2012 Activity Plan/Submitted

This is the version of the activity plan that was submitted to the Wikimedia Foundation as part of the preparation for the 2011-2 Annual Fundraiser. It has been superseded in practice by the current Board-approved plan, which has been updated to reflect developments post-WMF-approval, and the current draft of the 2012 Activity Plan that reflects the recent developments of the budget/plan.

This is our activity plan for 2012. It outlines the key projects that Wikimedia UK will undertake and their anticipated costs.

Our 2012 Budget will run from 1 Feb 2012 to 31 Jan 2013, and will be set out in detail over the coming months. The Budget will be calculated on the basis of more detailed forecasts of income and costs. We will have a more accurate forecast of our income from the Wikimedia fundraiser, and will have identified other sources of income available to us (e.g. charitable trusts). We will also be well advanced in the process of setting up an office, and will have a clearer idea of exactly which staff posts we will need to fill and what our office costs will be. Further input from the community on how to develop our plans is very welcome on the Talk page.

Wikimedia UK's current main source of income is the annual Wikimedia fundraiser, in which fundraising banners are placed on Wikipedia and other sites. Our participation in this is governed by the Wikimedia UK Fundraising Agreement with Wikimedia Foundation.

In 2010 Wikimedia UK raised £567,296.81 via the Wikimedia fundraiser, and slightly over half of this amount (after accounting for fundraising costs) was granted to the Wikimedia Foundation. Under the Fundraising Agreement, the Foundation may review this activity plan if the total expenditure funded from the Wikimedia Fundraiser, less any international programme budget line, is more than 150% of the equivalent figure raised in Autumn 2010 (£425,427.60).

Income

Wikimedia fundraiser : £805,000

Regular gifts: £83,000

Income Tax reclaimed: £110,000

Donations in kind: £40,000

Membership subscriptions: £3,000

Interest income: £10,000

TOTAL - £1,051,000

Payment processing costs: (£30,000)

Other fundraising costs: (£35,000)

NET TOTAL - £986,000

Wikimedia UK raised a total of £567,297 (US$ 923,559) in the 2010 annual fundraiser. We expect the amount of one-off donations in this period to increase by 40% this year due to an increase in the global fundraising target by 24% and a further increase of 15% because of better-optimised UK landing pages.

The board member responsible for the fundraiser, Chris Keating, works as a professional fundraiser and his skills and experience has been vital in drawing up our plan to achieve this ambitious target.

Wikimedia UK now accepts regular gifts through the Direct Debit scheme and has successfully tested the interface. These donations will be solicited during the fundraiser, in follow up messages and through other methods. We estimate that we will be able to convert 10% of donors into regular payments. Direct debit donors generally continue to give for several years. This income stream will therefore become a key source of regular, reliable income suitable for funding long term projects.

We are currently in the process of applying for charity status and have convened a general meeting on 16 October to consider the changes we need to make to our constitution to achieve this. Based on our expectation that this will be achieved, we will then be able to claim "Gift Aid" - a refund of donor's income tax - for all donations where the donor makes the appropriate declaration. We have made a prudent estimate that we will have participation from 50% of donors. Gift Aid (at 25% of the donation) is reclaimed in arrears direct from the UK tax authorities.

Last year we received significant donations in kind from organisations who donated use of meeting space, conference facilities and volunteers who donated professional services. Where possible we recognise this contribution. In addition, the chapter benefits from the considerable value that arises from the donation of time by volunteers who help organise Wikimedia events, help with administration and act as board members. This value is not included in the financial numbers above.

We currently have just under 200 members, who each pay a subscription of £5 per year. Members make an average donation of £10 at the same time as renewing their membership.

Interest income is estimated based on an average cash balance of £500,000, earning 2% per year.

Payment processing costs of £30,000 represent the payment processing costs incurred from PayPal and SmartDebit, who provide the one-off donation and regular giving services respectively. These are unchanged from the costs last year and represent 3.5% of the value of donations.

