Chief Executive Report2016-09-10

Board Meeting September 2016 Chief Executive's Report

Overview

This has been a somewhat quieter period for me since our last board meeting in June, coinciding with annual leave in July and August and also some sick leave in August. There has, however, been forward momentum on a number of fronts as outlined below, particularly in terms of planning for next year in the context of our proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation, further developing the communications strategy and finalising the three year business plan.

Daria and I met in August to review progress against our delivery plan for 2016/17, and overall are pleased with the team’s progress against planned activities. The Quarter 2 performance report included in these papers covers the period May to July and demonstrates continued growth in terms of programme delivery and reach, putting us in a relatively good position in terms of the half year progress report to the Foundation and our bid for next year.

Since the last board meeting Daria, Karla and I have attended Wikimania 2016, held in Esino Lario in Italy. Wikimedia UK also funded Jason Evans, Edward Hands and Fabian Tompsett to attend, and there were a number of other members and volunteers from the UK present at the event, either self-funded or supported by a Wikimedia Foundation scholarship. This was a brilliant opportunity for me to learn more about the global movement and make new connections - you can read my blogpost about Wikimania here.

Programmes Report and Update

The Quarterly Performance Report circulated with these board papers demonstrates the depth and breadth of activity undertaken by the programmes team over the summer, and also includes revised figures for Quarter 1. The following notes might support your reading of the metrics presented in the report:

• The number of individuals involved so far this year is 1733, compared to last year’s total figure of 1856. As an additional note this global metric is similar to, although not exactly the same as, the new Grant Metric 1 for which we will be setting targets as part of this year’s proposal to the FDC. The main difference is that people organising activities can not be included in this figure, thus excluding lead volunteers from the Foundation’s Grant Metrics.
• We have engaged 66 lead volunteers in our work so far this year, which is not far off the total for 2015-16, but significantly below our target for this year. We have however already achieved nearly double our target for volunteer hours; which so far represents nearly 1300 days work.
• Our half year total of 44,282 articles improved or created is significantly beyond our target of 10,000 and last year’s result of 13,072. This Global Metric has been retained in the Foundation’s review and will be one of three shared Grant Metrics for next year.
• Whilst bytes added has been removed from the new Grant Metrics, it’s pleasing to report a half year total of over 55 million compared to a target of 6 million.

Our 2016 - 17 FDC Progress Report was submitted to the Foundation at the end of August and provides a comprehensive report on our programme activities during the first half of the year. Some of the narrative highlights from this report include:

• Our focus on diverse and underrepresented content as the strategic driver for much of our partnerships activity this year
• Our participation in Art + Feminism, through which we held partnership events at nine high profile arts institutions around the country
• The appointment of a Wikimedian in Residence at the Wellcome Library in May
• The development of our work with Wikidata, and the potential for this in terms of cultural partnerships
• Our partnership with Llen Natur, the official body which gives Welsh names to species, releasing substantial amounts of content online
• A wide-ranging and highly successful partnership with National Library of Wales
• Funding from Oxford University's Innovation Fund to support a second phase of our Wikimedian in Residence at Bodleian Libraries
• The delivery of Wikipedia in the Classroom with higher education partners
• Our nascent work in education and learning across other sectors
• Our growing public profile, with a high number of speaking engagements delivered by our staff and volunteers

Staff and Board Update

Following July’s AGM we have two new trustees, Lorna Campbell and Jordan Landes, who I am very pleased to welcome to the board! As part of the trustee induction, Jordan has visited the office to meet me and the team, and Lorna’s visit has been scheduled for October.

Richard Symonds, our longest serving employee, left Wikimedia UK at the end of August to take on an exciting new role. Alongside colleagues and trustees from the charity I wish Richard all the very best for the future and thank him for his very significant contribution to the development of Wikimedia UK over his years with us. Richard was the Office and Development Manager however after discussions with SMT, Michael and ARC we will not be replacing like by like but instead creating two new roles, a part time bookkeeper reporting into Davina and a full time support role who will report in to me. We are in the process of creating job descriptions for these roles and hope to have new staff in place by November.

As part of the charity’s ongoing commitment to support the training and development of staff, Daria has been appointed a coach who she will be working with over the autumn.

External Relations

This quarter has seen us continue to increase our social media presence, with over 2000 Facebook followers (an increase of over 10% since John joined the team), and nearly 4500 followers on Twitter, an increase of a similar proportion. John is continuing to create online content with videos of the Wellcome Library residency and a Wikidata presentation in recent weeks. During this quarter John and I have been developing and formalising our plans for social media which are now incorporated into the wider communications strategy.

