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Movement Strategy/Initiatives/Guidelines for board functions and governance

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Guidelines for board functions and governance

In order to Ensure Equity in Decision-making, we need governance guidelines for all Wikimedia governance bodies. This includes the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Affiliate boards, and committees (like the FDC). These guidelines would help distribute power and invite new leaders into the movement, for example: by empowering more women to join boards or by increasing geographic representation. Guidelines would also encourage transparency and consistency in leadership practices across the movement. The Global Council will be responsible for making sure that the governing bodies of the movement follow these guidelines, and are supported  in doing so.

  • Establish good practice guidelines for how boards function, such as term limits, election and selection processes, and approaches to other governance questions where applicable and relevant for a community. These guidelines will need to be adapted and contextualized by each stakeholder. Boards would be held accountable for following good practices by the Global Council. For those that do not, the Global Council will create mechanisms to review and provide support.
  • Collectively define good practice guidelines for how to both empower/inspire and enable/support new volunteers to run for different types of elected roles. These efforts will be particularly focused on underrepresented groups.
  • Ensure leadership positions and ways of accessing them are documented, transparent, and accessible.

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Discuss

Join or start a discussion on Meta or the "Ensure Equity in Decision-making" space of the Movement Strategy Forum.

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Get help

If you need help in getting involved, please don't hesitate to get in touch directly with members of the Movement Strategy and Governance Team. They are here to help!

You can write to the team in any of 19 languages (listed on the team's page), by writing an email to: strategy2030@wikimedia.org

Initiative Project Stakeholder type Project lead Geography of the project Implementation Phase
28. Guidelines for Board functions and governance