Wikimedia Foundation elections/2017/Funds Dissemination Committee/Questions/Submitted/1

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What professional qualifications do you bring?

As a former elected chair of the FDC for three consecutive terms, I understand that diversity of experience is really useful for the work. However, seeing a strong pack of candidates, of whom a vast majority has lots of experience from within the movement, including budgeting, being a board member, etc., I'm really interested in learning in more detail what kinds of actual external professional experience can you bring to the table (I mean specifically experience from work in finance, accounting, as well as professional budget or project evaluation outside wiki world - typically done on NGOs advisory board level or by the staff)? Additionally, could you comment a little bit more about your learnt skills and formal education (definitely not as a must, but I have to admit that I'd really value a degree in management/business administration or finance or economics for this position as an added bonus, or a relevant postgraduate degree such as an MBA, DBA, CPA, etc.). If you don't have any of such experience or skills, that's ok - I'm requesting factual detail, rather than a rationale why it is "not so important", I know it is not the only thing that is needed :) Pundit (talk) 09:48, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chris Keating (The Land)

Professional experience - professionally, I'm a fundraiser for nonprofits (and previously, a campaign manager for a political party). I manage a team with a headcount of 6 and am responsible for, roughly speaking, £15 million of income and £1.5 million of expenditure. Particularly relevant to the work of the FDC: my work involves a lot of planning, and a lot of evaluation - including a lot of multi-stakeholder evaluation where, say, we have been working on a project with a number of teams inside the organisation and one or more agencies outside it. It involves taking decisions about resourcing and prioritising a portfolio of products at different levels of maturity, which also describes the work of a number of affiliates fairly well. And it involves working in a values-driven way not a purely commercial way.

Education - Since you asked about education, I have a B.A. in Economics from Cambridge University. I also hold Diplomas in direct marketing and in musical performance. So I have pieces of paper to prove my competence at discussing post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory, developing marketing plans, and performing Beethoven violin sonatas.

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

As described in my candidacy statement, my relevant external professional experience is having worked in roles at Europeana, the National Library of Australia, and Creative Commons Australia in which I have been involved in the complete lifecycle of annual-planning and grant-application: strategy, application, implementation, reporting. Prior to these organisations I worked at the Dictionary of Sydney and Austlii - both small, digital-focused non-profits organisation, which exist through competitive academic-grant funding.

My formal qualifications are not to do with finances or management, but they are to do with Wikimedia... My undergraduate thesis, for which I won the University medal, (B. International Studies (Honours class I, UNSW) is on the Historiography of Wikipedia - here is the abstract, and a summary of its chapters. For my Masters (LLM Intellectual Propery Law; QUT/WIPO), I wrote my thesis on The copyright in faithful reproductions of Public Domain art, which I adapted into a submission into the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry at the time into the modernisation of the Australian Copyright Act. You can read the full text of that submission/thesis here (and it is archived as "submission 136: submissions to 'issues paper: from individuals'").

Ad Huikeshoven

Professional experience - professionally I'm an auditor and financial adviser with over twenty years experience in non-profit (quango's and national government), and financial business consulting with one of the former big professional services firms. Education - I graduated in Economics and Business Administration (ME and MBA) at the University of Maastricht in 1992. I followed a two year post doctoral course in Operational Auditing. I am a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA).

Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive)

External Professional Experience: As a consultant of Bangladesh National Museum, I advice in evaluation process of various programs and involve with financial part. I have been working with Bangladesh Open Source Network as a Treasurer Role for last 10 years. In addition, I have served as a volunteer finance coordinator for the Open Knowledge Bangladesh for last 5 years. I have valuable experience in budgeting and financial analysis. I manage the distribution of funds to support projects around our activities and to individuals organizing volunteer activities in Bangladesh. As a consultant I headed several grants from Bangladesh Ministry of Culture, Ministry of ICT and governmental and also from industry. Other organizations like Mozilla Bangladesh, Open Knowledge Bangladesh I have experience to do financial related work. Being a Coordinator I involved several International conference financial part arranged by Ministry of ICT.

Skills and formal education: I’m a finance graduate & I completed my BBA & MBA major in Finance. Also I completed few financial courses that help me gather skills. As adjunct faculty I took class in finance subject. I worked in various non-profit national level organization and most of this organization I led the finance part. From the beginning of my career I worked with leading private bank and financial Institute. I have experience in the financial sector and have served on a couple of finance committees.

