Towards a five year plan 2013-18/Draft goals

The text on this page is an earlier version. For the latest version under discussion please see Towards a five year plan 2013-18/Draft Goals vs 2

Introduction

Wikimedia UK has decided to create a five year strategy. Getting the balance between being too detailed and not detailed enough is a challenge. Our annual plans are there for detail, this is a higher level document.

After our community working day on March 23rd we came up with a new draft strategy. This received some useful comments. Since then I have boiled them down to this strategy upon which we can create our detailed plans and targets.

This draft continues to echo plans drawn up by the Wikimedia Foundation; there was a consensus that it should. To this end, five top line statements have been written - strategic priorities - supported by appropriate targets and metrics.

We are a young charity so do not yet have the experience to predict our future with great certainty but we can assume that our development will be measured by the Wikimedia Foundation’s policy of steady rather than rapid growth.

Over the first two years or so of the plan, we will develop a level of background information available to act as benchmarks. This can then enable the charity to develop targets that are meaningful and realistic.

The key driver of the Wikimedia Foundation’s activity is its list of strategic priorities. Each of the priorities is then supported by appropriate targets. The strategic priorities are:

• Stabilise infrastructure
• Increase participation
• Improve quality
• Increase reach
• Encourage innovation

Wikimedia UK’s strategic priorities should support those of the Foundation to effectively demonstrate our value as part of the global Wikimedia movement.

Each of our top level strategic objectives should be supported by lower level metric data through our annual plans.

Based on our consultations and discussions to date and the Foundation’s strategic objectives I propose the below as Wikimedia UK counterparts. These form a basis for a discussion and for forming a consensus. Crucially, our community needs to continue to have meaningful input.

Draft Wikimedia UK strategic objectives

• Empower volunteers
• Develop volunteer base
• Support technical development
• Increase diversity of participation
• Enable content improvement

Empower volunteers

Volunteers are the core of our charity. Staff work very hard to facilitate volunteers and encourage them to lead on projects which they find interesting but staff need to develop strategies by which volunteers are empowered whilst ensuring the effective delivery of the overall programme.

• Every Wikimedia UK project is either led by a volunteer or has a volunteer as a key decision maker (this may not be strong enough)
• An annual survey of volunteers should be conducted to gauge volunteer satisfaction and empowerment
• Delegate budgetary authority / decision making to volunteers where appropriate (and in accordance with appropriate risk management)
• Ensure that (non-Trustee) volunteers have an active role in each of our sub-committees and are empowered to help set strategic vision of the strategy
• Offer training and development “career paths” to provide reward and skills to volunteers of longstanding

Develop volunteer base

We have a broad definition of ‘volunteer’, “participates in activities related to Wikimedia UK either in an online space or a physical space”. Preferably there needs to be demonstrable engagement with the activities of the chapter. The chapter currently has around 250-300 members and an estimate of around 100 active volunteers. Both of these figures need to increase significantly if the charity is to come close to reaching its potential and deliver the desired impacts. Some suggested metrics:

• Measure the growth in membership year on year - percentage . Target to double membership by the 2015 AGM.
• Continually measure the number of volunteers taking part regularly in Wikimedia UK activities. Target to increase the number of active volunteers by 33% every year.
• Measure the annual total attendance at Wikimedia UK events (duplication is fine - if volunteer x attends five events, count them five times - should obviously be rising). Target to increase by 50% annually the number of attendees.

Support technical development

It is important that we make a contribution to technical development (whether this is maintaining paid technical staff / contractors or, preferably, supporting volunteers in their own projects). The WMF and the community broadly lead on this but WMUK has a role to play (see QRpedia, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)). We should encourage our community to lead on this and provide sufficient resources to support this.

• Wikimedia UK hosted resources receive adequate support to keep any service outage to less than 2 hours
• Currently hosted resources such as QRpedia (which will be hosted by us soon) and the VLE are developed and maintained in ways that benefit the community
• Requests for further development that come from the community will be accepted wherever possible (metric: community requests logged in bugzillia; decisions make at technical committee and board level)
• Wikimedia UK commits a reasonable (define reasonable) portion of its budget to technical development

Increase diversity of participation

For Wikimedia projects to deliver the sum total of human knowledge there needs to be a concerted effort to broaden participation among under-represented groups - females and BME groups for example. We also need to ensure that our volunteer activities are spread nationwide and do not ignore non-English language wikis. By focusing on specific activities to increase the diversity of participants we can make a clear and valuable contribution to our community and aims.

• Ensure that 95% of the UK population have a Wikimedia UK event taking place within an hour’s journey
• Ensure that we have at least one Welsh language activity every year
• Ensure that we have at least two other non-English language activities each year (e.g Bengali)
• Develop meaningful partnerships with leading organisations that have an active interest in gender, sexuality, ethnic background, ability and age.

Enable content improvement

Essentially, Wikimedia UK exists to support and promote Wikimedia projects by encouraging initiatives that lead to clear improvements in the content of the projects. This is an integral part of our activity. Much of this will be achieved by the individual work of our editing community but we can encourage this by building partnerships, e.g. our work in GLAM and education.

• Develop the number of Wikimedians in Residence both in major institutions and in less formal settings whilst encouraging self-funding of these posts.
• Content improvement could do with one/two lines about Education/GLAM, e.g.
• Increase the number of events we hold with relevant institutions (editathons, backstage passes etc), working on increasing Wikimedia awareness in Education and GLAM sector, among others.
• Track and monitor the number of improved / created articles that directly result from our events
• Increase the impact of microgrants - how content has improved as a result of each grant (see Harry Mitchell’s microgrant for Operation Barras / Operation Flavius as an example)
• Increase the number of files / resources released under open licenses as a direct result of relationships with Wikimedia UK (where possible)

Endnote

There is the basis here for good strategic objectives which can be supported with solid metrics that will come in the annual plans.

The effective benchmarking of data that will enable the charity to determine realistic, measurable and meaningful targets.

The next steps

• Discuss our strategy on wiki and at the AGM on June 8th.
• Agree goals on wiki
• Set 5-year targets reflecting goals at July Board
• Define tactics to reach those targets - on wiki in time for budget proposals in September for 2014-15 proposals.
• Define interim goals based on agreed budget and agree review mechanisms