In addition, we intend to spend £35,000 in mailing letters to selected donors to thank them for their donation, keep them informed about how their money is being used and solicit new donations.

International Programmes

Grant to Wikimedia Foundation

£500,000

We will provide a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation for their activities that are charitable under UK law. This will support the cost of the servers which keep Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects running, as well as the other activities of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia is a global movement and Wikimedia UK also contributes, via the Foundation, towards the growth of the Wikimedia movement in the Global South.

Toolserver

£10,000

We will supporting the Wikimedia Toolserver, run by Wikimedia Deutschland, which is widely used by the Wikimedia community to enable automated editing, statistics and other tools to keep Wikipedia running smoothly. Although the long term future of this service is in doubt it has been shown that there will be a need for this valuable service for the next two years.

Staff

The following outline reflects the plans that the board has drawn up for recruitment. However, we have decided to put these on hold until our new Chief Executive starts in October so that he can have an input into how these are structured. Following his input the roles may differ significantly although we would expect the overall costs to be comparable.

Chief Executive

Salary, payroll costs

£60,000

We have recently appointed our first Chief Executive, Jon Davies. He has a vital role in ensuring that the chapter meets its strategic priorities and delivers the programme set out below. This was an important milestone for WMUK as this is our first permanent employee and an example of our changing business model as an aspiring UK charity.

Office Manager

Salary, payroll costs

£25,000

We currently employ a temporary Office Administrator but will seek to make a permanent appointment in the New Year. This role will deal with administration, correspondence, and the maintenance of our donor database. This is probably our most important appointment in terms of ramping up our capacity to run our activities. Obviously our Chief Executive is going to demand a professional approach but it is our office manager who will ensure initially that these standards are achieved.

Events Manager

Salary/Fee

£30,000

Our intention is to run three large conferences (for example, GLAM-WIKI 2012, EDU-WIKI and WikiConference UK 2012 - to be confirmed) and numerous smaller workshop events in 2012; these are vital for sowing the seeds of future collaborations and building a culture where we engage with our key partner organisations, the Wikimedia community and the general public. Our most successful conference required many weeks of effort despite having a very willing host organisation. We do not believe we can achieve the quality and consistency that we require with solely volunteer leadership.

Communications

Salary/Fee

£20,000

Wikipedia is an immensely high-profile project. As Wikimedia UK develops, we will need to communicate our existence, purpose and values with ever greater prominence. We will also need professional skills to increase the impact of our fundraising and to raise money from charitable trusts. These needs can be met by a mixture of full- and part-time posts and consultancy.

Developer

Salary/Fee

£30,000

Various needs including maintaining the WMUK websites and email systems (including the donation site and QRpedia), and developing MediaWiki to support the global projects and general wiki community. Expected to be contract work, rather than a single employee. QRpedia will be the first software project that WMUK has run and should complement the services supplied from Germany and the U.S. More essential is the need to maintain our part of the fundraising software.

Outreach

General outreach expenses;

Train the Trainers Programme

£20,000

We will, with professional help, set up a programme to train Wikimedia volunteers in how to train others. We expect this will be an important support to all the outreach activity we undertake, increasing the confidence and ability, and scalability, of Wikimedians to run training sessions and presentations. We have run some training sessions already for the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research who are top charities in the UK. We can supply volunteers to do this, but the cost of paying for course leaders in difficult areas (and the travel for volunteers to be present at training events) would be justifiable and affordable. If we can supply first class teaching resources then we may find that educators can train people with little support.

Outreach merchandise & publications

£5,000

Covers everything from "Introduction to Wikipedia" booklets to pin badges and Wikipedia cakes. This type of material is essential for a number of programmes. We have been able to source merchandise that is of sufficient quality that we can avoid importing material. Having this sourced locally means that we do not have to carry a large stock but we can re-order just in time.