Katherine Bavage (leela0808)

I already touch on my most relevant external experience in my responses to candidate questions, but happy to recap with a broader snapshot of my career.

I did a post-graduate masters degree in political communications in 2008-2009 before going to work for a UK Member of Parliament for a year and a half. This was an advisory and policy response role, and I learned a lot in my time there working to critically solve problems, manage correspondence and support campaigns. It was a great grounding in how to work within a complex legislative system, read long policy and strategy documents, figure out what is meaningful and apply it to what I am trying to achieve.

I found I really missed fundraising, something I’d done while an undergraduate and postgraduate student, and so eventually made the choice to move into it as a career track. I worked at a University for a year, then moved to become the Fundraising Manager for Wikimedia UK between 2012 – 2015, before returning to the University sector and my current role managing grant applications.

To be really specific, I have experience in developing and managing budgets and reporting within a management accounting framework (WMUK), scrutinising company returns and charitable annual reports (current role), and developing and reporting on project plans and budgets for large, complex research proposals for national and international charitable foundations (current role).

Organisational support of smaller affiliates

It has been rather difficult in recent years to justify programs that, for example, support smaller affiliates in neighbouring countries, since the results of this organisational or financial support don't necessarily translate into numbers which benefit the supporting affiliate in terms of being able to report them back to the FDC. Hence the question: How important is the support of smaller affiliates by APG-chapters to you? Do you think that in the future we should focus more on sharing organisation knowledge to support the growth of smaller affiliates and should this also be reflected in upcoming APG proposals? Braveheart (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just to offer one concrete example here: Fiscal sponsorships are sometimes required to organise projects like Wikimedia CEE Spring or events like the 2017 European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting - yet there's hardly any incentive for chapters to actually help out in the current system, as outlined in Wikimedia Austria's 2016 impact report (section Challenge – grantmaking needs an administrative backbone). Braveheart (talk) 15:00, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chris K (The Land)

Hi Braveheart - yes, I noticed that feedback when I had a look at WMAT's proposal last Autumn, and agree it's an issue; in a few cases some of the bigger affiliates have heard the message that the WMF and FDC want them to focus on their measurable impact, and have responded by saying no to otherwise reasonable requests for help that don't help their metrics.

So, to address the point narrowly: currently "sharing learning in the movement" forms part of the APG staff assessment, and I would like it clarified that this includes things like logistical support and fiscal sponsorships as well as (e.g.) publishing learning patterns and running sessions at conferences.

More broadly, I think there are two bigger issues. Firstly let's recognise that the numbers are not the full picture - particularly not the numbers we have available to us now. Yes, ideally, we would have good metrics to track the whole range of things that are included in the impact of a Wikimedia affiliate - but that is a complicated set of metrics (as I set out here) and it is a huge learning process to actually develop the right measures. While that learning is happening, I think it's more important for the FDC to assess an organisation's management, leadership, capacity and direction and the narrative about its impact than to compare crude numbers.

Secondly - I have long believed the movement (particularly the WMF and the bigger chapters) needs to do more active work to support and develop affiliates, particularly smaller and newer ones. Currently, there is a serious lack of support for a new affiliate after recognition by AffCom, and the gap is partially filled by regional collaborations and other informal initiatives. So if I am on the FDC, I will be particularly keen to support projects that help in this area.

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

It is a little-known, and perhaps even less-used, clause of the fiscal sponsorship system that the sponsoring affiliate is allowed to add a "management fee" (either a fixed amount or a %) to cover the staff-time costs of administering the grant. On the one hand it could be argued that this is not a good use of the movement's money, but I think it is a perfectly acceptable to acknowledge the genuine costs (staff time, as well as financial risk!) that administering a grant requires. Especially if a Chapter is operating multiple grants on behalf of their region - as is the case you identified in the "Challenge – grantmaking needs an administrative backbone" section of your Impact Report - I would be happy to see that Chapter asking for a (modest and justifiable) processing fee. By combining several of these it might even be possible to have 'self-funding' staff resources dedicated to providing that service effeciently: a 'centre of excellence in Wikimedia fiscal sponsorship' for their region, if you will.

