Talk:Strategy/Archive/WMUK activities and volunteers

The way this page is tucked away (and the talk page didn't exist until I created it, after stumbling across it) doesn't give me a great deal of confidence that you're going to get a useful consultation on its contents; perhaps it should be more widely advertised?

I welcome clear definitions of these terms; it may allow progress in working out where we stand rather than relying on the current estimated figure, the methodology for which is unclear at best. However, this definition is too broad.

• It includes everyone who has ever done something on WMUK's behalf (including, quite possibly, people who don't even know that WMUK exists), so there's no way to tell whether the volunteer base is growing, stagnating, or shrinking.
• The definitions are ambiguous, for example activities in conjunction with WMUK; what does "in conjunction" mean? Does that mean that the hosts of WMUK events count? What about the attendees of an event? Because my reading is that both could be counted as doing something "in conjunction" with WMUK, regardless of whether they pursue their involvement with the movement any further. If there are different interpretations on this, it's going to lead to different methods of calculating the number of volunteers, and the temptation will be for people to use a definition that fits the point they're trying to make (however well-intentioned they may be), and we'll be no closer to having a realistic figure that we can all agree on.
• The definitions need firming up with examples of the sorts of activities that are and aren't "WMUK activities".
• "In conjunction with" needs to be changed to something much less ambiguous, like "on behalf of".
• "In the course of his or her WMUK duties" needs to be "in the course of his or her employment" or similar; volunteers arguably have "duties", but not in the same sense as staff.
• You need examples to define "trustee-related activity" versus 'voluntary activity'; I suggest something like attending board meetings versus running an event in a personal capacity.
• What purpose does the caveat "involved in a non-leading capacity" serve? By that definition, if I'm involved n an event that has nothing to do with WMUK but I'm involved in it in a "leading capacity", it's still a "WMUK activity".
• More detail is needed on when staff count as volunteers and when they count as staff, otherwise the sorts of accusations that have been made in the past about massaging figures will resurface.
• We seem to have dispensed with the principle of volunteers being "at the heart" of WMUK. I don't think this has been the case in practice for a while, but it would be a shame to abandon the pretence of being a volunteer-led organisation altogether. Similarly, we seem to have moved away from the idea that staff only do those things that volunteers can't or won't do.
• This document would be a good place to attempt to define the roles of staff, trustees, and volunteers. For example, do the former two have to go through the same rigmarole to get approval for their projects that volunteers do? I very much doubt it, but it would be nice to see that they do, even if it is only on paper.
• More broadly, it's disappointing that the board did not think to ask the volunteers how they define the term "volunteer".

Of course, there are different types of volunteers, and some are more involved than others, which is too nuanced for a purely statistical analysis, but I'm pretty sure I could count on one hand the number of volunteers who come to WMUK with their own initiatives rather than participating in initiatives led by other volunteers or staff. Personally, I think that's a serious problem, but the board and staff seem satisfied with the latest version of this number, which uses an extremely broad definition of the term and seems to be incremented on an ad hoc basis with no consistent methodology. Harry Mitchell (talk) 17:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Harry. Do you mind if I convert your points to subheadings so that I can reply inline? We may well get a whole series of threads spinning out of this. That might be clearer than putting all the replies at the end and leaving the reader to link up comment and response. Thought I should check with you first, though, rather than jumping in and re-formatting without asking. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:34, 21 February 2014 (UTC)