I led Wikimedia UK’s participation in the EU consultation on Freedom of Panorama and Ancillary Copyright - which closed in June - encouraging both individuals and organisational stakeholders to submit a response. The campaign focused on the benefits of increased freedom of panorama across Europe, rather than the risk of the harmonisation of legislation leading to reduced rights in the UK. I am reconvening the advocacy group this autumn with a meeting planned for September. It’s likely that the work of this group will become more substantial and significant over the next few years, in the light of Brexit and the subsequent impact on copyright legislation in the UK and other relevant public policy areas.

On the subject of public policy, a new way of working has been proposed for the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group for the EU - currently co-ordinated by Dimitar Dimitrov and supported by a number of European Chapters including the UK. The proposals will see greater stability and investment for this work and most Chapters are being asked to increase their financial contribution towards the programme costs while Wikimedia Deutschland has offered to directly employ Dimi and cover his salary. A final decision on this will be made as part of the detailed budgeting for next year but given our prospective bid to the FDC, and the situation of the UK in relation to the EU, we are likely to offer a similar amount to this year’s contribution of 6000 Euros.

Staff, board and volunteers have a number of speaking engagements coming up over the next few months including my talk on the gender gap at open source conference OSCON 2016; Martin Poulter speaking at a National Heritage Science Forum event in September; Magnus Manske’s potential involvement in Wikimedia Sweden’s connected open heritage talk at the DCDC conference; and a presentation about some of our work with National Library of Wales and York Museums Trust at Museums+Tech in September.

Funding and Fundraising

I’m pleased to report that the National Library of Scotland’s funding application to Bòrd na Gaidhlig, in partnership with Wikimedia UK, has been successful with an award of £19,000. Daria is now liaising closely with Gill Hamilton on the development of this project, which will include a Gaelic Wikimedian in Residence focused on developing the Gaelic Wikipedia, and I am exploring external funding opportunities for Wikimedia UK’s financial contribution to the project.

We were also delighted that Oxford University is funding a second year of the Bodleian Libraries residency from their Innovation Fund, with this second phase starting in September and likely to include a greater focus on staff training and wikidata.

As covered in the financial reports for this meeting, other results in terms of fundraising have been disappointing and we have not received any major grants or donations this quarter, while individual donations from supporters that give through direct debit are also showing a shortfall against budget. I have been struggling to carve out the necessary time for fundraising but am acutely aware that this needs to become more of a priority going forward. Whilst no donations or grants have been secured since the last meeting, I have:

• Drafted the organisation’s case for support for input from the fundraising group
• Identified key projects and programmes for grants fundraising in 2016 - 17 and started identifying potential activities for fundraising in 2017 - 18
• Developed and submitted proposals for funding for an extension of the National Library of Wales residency, which Wikimedia UK is currently co-funding
• Researched and drafted proposals for external funding to cover our contribution to the Gaelic Wikimedian in Residence project

This autumn, as previously outlined, I will be writing to all individual donors (with support and input from Chris Keating around messaging) and will also be sending personalised letters to individual donors who have previously given over £1000 in a one off donation.

Other priorities are to continue to develop relationships with trusts and foundations, to further develop donor cultivation and care and to develop our longer term core fundraising strategy.

Membership

The membership level of Wikimedia UK continues to hover around the 200 mark and despite a number of new members joining prior to the AGM, lapsed membership since then has brought the figure down again. Whilst some headway has been made around membership - such as making applications and approvals much smoother and improving communications with members - we clearly need to think differently about the way in which we recruit members if we are to significantly increase this number. As previously outlined, one obvious solution is to convert supporters to members - although for ethical reasons this would need to be an ‘opt in’ process - while another source of potential new members is our social media followers. I am meeting Kate in September to find out how ERS grew its membership body and to consider if any of these approaches could be applied to Wikimedia UK.

Despite the current low membership numbers, I was pleased by the turn out at and response to this year’s AGM in July. The day felt very positive and we received good feedback from members present, with 75% rating their overall experience as very satisfying (5 out of a potential score of 5) and comments including:

Well done everyone - pleased that it kept interesting and to time Great catering and venue Everything feels euphoric this year! Very impressed by venue. The ambience is good and makes everything more interesting. Very useful to know more about Wikidata What a lovely atmosphere

A third of respondents specifically mentioned the wikidata training being very useful, with one person stating it as the main reason they had attended; so it was pleasing that the additional elements of the day wrapped around the AGM itself had encouraged people to participate.

Key meetings and events attended

• Evaluation Panel meeting
• National Heritage Science Forum Board Meeting
• Wikimania Esino Lario
• AGM in Birmingham
• DSC Brexit Seminar
• Skype call with Delphine Ménard, new Programme Officer for Annual Plan Grants
• Meeting with new trustee Jordan Landes
• ARC meeting