I think it's interesting that you've mentioned the European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting in your examples - as I was the one who coordinated that event, and obtained a WMF grant to provide a few scholarships for non-APG affiliates' representatives. Wikimedia Netherlands was the fiscal sponsor in this case and, generously, performed this task without charging a "management fee" (although it was offered to them). In my report on that grant I noted that:

"the combined value of the staff time...to administer the grant application (not including the scholarship-distribution or reporting time) was certainly more than the value of the grant itself. These political, procedural and legal difficulties the Wikimedia movement has in sending money to itself need to be resolved."

So I feel your pain about applying for, managing, and reporting on grant agreements!

As for the question of supporting smaller affiliates in general: If/when one affiliate has the capacity do to this - I think it's fantastic. Just because an activity is outside the physical jurisdiction of one affiliate does not mean that it, if requested, shouldn't be able and encouraged to assist. Inter-affiliate activities are good for our movement health in a variety of ways (on-wiki content creation, organisational development, and international understanding in a general sense) and should be encouraged. Equally, the sponsoring/supporting affiliate should feel comfortable and allowed to report on the results of that program - even if they were not the lead organisation - indicating the level of support they provided. Affiliates' metrics reporting results should not be seen as a zero-sum game.

Moreover - when two or more affiliates indicate on their annual plans that they are co-sponsoring an activity (such as many European Chapters now do with the FKAGEU) that massively increases the likelihood of that project's success. I've semi-jokingly said before: if a chapter presents an APG application with programs overtly stating that they're repeating a successful program run by another chapter, they should get double-points in the FDC deliberations!

Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive)

I think before supporting smaller affiliates by APG-chapters more important for the FDC to assess organisation's management, capacity and leadership. It's really important for both party. To develop more active affiliates, its need to help smaller and newer chapter to work following rule & policy. After got the recognition by AffCom most of new affiliate not get proper guideline to get funding. After got funding they clearly don’t know how they can report back to the FDC. So I support this part to help them. If I am on the FDC, I’ll try to support projects that really help and create scope to learn.

Katherine Bavage (Leela0808)

My perspective here is informed by work I did for Wikimedia UK to support Wikimedia Ireland and Wiki Cyrmu, plus other chapter volunteers or staff members.

I personally took pleasure in offering advice or support to ‘colleagues’ within the movement, whether staff or volunteers. As the fifth member of staff to be employed by Wikimedia UK (when it was still very early in its lifetime as a staffed entity) huge parts of my induction, training and handover and what I continued to learn were delivered by volunteers and staff members in more established chapters. So I very much saw this type of activity as ‘paying it forward’ and believe that a legitimate role for established groups is to support nascent ones (The Land has already made the point about how hard it is for new groups to affiliate and I agree).

WMUK did represent this to the best of its ability, whether through the narrative portions of reports and grant applications, metrics around editathons, outreach work or staff roles to directly support such activity. I think the point was well made in the APG report you link to, and I think the solution is to have a larger conversation about the value of the role affiliates play in supporting non-affiliates, evidencing the cost impact, and including that in grant applications. I would be sympathetic to such ‘acts-of-solidarity’ activities.

Ad Huikeshoven

The FDC operates to guidelines given by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. The FDC evaluates grant request with the strategic framework set forth by the BoT. It might be the case that the new strategy embraces building a global movement. In such a new framework I can imagine an existing chapter kick starting an affiliate organization in another country. However that is not within the current set of metrics. That being said, I'm not a fan of fiscal sponsorship. You asked about sharing organisation knowledge to support the growth of smaller affiliates. That is the primary aim and focus of the annual Wikimedia Conference and especially the preceding learning days.

WMF

The FDC is responsible for reviewing and recommending on funds allocations that relevant affiliated applicants request; an important role that is attributed to the FDC is to review and provide recommendations to the WMF Annual Plan. Do you think the WMF annual plan should abide by the same rules and expectations (in terms of presenting metrics, specific objectives, etc.) that other applicants abide to? Why or why not? --Joalpe (talk) 20:14, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

O FDC tem como responsabilidade revisar e recomendar a alocação de fundos aos quais organizações afiliadas podem requerer; um papel importante que também está designado ao FDC é revisar e enviar recomendações sobre o Plano Anual da WMF. Você acha que o plano anual da WMF deveria seguir as mesmas regras e expectativas (no sentido de apresentar métricas, objetivos específicos etc.) aos quais outros requerentes devem submeter-se? (Just in case my question is not clear in English, and someone is available for improving the version in English based on the version in Portuguese)