Extended Reach programme

£10,000

To support outreach projects in Scotland, Ireland or Wales, or aimed at increasing womens' participation in the Wikimedia movement, or involving any minority ethnic or linguistic community in the UK, which might not otherwise be funded.

Cultural sector

Technical development to support cultural outreach

£80,000

With international partners, we will develop technical tools (via the Toolserver or MediaWiki development) to support content donations by partner organisations and assess their impact. This item is reliant on cross chapter collaboration with Wikimedia France, Netherlands and Germany and a potential partner in Europeana. This project is meant to remove the bottleneck to expansion of Wikimedia Commons because of its inability to load large quantities of files from GLAMs.

GLAM-Wiki Conference Autumn 2012

£10,000

We will hold another GLAM-Wiki Conference to follow the successful initiative in Autumn 2010, to showcase and promote collaboration between Wikimedians and the cultural sector. Target attendance of 100. We have held a successful project but we aspire to raise the bar higher and publish proceedings to mark the academic importance of this type of collaboration.

Outreach Events

£10,000

We will hold at least 3 smaller GLAM-Wiki events during 2012. Costs include venue hire, travel and accommodation for speakers, refreshments. Target attendance of 100 through the year.

Wikipedians in Residence

£15,000

We will part-fund Wikipedian in Residence positions. The number of positions will depend on negotiations with partner institutions about how a Wikipedian in Residence fits with their organisation and how much funding they will make available.

Digitization

£20,000

We will support the digitization and release under an open license of cultural content, particularly where this content will be used in Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons. We will aim to have 4,000 culturally significant media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2012.

World Wars I and II project

£30,000

A project involving at least 3 major partner institutions to enhance Wikimedia projects' coverage of these two conflicts, with a particular aim of building engagement about the forthcoming World War I Centenary. It should be noted that there are other important topics in 2012 including the Olympics and Turing's birthday. The new board will need to decide the priorities here.

University and Academic sector

University outreach events

£10,000

Includes Freshers Fair stalls, Campus Ambassador training events, and other activity with staff & students, including associated volunteer expenses. This year we have trialled a presence at fresher fairs with good results. We need to scale this idea so that we could have a presence at most of the major UK universities next year. At Bristol we also paid for a Wikipedian in residence to investigate the opportunities for academic partnership. We would repeat this elsewhere if we could find another leading educational institution who was willing to champion our cause by use of Campus Ambassadors (or similar.)

Wikipedians in Residence

£10,000

We will part-fund Wikipedian in Residence positions at partner institutions. We have trialled this idea at Bristol University, although we have not been able to fully evaluate the achievements yet.

General activities

Grants programme

Project grants

£15,000

We will expand our existing Microgrants and Macrogrants programme and support members of the community to propose initiatives they want to take forward. (Note: in previous years, funding for this activity came from the Opportunity Fund.) In 2011 we managed to use the directors skills to lead several projects and respond to other opportunities as they arose. This will still be the case but we are expecting that the majority of applications will be from enthusiastic volunteers working in partnership with educational or cultural partners. For instance we have a town who want to QRpedia code their monuments, buildings and amenities. This doesn't fit into our existing programme but is innovative of what others could achieve.

Travel grants

£15,000

We will continue to provide financial support for individuals, from the UK and the rest of the world, to participate in Wikimedia events like Wikimania, the Wikimedia Chapters meeting, Wikimedia Loves Monuments, Wikisym and GLAMcamp.

In 2010-11 we have enabled delegates to attend Wikimania (a number of delegates from UK, Portugal, Kenya and Hungary), Wikisym (two scholarships for UK researchers); WikiConference India (details to come shortly); Wikimedia Fundraising conference (2 UK delegates) and GLAMcamp NYC (1 UK delegate). This represents an important contribution of WMUK to the global movement, and we are committed to growing this contribution in the future.

