Internal:Strategic plan workspace

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Status: Historical

This is an unstructured workspace to float ideas regarding the Strategic Plan, 2014–2019.

Strategic priorities

Approved by the Wikimedia DC Board of Directors, September 7, 2013

  1. Foster a welcoming and supportive social environment for local and remote Wikimedia volunteers.
  2. Empower academic, cultural, and government institutions to contribute content and expertise to Wikimedia projects.
  3. Promote women's participation in all aspects of the Wikimedia movement.
  4. Cultivate diversity of participation and content on Wikimedia projects.

Every program to date

Current as of June 6, 2014

  • Content Donations (various): NARA, 2011; AAA/Federal Art Project, 2011;
  • FedFlix (WikiProject Fedflix / Public.Resource.org): A nominally organized online project that has not had dedicated events, to the best of our knowledge
  • GLAM Wiki US Consortium meeting (self-organized): April 2013
  • LibraryLab (DCPL): 2011–2012
  • WikiConference USA: May/June 2014
  • Wiki Loves Capitol Hill (self-organized): April 2013; April 2014
  • Wiki Loves Monuments: September 2012; September 2013
  • Wikipedian in Residence: NARA (temporary), 2011–2012; AAA, Summer 2011; NARA (permanent), 2013–present;
  • WikiSalon (self-organized): April 2013; May 2013; June 2013; July 2013; August 2013; September 2013; October 2013; February 2014; March 2014; May 2014;
  • Women Who Wiki Workshop (Amy Senger and Steven Mandzik of 1X57; held at JESS3): June 2011
  • Workshop Facilitator Training August 2014 [1]

Tasks done (or will be done) by volunteers

  • Administrative
    • Checking PO Box (JH)
    • Participating in board meetings (JH,JG,PM,ETW,KA)
    • Maintaining constituent relationship manager (JH)
    • Meeting minutes (KL)
    • Drafting policies and resolutions (KL)
  • Communications
    • Social media (JH,GS)
    • Answering questions about Wikimedia DC (JH)
    • Writing blog posts (JH)
    • Website maintenance (JH,KL)
  • Outreach
    • Volunteer recruitment (JH)
    • Representing Wikimedia DC at events and meetings (JH)
    • Following discussions online (SS,KA)
    • Building relationships (JH,SS)
    • Recruiting members (KA)
    • Movement relations (KL)
  • Program
    • Event planning (JH,ETW,KA)
    • Event promotion (JH,GS)
    • Developing plans (JH)
    • Volunteering at events (PM,SS,KA,AL)
    • Taking pictures at events (GS)
    • Writing reports of events (JH,ETW)
    • Designing and administering surveys of program participants (JH)
    • Helping to train new editors (KA)
    • Edit-a-thon related preparation (KA)
  • Financial
    • Writing grant proposals (JH)
    • Writing budgets (JH,PM)
    • Maintaining records (PM)
    • Develop fundraising plans (JG)
  • Public Policy
    • Research and prepare policy papers (PM)
    • Participate in public policy discussions (KA)

Time spent on activities

  • JH: 20-25 hours/week
  • PM: 8 hours/week
  • KA: 6-10 hours/week
  • AL: 5 hours/week
  • SS: 4-5 hours/week
  • JG,GS,ETW: 1-2 hours/week

Perceived organizational roles

  • Making sure organization moves together
  • Fundraiser
  • Photographer
  • Organizing and sustaining
  • Partner and evangelist
  • Planner
  • Social outreach
  • Editing support at events
  • Prospecting for opportunities to improve underrepresented topics and populations, esp. Africa / women / Native Americans
  • Asking questions to ensure Board activities can be explained in plain English
  • Moral and material support to get more editing and content creation done