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

In November 2015 I was part of the FDC committee which made this recommendation to the WMF, during a period of governance crisis for the organisation:

"the FDC laments that the Wikimedia Foundation’s own planning process does not meet the minimum standards of transparency and planning detail that it requires of affiliates applying for its own Annual Plan Grant (APG) process. The FDC is appalled by the closed way that the WMF has undertaken both strategic and annual planning, and the WMF’s approach to budget transparency (or lack thereof). ...the FDC recommends that the WMF submit its 2016-17 annual plan to the second round of the 2015-2016 Annual Plan Grant process. It should participate in both the community review and FDC review processes that all APG applicants go through, and seek detailed responses from the FDC on its annual plan".

In accepting that recommendation, the WMF did indeed submit a proposal in May 2016. While we acknowledged the awkward timing this required, I was part of the FDC committee which responded to that application with this:

"...the WMF didn’t provide the FDC a detailed budget, as is expected from any other affiliate applied to APG (even privately, as had been offered by the FDC). Moreover, the lack of detailed information about each program costs made it hard for the FDC to review and evaluate the programs. ...due to the structure of the plan, the inputs (e.g., resources) are often unclear and the outputs of many programs do not have targets. Furthermore, it is often hard to understand what is operational and what is programmatic, especially in the technology section....Frequently there were no metrics and therefore no baselines for this year against which achievements can be measured. Risks were well articulated, however they are not linked to programs, nor are they actionable."

The following year, in May 2017 - just one month ago, the WMF submitted their latest annual plan. In the FDC's response we wrote:

"Although this plan lists goals, objectives and milestones, in most cases these lack targets and overall are not SMART. The FDC recommends that the WMF have a set of metrics and SMART goals they will use and report on for the duration of the new strategic plan so that year over year comparisons of progress will be possible, and to ensure that the work is continuously impactful...The FDC requests that the WMF complete the entire FDC application form for its deliberations in order to have sufficient detail to understand the annual plan and budget."

I post these three comments here to demonstrate that I have a consistent, public and strong record of asking the the WMF to meet the standards that its sets for its much smaller affiliate organisations.

Even as far back as 2012 (note: before I was on the committee), the FDC said that the WMF “should be a role model” with regards “measures of success and SMART milestones, as well as systems to measure and evaluate impact of all programs”.

The WMF's response to the FDC's most recent recommendation is to say that the WMF:

• "...programs do not directly produce impact in the metrics used for other organizations"
• "movement strategy will help us generate stronger predictive metrics for future Annual Plans", and
• "[is] engaging in work that is strategic and by nature speculative".

That is: that the WMF can't and won't use the same metrics that it requires its grant recipients use, and won't start creating alternatives - even for its currently active programs - until some time in the future. Personally I do not care if the WMF uses the same metrics. But I do find it galling that after literally years of being asked for the same thing, nothing has changed. Perhaps the FDC process is not the best way to achieve this outcome, and I am happy to admit that our reviewing process could be improved, but, at least until the Strategy process creates new systems for mutual-accountability in our movement, the FDC process it the best we've got. And I would like to continue pushing for this change as one of its elected members!

Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive)

I’m not sure WMF uses the same metrics or not. But FDC play a good role in this matter as FDC follow the best process. At least I think Before any good strategy process FDC working way is good. As I follow, FDC reviewing process is good now and I would like to continue work on this process and try to help FDC as its elected members!

Chris Keating (The Land)

Yes, I think the WMF should aim to lead the way in terms of the quality of its planning, its goals, and the specific measures used to support them. I would note that there is on the whole a good culture of evaluation and continuous improvement at WMF, including some very rigorous evaluation through A/B testing, which I really value. However, on the whole the WMF seems less than systematic about goal-setting and measuring.

This is a shame. First, it means that the WMF is achieving less than it could. Second, it means the WMF is open to accusations of hypocrisy, which is unhealthy. Third, I believe "how to measure the impact of the Wikimedia movement" is a big question we have scarcely begun to address, and the more WMF invests in time and effort to address it, the more effective the whole movement will become.

