Community Resources/Reports/Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact 2022/Building organisational capacity

All Wikimedia Foundation Funds reports

Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact
Building organisational capacity

• Key takeaways
• Contributors
• Content contribution
• Building organisational capacity
• Awareness-raising and advocacy
• Partnerships
• Regional learning sessions

Executive summary

Challenges:

• Improving their own organisational capacities and human and financial sustainability is mentioned as a main challenge. This can also be linked to grantees prioritising Movement Strategy recommendation 1 (Increasing the Sustainability of the Movement) in their work.

Strategies:

• 38% of grantees describe specific organisational capacity strategies when talking about their main programs and activities. It would be interesting to see this component described in more funds proposals and the outcomes they expect.
• Much of the “training/skills development” initiatives are targeted at the wider contributor community, and strategies and investments focused on internal training are less explicit.
• It would be important to explore and test new ways of more continuously and impactfully supporting organisational capacity building. This could be done by collectively working on needs assessments and encouraging grantees to finance internal capacity building (for instance by paying for training or consultancy services) within their grant proposals. This could also be considered through Foundation-funded partner organisations/service providers with contextual knowledge and expertise, giving grantees the opportunity to choose from a portfolio of services according to their interests, needs, and context. These more tailored and continuous capacity building strategies could complement peer learning or networking. Bringing in new expertise from outside the Movement into affiliates teams and boards could also be explored.
• Some common strategies grantees are developing are long-term planning, building capacities in their teams and also in volunteer organisers that are key in decentralising activities, and measuring internal processes and procedures to see effective and sustainable programme delivery. Another common strategy is expanding staff or volunteer teams in key areas such as educational and GLAM program managers. Some grantees are concerned about improving recruitment practices and staff management and a minority on improving DEI practices. This could be an opportunity for further work and support from the Foundation.
• Less common strategies are working on governance and leadership change, staff/team welfare, and volunteer management capacities - a key need stated throughout the report. For many volunteering movements in the world, this requires special training and expertise and there is an opportunity to look at different non-Wikimedia experiences and partner with organisations that can build skills in this area.
• It is interesting to note that communications skills are a capacity need that often comes up in Community and Affiliate insights surveys and a key factor for community growth. Nevertheless, few grantees prioritise building skills in these areas in their organisational development.

Learning and evaluation:

• As in other areas the very interesting questions will be difficult to answer by the data they are hoping to collect or measure. Many  grantees feel they don’t have the capacity or time to measure some of these organisational aspects. Others may do so, but use this for internal measuring and learning and have not included this in their proposal metrics - although the open metrics space in the form encourages them to do so.
• This is an opportunity to further support grantees as they write their proposals to think of ways of collecting this data, but also not put this task on their shoulders. The Foundation should also support this with referencing many existing frameworks and tools to measure capacity across organised groups in social movements and networks.

Detailed report

Challenges grants want to address/changes they seek

It is interesting to note that most grantees see that one of their top contributions to Movement Strategy is recommendation 1 around Increasing the Sustainability of the Movement. Improving their own organisational capacities and human and financial sustainability is mentioned as a main challenge.

Strengthening organisational capacity is often mentioned among the main challenges across regions, particularly for General Support grantees, and those with more than 2 years of grant experience. Grantees relate this capacity to different aspects such as: “plan and are more effective”, “sustainability” and “welfare”. The most common challenges or changes grantees mention are developing a strategic plan, being able to better deliver, grow and sustain programs, and developing team capacities, expanding and managing staff/volunteer teams. A few less common are knowledge management, improving governance structures, expanding/renewing leadership, and staff/team welfare.

Strategies

38% of grantees describe specific organisational capacity strategies when talking about their main programs and activities.  Given it is widely mentioned as a change grantees would like to work on, it would be interesting to see this component described in more organisation’s proposals and the outcomes they expect. Very few grantees reported specific initiatives and programs focused on internal team development and training.

Some common strategies:

• Planning, having a long-term view, and being sustainable: A number of grantees are focused on developing long-term planning, whilst they continue to deliver their ongoing programs. This planning often involves reviewing their programs, priorities, and the staff and volunteer needs structures they will need in the next 5-10 years. Also, projecting the financial resources needed, and seeing how this matches with Foundation multi-year grant opportunities and the extent that this will require other fundraising and partnership efforts. To do this, some grantees seek the support of outside consultants, and others seek to actively involve diverse community members to make it a participatory process. Many have also related this long-term planning with “alignment” with Movement Strategy.
• To better deliver, grow and sustain programs: A number of more experienced grantees (type B and C) in different regions that have delivered set programs over the years with continued funding, are looking at questions of effectiveness and efficiency. They  are  reviewing how organisational structures and staff/volunteering capacity and procedures can help learn more about their effectiveness, adjust or introduce new programs or approaches. The capacity to decentralise activities and support emerging communities in diverse geographical locations within a large country. However, there is not much detail about how they hope to achieve this and measure this. An insight in some teams is the need for cross-programmatic efforts so that one single campaign or topic over a period of time crosses all educational, GLAM, community, and any other areas of work, allowing for more team coordination and time management, and best targeting multiple audiences around a unified mobilisation and call to action.

