Toby You make an excellent point and I doubt anyone will disagree that it would be a Good Thing to do this. Would those volunteering to do it please put their hands up now?
[Pauses, cups hand around ear listening ...] Therein lies the problem that most volunteer organisations face. Volunteers do the tasks they enjoy (or at least derive satisfaction from), because they do it for free in their leisure time. Now sometimes a volunteer organisation is fortunate that there are "different strokes for different folks" and someone else will be quite happy to pick up the tasks another person didn't want to do. But sometimes there is nobody to pick it up some tasks (I recollect another incorporated association that endlessly tried to establish a roster for cleaning the toilet -- which was doomed to failure because nobody wanted to do it, even though everyone was in favour of a clean toilet) and I fear that metrics may be in that category in WMAU. If so, this is when we need to look at outsourcing that task. As you will all know (but maybe don't remember) we do now have a contracting policy http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Proposal:Contracting and, any moment now (drum roll), John V will be outlining the arrangements for the contracting subcommittee so we can get outsourcing happening. If there are tasks we need to outsource, we need to do this now while we still have funds to pay for the work that needs doing. If we delay until we have no funds, then we are in a serious catch-22 situation. I note that a number of the chapters who receive FDC funding appear to use at least part of those funds to employ project management staff, suggesting that this is the kind of thing that is hard to resource with volunteers in most chapters. Kerry -----Original Message----- From: wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Toby Hudson Sent: Thursday, 10 October 2013 4:16 PM To: Craig Franklin; Wikimedia Australia Chapter Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Funding Query On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Craig Franklin <cfrank...@halonetwork.net> wrote: > I also agree that the chapter and its volunteers *have* done a lot of great > work over the past few years, and I think you've hit the nail on the head > that we've often failed to effectively communicate our successes. Part of > any projects going forward will be a need to say "here's how we're going to > measure success" before we actually dive in on any project, so that we can > either use that measurement as justification for further funding, or use > that measurement to figure out what went wrong and make sure we don't make > the same mistake twice. and then: > Absolutely, a lot of volunteers have pitched in at some time or another and done some great work that have (in my opinion) led to positive outcomes for the movement. Enough that I'm not going to even try to enumerate them all for fear that I'll leave someone out :-). Hi Craig, Although forward planning of outcome metrics is obviously a good thing for the future, I think we should make an effort now to compile outcomes and metrics for projects, programs and grants that have already taken place. Is there an onwiki page for this, or a table to fill out for each project or grant we have undertaken? I know there are some reports linked from here http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Reports#Small_grants but surely there are more hanging around? Even though you can't enumerate them off the top of your head, we *should* be able to enumerate them if everyone writes up the outcomes of projects we've individually been involved with. I know there are huge outcomes as a result of the SLNSW training and residency.. but maybe they have not been tabulated into reportable dotpoints? Toby _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