Katherine Bavage (Leela0808)

This is an interesting one for me, and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a member of staff of WMUK who worked through the annual plan process several times, and as a volunteer in a movement that values transparency, it can be tempting to ask ‘Why does the WMF not have to undergo the same level of scrutiny?’. On the other hand, the WMF does publish a lot of data, metrics and reports that underpin its performance, has observable staff meetings and has responded to FDC feedback (indeed, submitting its annual plan was a positive response to FDC criticism).

The WMF, as a 501(c)(3) organisation, is in the position of being ‘Trustee’ for directly donated funds. Its role changed in 2013 when it moved to meeting that legal fiduciary duty to donors by granting funding to other entities within the movement to deliver their own potentially separate goals and aims, rather than trying to deliver on behalf of a global movement. It has its own governance and staffing structures, goals and aims. My suspicion is it would not be tenable to retain its 501(c)(3) status if its annual plan and budget were subject to approval outside this.

The WMF is therefore somewhat caught between trying to act ‘on behalf of all of us’ and on behalf of itself. In this scenario, I think continuing the moves made for the FDC to act as a critical friend is appropriate, but I doubt it will ever be entirely subjected to the same ‘rules and expectations’ as affiliates. Like all of you though, I would value more detail and more dialogue between the WMF and FDC and support the requests FDC has made to this effect in the past.  

Ad Huikeshoven

As per my candidate statement: I belief 90% of the time of the FDC should be spent on reviewing the WMF Annual Plan because 90% of the financial resources are spent by the WMF itself. I prefer a long and elaborate Annual Plan of the WMF, say 50 to 100 A4 pages. A 5 to 10 A4 page paper would suffice for most affiliates for their integral grant application (plan and finances) and their integral annual report (including financial report). Proportionality is the key.

Languages

As this is an international Enterprise, I expect from those who work with the community at least two or three languages to communicate with. English only is for me clear disqualifier. How do you expect this multi-language community to deal with grant proposals, that are written in slightly bad English, but good in an other language? How will you make sure, that good English will not be a prerequisite for getting funds? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 09:45, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chris K (The Land)

Je pense que je vais faire mal sur cette question. Je parle francais un peu, mais pour tous les autres langues étrangères, j'utilise le Google Translate. :)

I have never actually seen a WMF grant request written in anything apart from English. On the few occasions something is unclearly written, it's usually possible to ask for clarification in good time. To be honest, the WMF's written English is often worse that that of any affiliates, because WMF sometimes uses incomprehensible corporate-speak.

So I don't forsee much of a problem dealing with the actual text of the applications. I think I would have more of a potential disadvantage doing things like site visits, where knowing the relevant affiliate's language means an FDC member can engage with more people and pick up more nuances of communication.

Nurunnaby Chowdhury (Hasive)

As I’m familiar with six languages and my English language is not too good! But definitely, language is important. Always I follow a quote: ‘If anyone not good in English definitely he/she is good in another language. So if anyone not good in English that doesn’t mean he/she is not good communicator’. Personally, I’m really interested in helping them who are non english based. As most of our active member not too good in English, If elected I’m planning to invest a more time on various language specific people who have a good proposal but in slightly bad English. I’ll use my personal capacity to help them.

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

To your specific question, I am able to work in three languages (English as a native speaker, plus French and Italian). As Chris mentioned in his reply - it's actually more likely that native speakers of English would produce less comprehensible applications because they (we!) are more likely to write without thinking about the need to translate. But, in my opinion, it is the combination of bureaucratese + Silicon Valley jargon which is most damaging to cross-cultural communication in our movement. On a related note, I do wish that Tom Morris would keep his "WMFers say the darndest things" page up to date! :)

Katherine Bavage (Leela0808)

This is a problem I encounter at work when we are developing applications for foundations who may use English but primarily prefer to communicate in another language – such as Japanese, which I can neither read nor speak - so I can share your frustration!

Our work-around has been to work with native speakers on accurate translation, not just a direct word-for-word translation but really putting in the time in to make sure they understand the spirit of what we are trying to do and making sure that cuts through. What I’ve found is that, when putting together a proposed programme of work, actually a typo or a slight mistranslation is less important than a robust budget, clear timeline and clear sense of what your work will achieve.