• Expanding staff or volunteer teams in key areas: hiring new staff in order to improve their capacity to scale up and deliver programs in a more sustainable manner. Wanting to not depend solely on volunteers or a few staff or board members who are overloaded with work, leading to common cases of burnout and high turnover. In many cases, new staff is being hired as educational and culture & heritage (or GLAM) program managers, to diversify management responsibilities.
• Based on past challenges in hiring and training, many grantees, particularly those that are newer affiliates, are concerned about learning about recruitment practices and staff management. Others, albeit very few, have reflected on the teams needed to meet new challenges, particularly in terms of equity and inclusion improving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices in their hiring and staff processes. This could be an opportunity for further work and support from the Foundation, affiliates that are leading this work and outside the movement.

Less common strategies:

• Governance and leadership change: When discussing challenges or changes they want to bring about, grantees often talk about governance challenges more in the context of Movement-wide global governance. In a few cases, mostly more experience type B or C grantees are concerned with reviewing or improving governance structures, through new policies and procedures or by diversifying their board to represent more diversity and equity. Few explicitly mention promoting new leadership to existing governance structures as the main challenge. Leadership appears 13 times but is more related to leadership development in terms of building skills in new contributors than in leadership development within grantee organisations. A few grantees state that one of their main goals is developing leadership skills in other emerging Wikimedia communities.
• Organisational policies and procedures: given the Movement Strategy focus on knowledge management, it is interesting to note that few grantees explicitly mention creating, documenting, and improving policies and procedures as a way to build capacity. Two interesting cases are Wikimedia Spain and Wikimedia Uganda. The documentation of organisational procedures and learning around these could be a key area of peer learning and knowledge management and sharing.
• Volunteer management capacity: despite the number of challenges mentioned around bringing in new contributors and retaining them, there are few grantees that explicitly mention improving their organisational capacity to manage volunteers throughout their diverse journeys. This could mean aspects such as having effective tools to track on and offline volunteers (a CRM type instrument) and specific training for staff to know how to best manage volunteers, creating the right follow-up and incentives strategies. For many volunteering movements in the world, this requires special training and expertise and there is an opportunity to look at different non-Wikimedia experiences and partner with organisations that can build skills in this area.
• Staff/team welfare: for some grantees, the focus of building organisational capacity is on creating better conditions for staff by improving their working conditions or by expanding the team to prevent overwork and burnout. These concerns can include staff that is paid, but also those working directly with grantee teams in a volunteer capacity. It also seeks to address the balance between professional paid staff and volunteering boards.
• Building organisational capacity in other communities/user groups: various organisations with a more regional or international focus are seeking to build this capacity in others through direct support and training for volunteers and staff members and linking them with local partners and networks.

What about capacities around communications?

It is interesting to note that communications skills are a capacity need that often comes up in Community and Affiliate insights surveys. Nevertheless, building skills in these areas does not seem to be explicitly prioritised in the strategies or skills development initiatives. However, this is very much connected to the need for greater outreach and diversity. There were also some interesting questions around capacities to be more effective in their communications.

Learning and evaluation

Despite interesting learning questions about organisational capacity, there are few metrics related to this. As it has been highlighted in the report, many grantees may feel they don’t have the capacity or time to measure some of these organisational aspects. Others may do so, but use this for internal measuring and learning and have not included this in their proposal metrics.

This is an opportunity to further support grantees as they write their proposals and learning and evaluation plans, and to think of ways of collecting this data to support them in answering the questions they are asking themselves about how their organisation is evolving.

Some common learning questions:

Around organisational learning	Programmatic capacities and team management	Sustainability /team management
To what extent do our beneficiaries choose and recognise us as a learning community, how do we share learning, and what will we do differently now?	What helps us be more cost-effective and cost-efficient. How strong are we to increase programming volume? Are there enough human resources to achieve our goals? To what extent have the internal capacities of the team been increased?	How to best manage the relationship and workload between a volunteer board and growing paid staff? What are the best strategies for an organisation to achieve sustainable institutional growth?

Learning questions asked by grantees with a regional/international scope and seeking to support other emerging Wikimedia communities:

• How can we get to know the user group on a detailed level - communication structures, their key leaders, organisational visions, project goals, and potential audiences to efficiently recruit new editors for the organisations. How can we share this method of learning with others?
• What can we do to continuously create safer and braver spaces that are caring, equitable, pro-Black, queer, and trans-affirming. What does this mean in an employment context? What can we do to embrace our learning and unlearning of knowledge so that we may dream of new ways of being and doing, individually and collectively?

• What is the impact of micro-funding and how is it begun used?
• How to disperse funds equitably to event organisers / How can we support a global community, across cultural and language barriers in an equitable manner?
• How does our work promote the strengthening of regional alliances? How does it increase the diversity of Latin American representatives in the Wikimedia Movement?

Learning questions around communications:

• How to share good stories, particularly to show more long-term community members the value of diversity
• What is the Impact of podcasts / live meetings in building a sense of community and sharing skills
• How to reach that potential volunteer “off the street” - that hears about us from our communications
• How many people did our message (communications) reach?