WikiConference UK 2013/Elections/Questions/Vasileios Kospanos

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1. Key challenges

   Wikimedia UK needs to manage growth effectively - this is the main challenge for us in the coming years, in my opinion. We should partner with more education organisations (schools, colleges, universities) and demonstrate the value of membership and volunteering towards future career prospects. We should attend events as exhibitors to increase brand awareness for the charity and recruit more members and volunteers. We could launch more fundraising initiatives to fund these growth activities. We need to improve governance and separate the volunteer and member roles from trustee/board positions i.e. I am not an author on Wikimedia UK but understand the satisfaction and fulfillment members get when authoring because I do blog a lot on fundraising and charity finance, CRM and IT, plus music. Governance members must understand the charity's mission and objectives but at the same time we should be critical on processes and procedures, and suggest ideas to improve these on a strategic level without taking a hands-on approach on implementing our suggestions.

2. Volunteers

   I think the Volunteer Support Organiser role is key for managing this change, if maintaining this ethos is likely to challenge us. As Wikimedia UK grows in staff and budget, the role is about to change radically so how we manage and make the volunteering experience better will be key to achieve successful growth and actually increase volunteer engagement and volunteer numbers. My experience of working with volunteering charities is technology-related and having experienced the Olymipics last year and how technology enabled volunteers to do a better job, I can make recommendations on how Wikimedia UK can make the volunteering experience something members will enjoy even more and recommend to their peers, so we can see a return on our "investment".

3. Membership

   "Apathetic" is a tough word. A good balance between the two is the obvious answer here. I do not expect all our members to be as switched on as the actively involved core of our members, however we have to take into consideration our members' life outside Wikimedia UK. Membership levels should be introduced where there is something more for active members and something less for our least active members. We will need to review how we welcome new members to Wikimedia UK - my personal experience of becoming a Wikimedia UK member is not great, compared to other memberships I hold so this is something we need to pick up and improve.

4. Hudson Review

   I did read the review and I'm not surprised with the findings and recommendations for a new charity like Wikimedia UK - it is a transitional period and many charities experience similar challenges as I've read in many tenders and official documents related to systems' change driven by governance processes and membership challenges. The key lessons as I briefly outlined in the first question is to distinguish between the role of a member as a trustee and as a volunteer. Sentiments aside, governance members should be honest and critical of procedures and processes within the charity that need improvement. In addition, their role should be more strategic and giving direction rather than lending a helping hand implementing suggestions (which even though is appreciated it is not what a governance member should do). My background and experience, plus the fact that I am not an active Wikimedia UK member (yet) should help me have a better judgement on governance matters and managing issues that could affect the charity's reputation.

5. Training

   We need to take into consideration how important our Training programmes are for the charity to define what metrics need to be in place. Numbers and stats are important in every aspect of charity and business operations however when it comes to training it is more important to focus on quality rather than quantity. It would be terrible to report in 2014 that we trained 1,000 people in authoring/editing articles but only 10% of them are satisfied by the training and 90% are not active following the course (simple numbers for the example to make sense). Metrics play a very important role in every organisation and should therefore be in place for training delivered by Wikimedia UK. It is the thought process behind it and the objectives we want to achieve by delivering training that will drive the nature and importance of specific metrics.