Minutes 2011-04-26
Minutes for Board meeting on 26 April 2011, 7:30-10:30pm
Present:
- Roger Bamkin (RB)
- Mike Peel (MP) (Minutes)
- Andrew Turvey (AT)
- Chris Keating (CK)
- Martin Poulter (MLP)
- Fæ (AvH)
Meeting started at 7.30pm.
A: Minutes and Reports
A1: RB - Apologies for absence
SV sent his apologies for being absent.
A2: MP - Approval of Minutes 8Apr11, Minutes 16Apr11a and Minutes 16Apr11b
The three sets of minutes were unanimously approved.
A3: MP - Review email decisions
The following email decisions were noted:
- Funding for Fæ to attend GLAMcamp NYC, maximum of £1k (decided 20 April 2011).
GLAMcamp NYC - not supporting Rock drum's attendance; WMF is supporting his attendance instead.
A4: Actions and reports
The reports at Reports 26Apr11 were noted.
A41 Roger Bamkin (Chair)
Birmingham for next in-person board meeting: due to it being a possibility for the next in-person meeting. RB is going to talk to birmingham business organisations tomorrow. MP made the point that it's non-profits that we should focus on talking to, rather than for-profits.
Wright prizes: RB wants to encourage people to participate. MP can help with email to mailing list, geonotice, etc. (Chris K can help with this kind of thing as well)
A42 Mike Peel (Secretary)
OTRS: question of whether this should be opened up to volunteers. Elements of risk - e.g. if a volunteer implies that we have any sort of responsibility for Wikimedia content. ACTION: MP to offer access to specific known and trusted volunteers.
A43 Andrew Turvey (Treasurer)
Signatories: Discussed with accountants the option of having two bank accounts, one with one signatory and access to a small amount of cash, the other requiring 2 signatories and holding the bulk of the funds in a savings account.
ACTION: Fæ to send consent to act to AT.
Amount transferred to WMDE was €4000, not €5000 as on the report.
New member (no 214) approved by email. Name recorded in the in-camera minute.
ACTION: AT to circulate survey results once complete (in 1 week's time).
Fundraising agreement gave requirement to submit a series of reports to the Foundation. End March and End April due; ACTION: AT will work on these.
Fundraiser discussed, particularly limits on growth. Mostly something that affects other chapters rather than ourselves. Should be run past lawyers? Yes; along the lines of "What impacts does this have on our application for charitable status?". Cap of £1,000 on costs. ACTION: AT to take this forward.
Needs help with charity response, and 'staff roadshow'. RB has volunteered to help with the 'staff roadshow'.
Accounts for last year: to be sent around to the board; RB to sign afterwards.
A44 Chris Keating (Director)
CK to take a lead with writing blog posts, and asking others to write them.CK will list a schedule possible blog posts on the office wiki and write/chase others there
Has started following other Wikimedians with the Twitter account; will continue in the future.
Has been familiarizing with CiviCRM.
Would like to work on text to send to donors from previous years, tied into the next fundraiser; will discuss post-thinking about this.
Blog post approval: keep at existing policy: 24 hour notice before posting it; or majority decision of the board.
NMM - waiting for them to sign off the MoU (hopefully shortly), after which we can sign and seal it.
Emails to new members, and thanking donors; CK to pick this up.
A45 Martin Poulter (Director)
Workshops: others that we can pro-actively approach. Should make sure that the events aren't happening in the same week as other events.
Watershed: want to improve their article, understand that they can't improve it directly, but can make content available to improve Wikipedia's content as a whole. (Note: different to the summary in SV's report).
Confusion between individual + board communications; made explicit on Fæ's blog, and should generally be made clear.
A46 Fæ (Director)
The proposal at File:2011 GLAM outreach task force proposal.pdf was explained to the Board.
GLAM taskforce: Plan is to set up this task force in the near future, then have someone part-time hired to coordinate. Within timeframe of 6 weeks. Task force would last 9 months. Would be reviewed on ~3 monthly basis. 2-3 people on task force may be professionals. Working party would be recruited by Fæ, with ideas run by board members. Task force would publicly report every 6 weeks. £2,000 approved to set up this task force.
Facilitators: Fæ and SV have discussed; Fæ and CK to talk further. Both SV + CK would then phone around suppliers. Fæ would check 3 suppliers and their references, and come back to the board with a proposal for what should be done and when.
GLAMcamp London: UK-focused. Room booked. Better during weekend? Would be for both Wikimedians and professionals; arguments both ways. Should invite professionals that we have had contact with in the past. Location free; catering would cost. Expenses would not be paid unless needed. Low cost.
A47 Steve Virgin (Director)
SV sent his apologies. MLP ran through the arkive and ambassador aspects of his report.
Campus ambassador: there were concerns about this, primarily with regards the available coordinators, and also the proposal that we relax the criteria for becoming a Campus Ambassador. Shouldn't be training people as ambassadors unless they have mentors.
ACTION: MLP to talk to Alex about what's been achieved so far, what can be achieved before he leaves, his involvement afterwards and how WM-UK might help further; and will report back to the board on this.
