Wiki administrative executive

Concepts

Administration, not programs

Historically the Wikimedia Foundation has sought to fund programs, not administration. Historical ways of measuring the impact of programs are at Learning and Evaluation/Global metrics, Grants:Metrics, and Global metrics/Review.

This model of an administrative executive advances none of those goals or metrics directly. Instead, they provide paid staff administrative support so that Wikimedia community volunteers can be more effective in achieving those goals.

Employee of community organization, not Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation does not hire staff to provide administrative support to Wikimedia community members. The foundation may provide a grant of money to a Wikimedia community organization, then that organization can hire an administrative executive.

Wikimedia Foundation provides grant support for administration, so that community volunteers can do programs

The theory behind the Wikimedia Foundation sponsoring an administrator is that indirectly, doing this results in volunteers doing useful programs for impact.

Community groups which are most likely to benefit from getting Wikimedia Foundation sponsorship for an administrator have the following characteristics:

The organization already exists
The organization has a history of success using volunteers
The proof of the organization's success is in its Wikimedia annual reports

Duties

Zero impact!

Start the conversation by promising ZERO IMPACT, NO ACHIEVEMENTS!

The problem with trying to support programs without funding administration is that the Wikimedia community continuously attracts volunteers who will do programs for impact without pay. The Wikimedia community does not attract administrators who will support those programs without pay. Since having administration greatly increases the success of programs across many dimensions, an effective strategy for maximizing program impact at the lowest cost is to fund administration instead of funding programs.

Wikimedia LGBT+ is an example of an organization which had 10+ years of history of excellent volunteer engagement but a nightmarish scarcity of administrative support. While the Wikimedia Foundation frequently offered to support LGBT+ programs, the foundation declined to fund general administrative services. Consequences of this included lack of infrastructure to support editors experiencing harassment for LGBT+ engagement, high barriers to encouraging diversity due to lack of global communication infrastructure, and a general lack of the administrative support which leads to the most success.

While programs are necessary, and while sponsorship for programs is helpful, Wikimedia LGBT+ recommends that small Wikimedia community organizations plan and negotiate separate budgets for administration versus programming. To combine those discussions is too confusing and complicated, and historically has led to management failure for many Wikimedia community organizations.

Advice: start the conversation for sponsorship of Wikimedia community organizations by insisting on ZERO IMPACT as a grant-sponsored goal until administration is in place. Be aware when financial conversations ask for impact without budgeting for administration. Ideally, separate conversations about administration from conversations about programs, because anyone who lacks professional experience in nonprofit management is unlikely to be able to plan for both effectively at the same time.

Annual reports

All registered Wikimedia affiliate organizations must file an annual report at Reports. Filing this correctly is a top priority of the administrative executive.

When the Wikimedia Foundation sponsors an administrative executive, the context is that Wikimedia community volunteers without sponsorship are already doing activities which need to be documented in the annual report. It is a major problem that Wikimedia community groups do not file their annual reports, but paid administrative executives can do this.

The annual report will demonstrate impact - however - the point is that to start, the group needs a grant-sponsored administrator to log volunteer impact before the group considers getting funding for programming.

Hosting meetups

Wikimedia volunteers can present at meetups and socialize at meetups.

Wikimedia volunteers cannot administer meetups effectively! This must be done with paid staff support!

Boring tasks which paid administrators do include all the services listed below on this page, and briefly which are documentation, communication, budget management, thanks for volunteer organizers and sponsors, keeping participant records, ensuring safety, checking diversity, and being a point of contact.

Documentation

Documentation includes all the media records related to any Wikimedia event, such as a meetup, a content drive, a conversation, or anything else.

The Wikimedia community has well-understood practices for documenting its activities. Documentation is valuable because it increases transparency, diversity, and accessibility, which are Wikimedia community values. Documentation also is a Wikimedia Foundation request for the annual reports. It creates a log of impact for the organization. When an organization seeks additional sponsorship, initially from the Wikimedia Foundation but eventually from external sources, then that documentation demonstrates that the organization is mature for funding.

Paid administrators manage the documentation. While volunteers can often help, organizations routinely experience situations where volunteers cannot do this because of lack of training, availability, or any other reason.

Wikimedia programs and events worth doing are always worth documenting!

Thanks, awards, recognition

The administrative executive gives thanks to Wikimedia volunteers for participating in programs and thanks to partner organizations for in-kind contributions.

While anyone can practice gratitude, having a central administrator to ensure that contributors get appropriate thanks and credit ensures a safer, friendly community. Only a central administrator can document with certainty that all partner organizations, such as the frequent use of community centers, universities, libraries, museums, and even places like coffee houses get thanks from the Wikimedia community. Giving thanks encourages people to engage more with their time, and encourages organizations to give more of their community space and resources.

Budget publication

Whatever the budget is for Wikimedia community organizations, other Wikimedia community members and the public want to know. Financial transparency is a Wikimedia community value.

Additionally, failure to publish a budget results in insane conspiracy theories and stalking from the public. Insane harassment happens in the Wikimedia Movement with enough frequency to justify consistently having a sponsored administrative executive publish the organization's budget in the annual report for anyone to see.