WikiConference UK 2012

WikiConference UK 2012

£5,000

Combining our Annual General Meeting with a series of presentations about the Wikimedia projects and chapter activities, following up on WikiConference UK 2011. This is an opportunity for the chapter to celebrate the past year and to realise the enthusiasm from a new board of trustees. Our 2012 AGM will be a change as the current board includes project leaders where we may be looking for trustees to guide the strategy of our Chief Executive.

Administrative Costs

Board costs

£10,000

The WMUK board does most of its work by email and phone, however some face to face meetings are needed to ensure that the right strategic decisions are made;, the board works together well etc. The costs here comprise travel, meals, space for the meetings and accommodation. We are grateful for support in 2011 in the form of free or subsidised meeting locations at the British Library, Birmingham Business Park and Derby Museum, we hope to continue to receive similar support but to be prudent we are not budgeting for similar support in the future. Our current board live in a compact triangle with corners at Bristol, Manchester and London, but this may not be the case with the new board. If we do manage to get active membership in Scotland or Ireland then we may need to pay for flights for our face to face meetings.

Legal fees

£5,000

This budget allows for follow up work from the charity application, and other legal risks. Legal fees in 2011 have been very large due to the exceptional item of our Charity Commission application and the assistance we have had to purchase to liaise with our lawyers and the commission. The total is therefore less this year.

Accountancy fees

£10,000

Accountancy fees cover the costs of our annual accounts and audit, quarterly management accounts and additional consultancy work on financial systems and controls.

Annual Report

£5,000

This budget is to allow for the production, design, and distribution of an Annual Report aimed at donors, members and key stakeholders.

Office rent & equipment

£20,000

With the recruitment of permanent staff we will shortly be establishing an office to be located in or near London. These costs are based on room for up to five staff and include the capital costs, for instance furniture and computers and revenue costs such as rent, telephone and stationary.

Contingency

£11,500

This general contingency is to allow for other miscellaneous costs we have to incur.

Reserves

Reserve Requirement - £100,000

Reserves brought forward - £145,000

The 2011 budget included a planned £60,000 reserve fund to be carried forward into 2012. In addition, we are currently projecting a net underspend of £85,000 from the 2011 budget, which means that we expect to have £145,000 to carry forward. The details are shown in the following table:

Expense Line	Budget	Forecast	(Under)/Over-spend	Explanation
Communication Staff	20,000	0	-20,000	Recruitment delayed pending Chief Exec appointment
Developer	25,000	10,000	-15,000
Events organiser	22,000	10,000	-12,000
Education project	20,000	10,000	-10,000	Planned EDU-WIKI conference delayed
GLAM projects	40,000	20,000	-20,000
Legal fees	10,000	15,000	+5,000	Charity application
Accounting	4,000	6,000	+2,000	Additional costs relating to quarterly accounts and controls work
Opportunity fund	22,000	7,000	-15,000	Balance forecast at end of year
Other items on budget	415,000	415,000	0
Total'	578,000	493,000	-85,000

The original recruitment plan involved recruiting the junior positions first and then the Chief Executive. However, following discussions and advice from our recruitment consultant, it was agreed that we should recruit the Chief Executive first to allow them to structure the team in the way that they decide. Being a more senior position, the recruitment of the Chief Executive takes more time and therefore this decision has put back the entire process.

Our reserves policy is to plan to have sufficient funds at the end of the year that we could have an orderly wind-down of all the committed spending and ongoing projects if our future non-regular donations ceased. We note that this is lower than our accountants advise us is usual for UK charities to typically hold, which is a full 12 months expenditure.

We can expect approximately 90% of the £83,000 direct debits to recur in 2013, which provides reliable income of £75,000. We estimate that approximately £175,000 will be required to have an orderly wind down, compared to £470,000 of UK expense in 2012. This results in a reserve requirement of £100,000 for 2013.

Combined with the £145,000 carried forward this means we plan to release £45,000 out of reserves to spend in 2012.