Alex currently has ~15 people interested in becoming a Campus Ambassador, and a mailing list for people interested in supporting the project in the longer term.
B: Discussions and decisions needed
B1: Current status of the application to become a charity (AT)
Applied for charity status, and received a ~10 page response back from the charity commission with a set of issues that they want us to address. First step is to send a response back - nearly there. At last in-person meeting, lots of work was done getting this into a good shape. Need to finalise this, which will then be sent to the charity commission. Then need to organise a meeting with them. Obviously don't know how that meeting will go; if successful, then will review how constitution needs to change, after which an EGM will be called to approve the changes.
Need to get response completed; next few days. Primarily people being able to go through the document and check the wording, and also check that it replies to the CC letter. 1–2 hours work finalising everything, 2-3 people getting online together to go through this. Friday 29th, 10.30am. AT, MLP, RB, MP, CK - can't make it then but happy to proofread the document when it's done, Fæ.
Document needs to be persuasive, accurate, and address the issues that they have raised. Narrative letter. Not legalistic; more about justifications.
Initial approach was using lawyers to assist with the process; briefed them, and they wrote the initial draft. (AT) Not a successful approach, as it's difficult to explain how Wikipedia works in detail to a third party; hence the first draft wasn't usable. Second version improved, which has then been rewritten by Wikimedians. Lesson to learn: not a legalistic thing, more making the case for what we do, how, and why.
Worth involving the wider community? Better to keep the content of the letter out of the public realm. Involving individual members of the community could be beneficial. In particular, peer review with Ironholds. MP to get in touch with him, and invite him to the Friday meeting. Also Johnbod.
B2: Current status of the audit for financial year 2010-2011 (AT)
Covered in AT's report.
B3: Date and location of the next WMUK AGM and WikiConference UK (RB/MP)
Based on last year's idea: good to set the date out earlier on, so that there's lots of time to prepare and advertise it.
Previously informally agreed that it should alternate between London and not London. Hence next year, should be in London. Aim to have 100-150 people. Preferably based at an important potential partner.
Date. Do we want to have AGMs in spring? Have to hold the AGM within the next 15 months; could move it forwards or back? Might be worth moving it back so that there is more time to prepare the audit for presentation at the AGM. May? Possible risk of it being in student holidays, but expect that they would come regardless if they are interested. Pencil in as mid-May 2012.
B4: Priorities for the year (RB)
RB sent around an email regarding this prior to the meeting, setting out a list of potential priorities that can be sorted into rough order of priority.
B41: Balanced Budget - All - AT
More general than the budget; actually finances under control.
AT wants feedback on how this should be reported; how to report what money has been spent.
At next board meeting: need to run through the budget, line by line, and make sure everyone on the board is happy with the line items, the amount budgeted towards them, and who they are allocated to.
MP gave an overview of the 2011 Budget page, also summarized the office wiki expenses process.
Reporting at the 6 week board meeting: would go through the items, reviewing changes, and making sure that things are on track.
B42: WMUK AGM - All - AT
Covered above.
B43: Charity status - All - AT
Covered above.
B44: Fundraiser for 2011/12 - All - Two briefed directors to Austria
AT on May 2010: first time it was done. Foundation + chapters could get together and talk about the fundraiser. Mostly focused on technical details of the fundraiser. Agreement, CiviCRM (+ mini training session), fundraising more generally (outside of annual fundraiser).
Wanting to do it again; Austria hosting it this year. Worth going to make sure that we're on the same page as the foundation, that we know the people involved, who to contact, etc. Important for smooth running of the fundraiser, and ensuring that disputes/problems will be resolved amiably.
CK - interest is more on the fundraising side rather than technical details; willing to put up with some chapter politics.
CK, RB willing to go. MP could go as a backup option.
Two board members attending, max of £600/each from opportunity fund. CK and RB to confirm.
B45: Main/lead staff member - Exec? B46: Establish main/only base in the UK - Exec?
Discussion of whether best location of office, and location of best person will be; not black and white, so depends on both. Setting up of office as first job of employee. Should not constrain too much about the position before hiring the person.
Discussion about whether to hire manager first, or hire bottom-up. Talk about hiring manager first now; previous board discussed hiring from the bottom up. Can approach it both ways; depends on what will work best. Now have more capacity on the board, so have less pressure on individuals. Can hire short term contracts/temps to do things to cover interim period.
One of top priorities needs to be hiring manager; sooner the better.
Question over wages; feedback from AGM was that we might be setting this too low. To be reassessed based on feedback from hiring consultants.
C: AOB
CK: outreach leaflet. Two elements: leaflet for BL, then more general production of leaflets. CK, MLP, MP starting task force; CK task force leader. Request to be sent to volunteers for help. Complementary with GLAM task force. Would attract different volunteers. Would have to be complementary to the Bookshelf project - http://bookshelf.wikimedia.org/
AT: Communications. Discussed off the record.
C1. Date of next meeting
Executive, telecon, 7.30pm, 20 May
Full board, in-person, 11-12 June.
Meeting closed 22.36.