Generally, I’ve found that, where these things are missing, language isn’t the main problem. I do appreciate your perspective – it’s frustrating to think you might have an additional hoop to jump through and that a native speaker/reader wound better understand a proposal. However, I don’t think a native speaker reading an application necessarily makes it more fundable.

If elected, I will always start with the fundamentals first, elegance of language second, and expect FDC to work with non-native speaking applicants where the fundamentals are unclear because of language. I hope you’d consider supporting my candidacy on that basis.

Ad Huikeshoven

As far as I know WMDE employs someone who is a near native in American English - having lived in America for a couple of decades - who compiles these reports. That is a luxury not every affiliate can afford. When I was on the board of Wikimedia Nederland, we used to hire the services of a professional translator for grant application and for annual and financial report for translating those reports from Dutch to English. Proper investment of donors money, we believed. Consider that a best practice. Restricting the size of grant applicatons and reports helps also in controlling translation costs as most translator are paid per word.

Accountability of non-APG chapters / Beyond Grantees

We have several chapters in the movement that do not run their (bi)annual plan via the FDC, despite receiving funds from fundraising or taxpayers in their country by using trademarks owned by the WMF. Do you think that these chapters should also submit their annual plans to the FDC for feedback, in order to hold everyone in the movement to the same standards? Braveheart (talk) 14:22, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is a diverse and growing group of Wikimedia Organizations that are entirely or largely independent of APG funding, including WMF and WMDE, chapters with in-country tax support, smaller affiliates and those who do not choose to depend on this type of funding. At the recent WMCON, a few members of this group met informally with members of the FDC to discuss ways to support shared learning, transparency and accountability into the future, regardless of funding relationships. What role do you see for the FDC and its members in this conversation, as it continues? Thanks! Nicola Zeuner (WMDE) (talk) 14:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

This is an issue of movement accountability that is close to my heart. The two Chapters who are most specifically relevant to the issue you mention are Poland and Italy - and by coincidence they are two of the countries that have had the most strong representation of their nationality on the FDC over the years! Equally, I know that they have both expressed interest in joining the FDC process in some form, in order to obtain structured feedback and to demonstrate their sense of accountability towards the movement as a whole. A third good example is Wikimedia Indonesia which has previously received large grants from external philanthropic sources - but this year has joined the SimpleAPG process. I mention these examples by way of say that I do not believe anyone is trying to hide from being accountable - it's just that different groups have grown in different ways (and in different legislative/fundraising environments) resulting in a large mismatch between our various movement entities' movement-accountability processes.

Currently the FDC is, effectively, the only body in the movement which provides a formal accountability-checking service. This is not what it was designed to do, it only does this for APG Affiliates, and it is not necessarily the correct group to do this job. But that's the way it is. The Affiliations committee has only recently started to ensure that the very minimum standards of Affiliate accountability are complied with (with their one-and-only tool: de-affiliation), and the FDC reviews some of our largest entities in the movement. The issue is one of fairness.

Is it fair that a Chapter receiving no money directly from the Wikimedia Foundation should nevertheless be forced to submit to a review by the FDC? Or the same question in reverse: is it fair that a Chapter trading on our Wikimedia brand does NOT have to be more formally accountable than the minimum standard, merely because they have local independent funding? There is no easy answer to this moral dilemma - and I am going to push within the final 'implementation' phase of the Strategy process (whether or not I am elected to the FDC) for this practical question to be answered.

Moreover, I believe that our matrix of "rights" and "obligations" in movement accountability is currently set-up in reverse order (at least as I see it). The obligations are set at a high/strict level to be able to account for the most organisationally-complex of our movement affiliates - but that forces our smaller affiliates to use process that are unnecessarily difficult and burdensome for them. In reverse, we confer rights based on the needs and capacity of the smallest affiliates which stymies the larger organisations who have more experience. For example: Amical must produce complex documentation because that's what WM-DE needs to do; and WM-DE is not allowed to sell t-shirts because Amical doesn't have that capacity. This should be reversed: we should have a scale of commensurate rights and obligations that both grow together. 

Ad Huikeshoven

The role of the FDC is to discuss Annual Plan grant applications, it dessiminate funds received by the WMF. So the FDC will continue to discuss Annual Plan grant applications of affiliates and the Annual Plan of the WMF. Next to the FDC is another very important committee in our movement, the Affiliations Committee. The AffCom could, and in my opinion should, not only review applications to become affiliate, but also annually review compliance with accountability and other standards applicable to those affiliates. I didn't say to increase the administrative burden for the affiliates, but that AffCom actually reads their plans and reports, give feedback, and make recommendations to the BoT of the WMF. When on the FDC I will push for a recommendation to the BoT of the WMF to revise the AffCom charter in that way.