Even for organizations which have no money, there is still financial information to report. If an organization has received in-kind donations of community center space, then logging that is helpful. If a member of the organization buys coffee and cookies for the group, then log that as a donation to the organization and thank the member. If the organization attracts a volunteer expert to give their time, perhaps to speak on a subject or join the group in any way other than as a member, then log the value of that.

Wikimedia community organizations naturally attract people to donate to them, if not money, then valuable attention and support.

Central point of contact for inquiries

Wikimedia community organizations become the regular, even if infrequent, targets of inquiry. Questions may come on the wiki, by email, through social media, or in-person at events.

The administrative executive should be the key point of contact for inquiries. Otherwise, even simple questions flood everyone in the governance or organizational network. Having a central point of contact is normal.

Safety

When there is a central point of contact, then Wikimedia community organizations will receive complaints of harassment.

Preventing misconduct and responding to harassment is a peer-to-peer process which varies greatly for different communities. For example, a national regional Wikimedia community organization may respond in one way, whereas a city-base community would respond in another, and an online-only thematic community would have yet other needs. Some communities, like for LGBT+ and women, get specific harassment which is often sexual in nature, and less understandable to groups for straight men.

Whatever the case, and whatever the need, the administrative executive coordinates a response with their own community. The administrator may not be able to solve the problem; instead, they are a point of contact and referral to whatever process that the volunteer community is able to recommend.

Keeping membership and contact lists

Organizations need a membership list. Members always get some kind of benefit that non-members do not get, even if membership is open to everyone and the organization is easy to join.

Volunteers alone are unable to centralize and organize membership effectively. While the Wikimedia community's digitally native and activist attitude do lower the barriers to organizational management, no software exists and no social structure exists which actually works without a person actively working to maintain the member list. Thus the need for the administrative executive.

A count of members goes into the annual report. The list of members gets used by other processes, including for communication, democracy, and diversity checks.

Democracy

The Wikimedia community values democracy and community participation. Some Wikimedia organizations elect leadership. More commonly, all Wikimedia community organizations participate in member discussions about developing Wikimedia content and the social and ethical issues which arise as a consequence of content development.

The Wikimedia Foundation calls on the Wikimedia community to participate in global discussions around once a month. In addition to Wikimedia Foundation calls, various community groups around the Wikimedia platform ask for comment on issues hundreds of times a month.

The administrative executive organizes elections or consensus discussions as needed, following whatever process the community organization chooses for itself. Through this democratic process, the members of the organizations can issue consensus statements of the organization.

Diversity checks

The Wikimedia Foundation routinely asks organizations to report the diversity of their membership. Additionally, the Wikimedia community frequently discusses this.

The challenge with this is that every organization will have its values for what demographic data its members want to share. For Wikimedia LGBT+, some members will want to report their gender and sexuality, because discussing these things empowers some people in this community. However, some people in that organization may not want to report these things about themselves. For other groups, the members may not want to talk about this at all. In some regions of the world religion is important to report; in other places it is socially inappropriate to discuss this. In general groups try to get representation from minorities in their region or field, but they may take offense when the Wikimedia Foundation is forceful in demanding data beyond the community's wish to report it.

The administrative executive collects the diversity report as the community wishes to share it.

Press

When media organizations contact a Wikimedia community organization then there needs to be a plan in place to respond to the opportunity.

Rather than crowdsource the response with whomever is contacted, instead the administrative executive coordinates the response with the community.

Partner communications

Similarly, when partner organizations contact the community organization, there should be consistent communication, especially from organizations donating support of any kind.

Only an administrative executive will have continuity and training to document these conversations and keep the relationship healthy.

Position statements

When administrative structure is in place over time then eventually members of the organization are likely to want to publish position statements in response to frequently asked questions or circumstances which arise repeatedly. These responses may be in the form of on-wiki documentation of best practices, or when they concern the world outside the Wikimedia platform, may be a published white paper or other position statement.

The administrative executive supports volunteers in developing these statements, publishing them, seeking consensus through a democratic process, then delivering them to press, partners, or whomever needs them.

Grant writing

When enough Wikimedia community members meet, collaborate, and discuss among themselves for long enough, then eventually they will develop plans to request money. Sponsorship requests start with the Wikimedia Foundation, but many other sponsorship opportunities exist.

Grant applications are too complicated for volunteers to complete without support. Having a sponsored administrative executive is the path the getting more money from foundations, government schemes, and other funding programs.

Staff management

The point of seeking money is using it to empower people to advance the mission of the organization. While the Wikimedia Foundation should sponsor administration of organization staff, external funders like foundations will want to sponsor actual programs for impact. When there is grant funding for programs, then the administrator should facilitator their hire and get them paid. The administrator ideally would not manage other staff, except to support them with administrative services like receiving their invoices and helping them to access organizational resources.

How to request money

The Wikimedia Foundation offers money at Grants:Start. Tell them that you want staff administration. Ideally, tell them that if you get administration for a few years, then you will seek and find external sponsorship from outside the Wikimedia Foundation.

To set pay rates for the administrative executive look for comparable salary in nonprofit management. If in doubt, set the pay at middle class plus benefits.

If part time is desired, consider asking for 10 hours a week for a year. The pay rate might be middle class plus 40% because part-time consultants get a higher rate per hour than salary, and also they need benefits, and also doing Wikimedia projects is a hazardous job with high risk of harassment.