SWOT

Strengths
  • Good at building relationships with cultural institutions (and gradually at other institutions)
  • Holding regularly scheduled, engaging events with face-to-fact interactions
  • Particularly good at edit-a-thons and large events in general
  • Good website
  • We are a friendly organization, open to new members and free of drama
  • Talented, excited people in our organization
  • Relative gender parity
  • Good organizational governance; effective leadership
  • Good at working with WMF and other Wikimedia organizations in a diplomatic manner
  • Good at reporting events
  • Planning events with organizations
  • Small grants program is beneficial
  • Growing social group
Weaknesses
  • Experienced Wikimedians moving out of DC
  • We need to be better at sharing information amongst ourselves
  • Engaging with other groups
  • We need more women on the Board
  • We need more people of color participating
  • Linguistic diversity would be good
  • Clearly defined volunteer roles
  • Writing down best practices
  • Over-reliance on WMF funding
  • We do not involve members enough in planning and outreach
  • Following up with members and ongoing communication with them
  • Scaling up to respond to requests from institutions
  • We are in need of more staffing to expand volunteer base and respond to requests
  • Meetups are same group of people
  • Haphazard event promotion
Opportunities
  • Tech sector outreach in DC—growing community we need to stay in touch with
  • Open government outreach—we can help them in their mission
  • Progressive community outreach—intrinsic interest in our priority of reducing systemic bias
  • Legislative affairs
  • Participation in international organizations
  • Federal civil service staff
  • Wealthy donors we could reach out to
  • More GLAM partnerships!
  • University and school outreach
  • Community centers
  • Networking at Wikimedia conferences and other events
  • Enough organizations in DC to keep us busy for at least ten years
  • Expanding base of volunteers so we can move on opportunities offered by organizations
  • A coordinator tapping in to local universities could bring education program editors together with cultural institutions / non profits working in their specialties
  • Many diaspora language communities in the area are an untapped resource-- takes consistent participation in their communities to make Wikipedia happen for them
  • With old fashioned volunteer outreach, we could coordinate a national scanning corps / digitization effort. All this would take is elbow grease
  • Getting Wikipedia work on the list of acceptable AmeriCorps projects would open up a whole new world for underemployed, educated people to work with us
  • Wiki Workshop / Wikipedia corner where we assist the public with editing on a walk-up basis (say at a flea market, cafe, or festival)
  • Giving more talks at DC events
  • Putting together a standard talk on "how to evaluate the quality of a Wikipedia article"
  • Putting together a standard talk on "working with you on improving that BLP of concern ..."
  • Publicizing our events on DC-area forums
  • Events specifically geared toward training; Andrew Lih is willing to help here
Threats
  • Too much interest in Wikimedia DC's services and no way to accommodate; cannot respond in timely manner
  • Shortage of information management infrastructure, causing things to get lost
  • Lack of leadership back-bench
  • Getting funding proposal rejected by WMF
  • Present lack of tax-exempt status
  • Drama in Wikimedia movement
  • Over-reliance on unpaid volunteers; risk of loss of specific leaders in Wikimedia DC
  • Potential lack of awareness of friendly space policy
  • The threat posed to a free and open internet with acceptable costs and upload/download speeds
  • Getting in political / PR hot water by making public statements that get us caught up in the current political culture of disparagement in DC
  • Shortage of legal expertise
  • Burnout by members whose employers lose patience with Wikipedia holding weekday activities
  • Burnout on paperwork and reporting requirements by volunteer Board members
  • Burnout on managing HR-related activities required for grantmaking/supervision of paid people working on our projects
  • Getting hacked because we keep material in the cloud instead of in our own secured system
  • Present lack of capacity for independent fundraising

Insights from other people

  • Jim Hayes: Wikisource needs more love, grants for that; photography grants to get a day to take pictures during events w/ high concentrations of notable people; bad process workflow on Wikipedia especially AFC; officer training (how to plan a meetup, run the organization); hard (statistical modeling and data) vs. soft (taking care of people), noting that soft is indeed hard; you can train people in editing all you want but you also want to nurture and pay attention to your volunteers and their risk of burnout; energetic work of evangelizing to partners vs. slower/harder work of implementation

Logic models

Priority A

Foster a welcoming and supportive social environment for local and remote Wikimedia volunteers.