Chris Keating (The Land)

I'd certainly recommend chapters with APG-scale budgets who aren't in the APG process to take part in the reviews voluntarily. As a trustee of one of the APG chapters, I found the feedback we got from the FDC very helpful.

There are of course also issues around accountability, fairness, and support. The way things have evolved in the Wikimedia movement, any affiliate taking part in the grants programme has quite heavy scrutiny from the WMF and broader community (perhaps via the FDC) - this is generally healthy for those affiliates and is even healthier for the movement. If you're an affiliate with the same sized budget but are not taking part in the grants programme then there is far less scrutiny; AffCom will only act to close down the affiliate if it appears totally inactive. Hopefully the affiliate's own membership, and the communities of the projects they work with, still provide a good level of scrutiny - but I am still worried that somewhere, somewhen things could go very wrong and no-one would notice until it was too late.

Of course, it isn't for the FDC to settle these issues. But logically, to my mind, the answer would be to separate the function of assessing and improving governance, management and volunteer capacity, from the grantmaking function.

Movement Strategy

The current participatory process of creating a movement strategy will define and articulate the direction and strategy of the movement for the foreseeable future. The FDC has been a mechanism to oversee the disbursement of APG funds to individual affiliates in accordance with the current values and priorities of the movement. These might shift with the new movement strategy, in particular if it will orient itself towards more global power equity, inclusion, strategic partnerships and technological advances. How could the fund disbursement processes be reformed in accordance with a changing movement? What might this mean for APG and FDC? Thanks ! Nicola Zeuner (WMDE) (talk) 14:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Liam Wyatt (Wittylama)

I would not want to pre-empt the outcome of that strategic planning process, but this question is highly related to my response to your earlier "Accountability" question - specifically regarding 'fairness' for movement-accountability between affiliates. The current situation is not ideal, because the process is not applied consistently to all parts of our movement, but it's a good start :) Once we have a "finalised" strategy for the movement THAT is the time, and not before, for all parts of the movement including WMF, Chapters, FDC etc. etc. to come together and agree - for the good of the movement - how to redistribute our pieces of the Wikimedia puzzle to implement that strategy (to paraphrase Schiste). This WILL require some people losing parts of power that they currently have, but it's important that all parts of the movement go in to that discussion with an open mind - not a mindset of 'defending my territory'. I would like to believe that the FDC can play a productive role in that process and change, in whatever way is necessary (including being disbanded/replaced, if that is what is required) to suit the needs of the new strategy.

Ad Huikeshoven

Formally, not at all. The FDC will continue to review grant applications vis à vis the existing strategic framework and metrics set forth by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Or, the FDC will shift the way they review grant applications right after the Board of Trustees has finalized the strategy process with new directives and has instructed the FDC to follow this new direction. Please be aware that the current cycles of the strategy process focuses on the impact of programs the movement as a whole pursues and does not focus on fundraising, fund disbursement, governance, management or administration of the movement. The dialogue about how the new strategic goals might best be achieved has not been started, and will probably not start before September 2017.The current Application does not dictate which programs should be in the Annual Plan. Therefore it is allowed to compose an Annual plan in programs around the five themes mentioned in the current cycle of the strategy process, but that is not a requirement.

Chris Keating

I've set out in some of my other answers, and in my statement, that I think we ought to do much better as a movement at supporting and developing affiliates at all levels. The question for the movement ought to be "How can we build the most impactful, diverse, brilliant affiliates?"; the question that the APG process exists to answer is "How can we share out the cash in an equitable way without huge arguments?" which to be honest is pretty different, and the APG process is only a partial answer anyway.

However, while I very much enjoy thinking about the future, I do also want to stress that this election is for the FDC that actually exists not for some hypothetical future movement body with a similar-ish role. I don't actually think the FDC should have any particularly special role in developing ideas about future movement structures, it's not what it is constituted to do. While I know some individual FDC members will have really insightful points to make on the subject, so will plenty of people who aren't on the FDC.