WikiConference UK 2013/Elections/Questions/Alastair Sasaki McCapra
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Answers
1. The key challenges over the next 2-3 years are, I think :
- To remain focused on the strategic objectives of the organisation and not get bogged down in endless governance-tweaking. Some organisations get lost in a maze of this stuff for years on end. Clearly there are changes to be made and embedded in the culture of the organisation but these things are means, not ends. Some organisations lose sight of this, to their cost. I would advocate steady, measured, change, with a minimum of EGMs and other special measures.
- To maintain the Board focus on strategy so that trustees are looking forward and outwards, not backwards and inwards. (I’m not suggesting that current trustees are backward-looking, but I’m conscious that in many organisations trustees can too easily get drawn into competing with the salaried staff to see who can run the organisation best. As a trustee I would resist this loudly and consistently). Wikimedia UK does not need two managements working at cross purposes. It does need trustees thinking and planning ahead and identifying key priorities for the organisation to focus its efforts on. I would advocate that Board agendas which keep trustees focused on the future, discussing opportunities and challenges.
- To build and expand the network of partner organisations to spread the Wikimedia ethos in ways which become mainstream. I won’t advocate anything specific on this for the time being as I am not familiar enough with how prospective partners are currently identified and cultivated. If there is not a pro-active programme for doing this however, I would advocate starting one.
- To be a learning organisation in every sense, actively drawing on and incorporating appropriate lessons from the wider Wikimedia community worldwide, and indeed from other organisations in different sectors. Having a worthy ideal and committed people is not a guarantee of success. I would advocate a range of measures involving Board and staff training, formal horizon-scanning and inviting external speakers to Board meetings, assuming these things are not already in place.
2. My experience first. I am currently a volunteer for two very small organisations which have no staff, and have previously been a trustee for a larger organisation (a college) which had a large staff. I have also spent the last fourteen years on the staff of membership charities.
Most membership organisations start small and are 100% volunteer-run. The two I currently volunteer for are like that and always will be – they are small communities with very specific activities and no aspirations to be big national players. When membership organisations grow to a certain size it becomes impractical, and increasingly risky, to run them on an entirely voluntary basis. Colleges were originally run as student collectives but there was not much mileage in that organisational model past the high Middle Ages.
The organisation I currently work for has an income of £1.7m and it estimates the value of its volunteer contributions to be about the same amount. This means the value of volunteer input is about 3 times the cost of staff. If those staff were not in post we would not get £1.7m in volunteer inputs, because the activities they are working on would not exist without staff to sustain them. The purpose of employing staff should be, in my view, to enable and support volunteer effort rather than to downplay it.
For this reason I don’t think employing staff should undermine the ethos of Wikimedia at all. What it should do is release volunteers from relatively mundane operational tasks so they can concentrate their efforts where they will have the maximum impact. The challenge is to manage this transition thoughtfully and sensitively, and to make sure that the deployment of paid and voluntary inputs is best calibrated to give the organisation the most positive results.
3. Funny to see these offered as a choice! Large passive memberships are generally a feature of mature charities, so it may not be a prospect Wikimedia UK has to face for some time yet. It may be, anyway, that the day of organisations with large, passive memberships is over – nowadays people are much less inclined to join things unless they want to get involved. The key thing for me is the fulfillment of the charitable mission. Having lots more members isn’t necessarily the best way of achieving this.
4.Yes I have. The recommendations it makes are pretty standard as far as charity governance are concerned. Indeed I think much of their advice simply restates what is already set out in the guidance on the charity commission website. It is important to recognise that having registered as a charity, Wikimedia UK must now treat these as compliance matters. If the recommendations of the Hudson Review are to some extent at odds with the custom and practice of the Wikimedia UK community, it is not charity law and regulation which are going to be changing as a consequence.
I also think it is important to maintain some perspective and realise that the issues it raises are not unique to Wikimedia UK - many well-established charities would score no better than Wikimedia UK on the traffic light system. Clearly work needs to be done to get rid of the reds and move from amber to green, and the key thing is to embed the right behaviours in the organisation’s culture.
I strongly agree with the point that the Board needs to focus on strategy, rather than trying to manage the organisation operationally. This is a source of conflict in many organisations, and a major drag on their effectiveness. One thing I particularly liked was the emphasis in the Review on behaviour. Some charities spend a great deal of time tweaking and retweaking their structures, not always to good effect, in the hope of conjuring up the right sort of behaviour. Structures and procedures are designed to promote and foster good behaviour, but it is the behaviour which the real goal.
I’m afraid I don’t really feel able to say yet what I think the organisation has learned from the review. The impression I got from the weekend I came to some time ago was that questions about conflict of interest are taken very seriously, and of course I responded to an advertisement for external trustees, so I know that part of the recommendations at least is being put into effect.
5. This is an interesting question because it is exactly the kind of thing which can lead trustees to becoming involved in lots of operational detail, getting drawn into discussions about whether one set of metrics or another is most appropriate, never agreeing, taking up lots of Board time, and driving each other hairless.
My answer is that as a trustee I would be responsible in law for ensuring that the funds of the charity are being spent in a way which is furthering the mission of the charity. I therefore need the management of the charity to provide me with a set of indicators which will enable me and my fellow trustees to judge whether that is being achieved or not, and, if not, how it might be improved.
On this basis I would clearly need to have some metrics in order to do my job. I would expect the staff to propose a set of metrics with a rationale, possibly with some options for the Board to consider. They would not all have to be hard metrics and indeed some of the softer ones might be more useful. So long as we were getting consistent and meaningful metrics which enabled us to make decisions on future resource allocation, that would be sufficient for trustees to do their jobs.