Movement Charter/Movement Charter Drafting Group/Scope, timeline, and set-up

Scope of the group

Adapted from: Definition of roles and responsibilities of the group

• Develop the Movement Charter, in consultation with communities, affiliates, the WMF, and subject-matter experts;
  • incl. defining roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia Movement;
  • Identify which areas in the current governance structure must be transferred to the Global Council;
• Explore different potential models available for the Global Council, create scenarios for their implementation and determine which would be most suitable for the Wikimedia movement to achieve the goals of the recommendations;
• Facilitate the design of a transparent process, along with an external legal assessment, to transfer responsibilities and authorities to the appropriate Movement-led bodies.

Timeline for drafting the Movement Charter

tbd

Membership requirements

• All members of the Drafting Group are expected to act in the interest of the movement.
• Group size: Up to 18 people, to ensure diversity of different perspectives, yet keep the group functional.
  • Up to 10 additional members can be appointed if specific competences and expertise are missing or if a member drops out before the finalization of charter.
• Drafting Group members will need to be able to invest an average of 5-15 hours per week, but that time might vary depending on how the workflow is organised.
  • A possible scenario would be that within the group, there is a core group of writers and puts in between 10-20 hours each week, and also has capacity to work on the process, do research if needed, etc.;
  • This group might also include leaders of subgroups, if these are needed;
  • The other members work in sprints during specific times.
• Members should be able to commit the required time over the lifetime of the group.
• Members need to either have a track record of being reliable and responsive or provide references that can confirm their reliability and responsiveness.
• Members need to be comfortable to work in a consensus driven and open environment, with the necessity to attend and actively participate in a large number of online meetings and collaborative writing.

Diversity criteria for the composition of the group

Aim for creating a healthy mixture of different roles and functions:

• Region, country
• Language
• Gender
• Type and size of organization
  • WMF
  • Affiliate types
  • Affiliate size, age, or focus
• Type and size of community
  • Projects
  • Languages
  • Small and large projects
  • Emerging communities / established communities
• Current and past roles in the organization or community (contributor, functionary, board, staff, committee)
• Voices that are not yet included in governance discussions
• Previous experiences in participative processes (Movement Strategy, Terms of Use, etc.)
• …

Skills and expertise

During the April SWAN meeting, participants provided their answers to what abilities, skills, knowledge, experience (see KASE framework) are needed for Movement Charter Drafting Group members and/or consultants. This is a synthesized and clustered overview of these skills, including an indication of which of these are needed inside the group and which could be added via consultants or advisors.

Feel free to join this discussion! Is this overview complete? Is it correct? Please share your views.

Field / Cluster	Type	Must have / needed inside the group	Nice to have / needed for the group (can be an added resource)	Details (for reference)
Cultural and Language Competency	Skills	x		Cross cultural communication; two or more languages; Experience with different cultures & languages; Intercultural communication/working experience (from within Wikimedia or not); Good English skills. It sucks but there's just no feasible alternative to the commitee having a single shared language and no feasible alternative to that being English.
Governance of (International) NGOs and Orgs (incl. Legal)	Knowledge	x		Familiarity with the constitution of the International Federation of the Red Cross; Governance of International NGOs; Academic / scholarly knowledge of constitutions / charters; Knowledge of WMF Board scope and governance; Organization management; Board management; Legal, Have an understanding of whether or not a structure like a Global Council needs to have legal personality, or not; Governance experience in non-profit in general and specifically within the Wikimedia Movement; Practical knowledge of constitutions / charters; NGOs governance experience; For profit governance experience; Legal knowledge, both USA and international; Corporate skills (corporate in the sens of designing/running organizations); knows how to publicly report shenanigans, if necessary
Inclusion and diversity awareness	Skills	x		Be able to bring in individuals, communities, and populations, who feel that the current WMF projects communities are not tolerant of them, that feel we are not as diverse as we could be; Under represented communities
Movement consultations	Knowledge		x	Leading and moderating community forums / discussions; Familiarity with local community(ies); Interact with community professionally; Proficiency in community consultations - no council will ever be fully representative; Resource: skilled in consultation (outsourcing research to specialized groups or firms); Acceptance of rejection of the first draft by the communities Creating and managing these consultations should be done in via the support structure while some group members can engage with the community to ensure transparency.
Movement history, dynamics and ecosystem	Knowledge	x		Consider the overall open knowledge movement, and Wikimedia Foundation's projects place in that movement; Knowledge of MS WG process and work; Familiarity with local community(ies); History of the movement (e.g. mistakes that were made in the past); Experience in WM governance issues; Deep experience with Wikimedia projects / community; Wikipedia editing; advocates for community even against WMF opposition; Long term experience with the different communities with the different projects under WMF
Policy writing	Skills	x		Policy-writing skills; Have written bylaws in the past
Product & Technology	Experience		x	Technology development
Project management and administration	Experience		x	Project management skills; Management: directing / overseeing work of consultants and staff; Financial skills
Research management	Experience		x	Analyzing and reporting research findings; Resource: skilled in consultation (outsourcing research to specialized groups or firms); Conducting research; Research management (how to identify research needs, design the research, work with researchers, analyse and summarise the results etc)
Revenue Streams and Resource Allocation	Expertise	x		FDC knowledge (not experience); Funds dissemination; ready to share annual $100 million; Fundraising
Stakeholder relations and negotiations	Skills	x		setting up, facilitating, and consolidating negotiations with different stakeholders; To be able to be both a good and bad cop for all parties of Wikimedia movement; Team Worker; Listening; Ability to be open minded and tolerant of points of view of those who have differing opinions than themselves; Being diplomatic and ready to find compromises; Dispute resolution; Track record of cooperation / collaboration
Strategic and structural thinking and planning	Skills	x		Design thinking; Strategic thinking; Translating a strategy recommendations into structures; Analytics abilities; Critical thinking; To be able to see all the gaps that need to be covered; the 2030 strategy must be their 'religion'; Demonstrated competence to get things done in governance processes, and not get lost in endless debates Iterate
Textual work and communications	Skills	x		ability to document process on-wiki to share with community; Communicate well and sum up complex conversations; reading and collaboratively creating many documents and emails; Excellent writing proficiency in a language (not necessarily English); Writing complex but human-readable documents; Documentation

Support structure

• Set up a system to compensate individuals for their time and their effort to enable participation of any member of the movement;
• Set up a support structure for translations and interpretation for those who need it to facilitate participation in the conversations;
• Facilitation and documentation support to the group to ensure that all the group members can fully participate;
• ... tbc ...