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
    • We need to recruit more editors; retention of new editors on Wikipedia is declining. Online environment of Wikipedia can be intimidating and confusing. We want to provide a safe and welcoming environment where anyone can learn how to participate on Wikipedia. This will let us reach a new audience and improve the user experience of Wikipedia.
    • With respect to remote Wikimedia volunteers, we would like to provide opportunities for Wikimedians to participate in our events, particularly when they cannot participate in such events where they live. This opens opportunities for membership for those beyond the DC area.
  • What will it look like once we have solved the problem?
    • In our chapter region we will have a core of 25 active editors (5 edits/month) and 50 contributors overall (10 edits all-time) by September 30, 2019. At least 75% of the contributors will report in a survey that they feel welcome at our events and that they have received adequate support in their endeavors.
  • What activities do we need to do for this to happen?
    • This figure of 25 active editors and 50 contributors includes more than Wikipedia edits; it also includes contributions to Wikidata, Commons, Wikisource, etc. There are many different types of contributions we can facilitate, depending on the group.
    • Friendly Space Policy Implementation: Wikimedia DC adopted a friendly space policy for Wikimania 2012 and has since adopted a friendly space policy for all events conducted by the organization. For the policy to mean anything, anyone involved in the organization of events needs to be familiar with the policy and know how to handle an infraction.
    • Volunteer training: Run-of-the-mill edit-a-thons have been proven ineffective for editor retention. Meanwhile, preliminary research in Wikipedia workshop techniques has indicated that particular training techniques could lead to higher editor retention. Those interested in conducting Wikipedia workshops should be trained in these methods, and these methods should be improved incrementally through experimentation.
    • Small workshops: Events that train people how to edit Wikipedia, thematically developed according to the target audience. Could be integrated with the edit-a-thon concept or organized as independent events, depending on availability of venues
    • Development of remote participation and asynchronous participation tools: There won't always been an event going on when someone needs help with Wikipedia, and not everyone can go to our events. It is necessary to develop tools that allow remote participation in in-person events and supplementary online components to facilitate after-hours support, including resources for the Teahouse.
  • What resources do we need to carry out these activities (money, time, people, expertise)?
    • Time: Friendly Space training could take the form of a half-day workshop around once a year, with about one month of advance planning. Volunteer training could coincide with friendly space training or be held separately, at least once a year, with one month of prep time for local training (and more if we want to invite people from outside DC). Workshops should be held monthly, on a regular schedule. Development of remote/asynchronous participation tools will take at least one year of research and development, including the development of test projects.
    • People: Ideal setup: One friendly space trainer, one volunteer trainer (could be same person) training at least four people who organize at least three workshops per year. One person would be in charge of organizing these people, including scheduling meetings and events. Those trained would also be expected to volunteer at the Teahouse and other such fora; ideally, there are more than just four people taking on this responsibility, however. Also, someone who follows up with people, shares their stories. We should also encourage the development of creative proposals for remote participation.
    • Expertise: Someone with experience in diversity/safe-space training, and someone who can "teach the teachers." Skilled event planners. Someone with technical expertise will be needed to develop the remote participation technology.
    • Money: An edit-a-thon traditionally costs $120–550, depending on the length of the event, the number of people, and the food served. Each event we host would cost around this much, but we should budget extra for professional facilitators.
  • What resources do we already have to carry out these activities (money, time expertise)?
    • We can get event funding easily. Emily can do the initial facilitator training; we can find money for a friendly space trainer through our contacts. What we really need are people who are interested in becoming facilitators, being worked up the ladder from attendee to regular editor to facilitator to (ultimately) facilitator trainer. These people are already in our organization, potentially—they just need to be given that extra training. We have a wide variety of organizations that we can partner with for long-term programs of events; this ties into other strategic priorities.
    • Funding for paid facilitators (friendly space training, volunteer training and organizing) may be harder to come by. It requires substantially more funding. However, we can fundraise off of people who have benefitted from our programming.
  • What happens as a result of these activities?
    • Training people in running safe and welcoming spaces, online and offline, helps us in our mission to recruit editors. More specifically, our outputs include training events and trained volunteers who do the work of our organization. These trained volunteers can help us with our other strategic priorities.
    • Workshops themselves recruit people based on their interests, channeling those interests into contributions to Wikimedia projects.

Priority B

Empower academic, cultural, and government institutions to contribute content and expertise to Wikimedia projects.

