION 6.9: RS to check Finance policy updated to reflect this [trustee authorisation limits].

1.45pm Discussions

Key Performance Indicators - JD / Fae

30 mins total

Jon's draft KPI document; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T8V6uAJHyZ4ft7XOnk1wbCQS4ArmYMbxWITWwFOnlds/edit?pli=1

1. Performance against the service level agreement for chapter inquiries
2. Performance against volunteer and membership plans

The above was not discussed owing to time constraints.

2.15pm Project proposals

Gibraltarpedia update / MOU - Roger (25 mins)

Roger updated the board on Gibraltarpedia, and explained how he would like to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Wikimedia UK. This would not involve the transfer of any funds, but would mean that Wikimedia UK would offer in-kind support in the form of press coverage and various merchandise.

DECISION 6.7: There was support in principle to sign an MoU with Gibraltarpedia, so that we can provide non-financial support for the project via the office (such as provision of standard outreach leaflets) but it was noted that more work was needed on the draft MoU.

ACTION 6.10: MP, DT, RB, SB to work through the outstanding issues with the Gibraltarpedia MoU.

Proposals for Wales - Robin Owain (15 minutes)

Robin Owain

Media training / Comms review recommendations - Jon (10 mins)

See http://office.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2012_communications_strategy_key_recommendations

3.20pm Reports & other business

Any other points from Reports 8Sep12 (40 minutes) - includes reports from sub-committees

Decisions requested

Conference Committee scope (see Mike's report); Technology Committee; membership of committees (MP proposal to require committee members to be Wikimedia UK members)

JD Digital Past 2013 Conference, our level of support.