Notes of the Affiliate Chairpersons meeting July 31, 2016

Notes of the Affiliate Chairpersons meeting July 31, 2016 (Etherpad meeting)

Present:

Tim (WMDE)
Frans (WMNL)
Filip (WMRS)
Polimerek (Tomasz) (WMPL)
Mattias (WMSE)
Laurentius (WMIT)
Hogne (WMNO)
Kirill (WM-US DC)
Ilya (WMUA)
Christophe (WMF)

Annual Wikimania (initiative Hogne)

The bi-annual idea is off the table. The Wikimania committee voted unanimously to continue Wikimania as an annual event. Thanks to Hogne for coordinating the statement on behalf of the chairs and for this initiative.

Progress Board member support page

Tim and Frans have written this meta page (presented at the chairpersons meeting in Wikimania): Board Member Support Add to it if you have anything of importance to share.

Discussion / decision about next Boards member training

In the last Wikimedia Conference we had a board training for new board members, with special focus on affliate organizations with staff (roles, responsibilities, COI). What next? What are the needs for training?

One option is to repeat this topic. Others ideas:
A training for more experienced board members (Mattias)
Financial management (Frans)
Volunteer management
Strategic planning (Lorenzo)
More on governance (Filip)
Training for user groups, professionalisation process Tomasz

Frans will present the ideas to all affiliates and ask for their feedback. Organizing it as a Wikimedia Conference preconference still looks the simplest and most cost-effective idea.

Support for the forthcoming vision & strategy process WMF

This was brought up in Esino Lario. Christophe and Katherine are working on a schedule. This will be shared at the end of August. The next step is a WMF board retreat on strategy in November. Christophe: Katherine is currently gathering information. We try not to repeat the old mistakes, we will certainly gather opinions from different people / stakeholders. AffCom will have a role in gathering inputs from affiliates. Target: share the result / strategy during Wikimania 2017. The strategy process will be placed on the agenda of the next chairpersons meeting.

Exchange best practices concerning the fight on harassement

Christopher explained briefly what's going on the issue in WMF. There ensued a discussion if the chapters will be included somehow in the process or not. Christopher explained that at the moment he doesn't know, as there is still discussion inside WMF about the shape of the program. There is no need to stop or postpone national/local harassement programs at this moment.

Increase Chapter's membership base

Hogne asks for suggestions on how to increase the number of members.

WMSE: In 2014 the WMF sent a letter to the donors on behalf of WMSE inviting them to join the chapter. In this way they got from 200 to 500 members (300 members from 18.000 contacts). WMPL has a "no inactive members" policy. They have 120 members, and 60 of them are active. WMSE, on the contrary, wants to have more members in order to have more political weight. WMIT got 200 new members when it was payment processor in 2011, but most of them left after one year.

Do you have organizations as members of the chapters?

WMPL: we can have organizations as "supporting members".
WMIT: we cannot have organizations as members. We could have them as "supporters" (but not members), but it's not currently done.
WMDE: for Germany having both persons and organizations as supporting members is normal.

Next meeting

Next meeting in about two months, end of September, on Hangouts. Tim will organize this. The notes of this meeting will remain on Etherpad for a couple of weeks and then be transferred to meta.