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
    • Universities and cultural institutions have collections of information and subject-matter expertise of strong interest to our projects, especially as they relate to underrepresented topics.
    • Government institutions collect and release large numbers of data, much of which is useful for Wikimedia projects. The "open data" movement represents a general interest in making this data available to the public. Their movement is consistent with our mission to make information available for the world.
    • We must actively build alliances with these organizations and movements so that they contribute to our movement and help fulfill our mission. These alliances include content donation efforts, technological solutions that bridge the gap between source data and visualization, and recruitment of people within these organizations for our events, including workshops.
  • What will it look like once we have solved the problem?
    • At least one organization in each identified sector (academic, cultural, government, international) will participate with us in a program of regular events per year. These regular events work to build communities of Wikimedia contributors, per our other strategic priorities.
    • There will exist a workflow for translating primary sources (source documents, photographs, raw data) to content on Wikimedia projects. At least one organization in each named sector that has large collections of such content will have implemented this workflow in their organizations.
    • We will have a comprehensive accounting of potential partners in our region, including a process for reaching out to these potential partners for participation in our activities.
  • What activities do we need to do for this to happen?
    • Partner recruitment process: We are learning about recruiting GLAM partners from our cultural partnerships coordinator and from our Summer of Monuments project manager. The identification of best practices, paired with goals for identifying and recruiting partners, is necessary for the growth of our organization.
    • Recruitment and training of partnership coordinators. GLAM-Wiki movement has years of experience in outreach; this experience should be channeled into development of best practices for other sectors. Events like GLAM Boot Camp will prove helpful.
    • Introductory meetings and events: Edit-a-thons are effective as introductions to Wikimedia for partner organizations. Introductory events could eventually lead to regularly scheduled events.
  • What resources do we need to carry out these activities (money, time, people, expertise)?
    • Money: Funding for carrying out events, records management (CRM), and in the long term, full-time volunteer coordinators and partnership managers. In the long term, we may want to invest in digitization (either through purchasing equipment or by renting such facilities) and other equipment that will facilitate our efforts.
    • Time: Volunteer training should take about two months to plan and be held once or twice a year. Outreach efforts should take about 20 hours/week per facilitator. This includes time needed to input data into the CRM.
    • People: At least one volunteer trainer per sector and one coordinator; these two roles could be filled by the same person, but ideally others are trained to carry out this work for continuity and increased capacity.
    • Expertise: An understanding of the relationship between Wikipedia and these sectors, plus practical experience in these sectors.
  • What resources do we already have to carry out these activities (money, time expertise)?
    • We can get money for events and CRM trivially. We have experience training in cultural outreach (via GLAM Boot Camp) and we have an experienced Campus/Regional Ambassador in DC.
  • What happens as a result of these activities?
    • Recruitment of institutional partners, addition of content to Wikimedia projects, training of volunteers to oversee these projects

Priority C

Promote women's participation in all aspects of the Wikimedia movement.

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
    Women's participation is dwarfed substantially by men's participation; only 15% of Wikipedia's contributors are women. There are multiple potential causes, including cultural issues on Wikipedia, cultural issues in broader society, and the amount of free time women have compared to men. Researcher Amanda Menking as a Wikimedia Foundation grantee is studying the cause of the problem. We would like to increase the participation of women, as their systemic absence from Wikimedia projects have prevented them from reaching their full potential to cover the world.
  • What will it look like once we have solved the problem?
    The Wikimedia movement, offline and especially online, will be a safer and more welcoming space for women. Women will be editing at approximately the same rate as men, and will serve in leadership positions at approximately the same rate as men.
  • What activities do we need to do for this to happen?
  • What resources do we need to carry out these activities (money, time, people, expertise)?
  • What resources do we already have to carry out these activities (money, time expertise)?
  • What happens as a result of these activities?

Priority D

Cultivate diversity of participation and content on Wikimedia projects.

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
  • What will it look like once we have solved the problem?
  • What activities do we need to do for this to happen?
  • What resources do we ‘’need to carry out these activities (money, time, people, expertise)?
  • What resources do we already have to carry out these activities (money, time expertise)?
  • What happens as a result of these activities?
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