User:Pyb/Sandbox1

Staff and contractors: upcoming year's annual plan

1. Please describe your organization's staffing plan or strategy here, or provide a link to your organization's staffing plan or organogram.

In order to ensure that the charity is best resourced to deliver impactful projects we have made a number of staff role changes in 2015, and the total staff headcount has been reduced from 14 to 9 (8.6FTE).

The programme team has been reshaped to match our delivery needs. In the new Project Coordinators roles, we are linking various topical project areas (such as GLAM) and volunteer engagement, so that more connected support is given to this work. We are aiming to direct more energy into working in partnerships with external organisations, linking several activities into these bigger projects, and so the staffing changes matches that. As is visible from the job descriptions ([1]), Project Coordinators have been recruited basing on skills needed for the project management and volunteer support, which means we are getting skills needed for delivery. We also put these roles more in line with the Wales Manager (Project Coordinator - Wales Manager), to reflect that these roles are very similar in function and can all collaborate within the programme team.

Because we are planning to build on large scale partnerships with external organisations, we need to ensure strong reporting and administration. This is why we took the opportunity of the restructure to change the office support role to the Administration and Programme Assistant. The role involves providing core administrative and financial support for Wikimedia UK activities, with focus on its programmes and reporting.

In general then, we reevaluated the staff structure and strengthened it, moving capacities to the most important areas.

In their comments of November last year the FDC said:

“While the FDC understands that reducing Wikimedia UK’s funding might be a strain on the organization, the FDC hopes it will lead to a productive re-evaluation of priorities and direction. The ED transition should be seen as an opportunity to rethink and restructure. The governance reshuffle and adaptation has been managed well, recommendations brought about by the governance review have been implemented, and board diversity has been achieved, which will provide a strong foundation for the coming transition. At the same time, the FDC notes that it seems difficult to identify a sustainable and clear staff structure beneath the executive level.”

Well before then, it was clear to the board that many of the assumptions and plans on which the current organisational structure was originally built were no longer fit for purpose, and we were already engaged in a review of our staff structure. The outcome, announced earlier this year, was a more streamlined organisation, better focused on our strategic goals, better able to engage with and involve volunteers of all kinds, and more appropriate to the level of resource we have.

We are confident that with our new slimmed-down structure we can be more responsive to new ideas and do better at bringing volunteering into the heart of our projects.

Last year the committee further noted:

“The FDC urges Wikimedia UK to carefully consider its plans to hire additional fundraising staff, and to articulate a clear strategy for how that position will benefit the organization and the movement. The FDC acknowledges that there may be many untapped resources in Wikimedia UK’s context, but resources will need to be clearly identified in order to be targeted effectively.”

The board accepted that the charity's previous capacity and model for fundraising was not adequate and that greater diversity of income streams was essential. We concluded that we needed not more dedicated fundraising staff but rather a new permanent Chief Executive with significant expertise in this area: someone capable of providing a strong personal lead within the restructured staff team.

In August 2015 we announced that we have been fortunate enough to secure as our new CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid, previously Director of the national live literature charity Apples and Snakes. Lucy brings extensive experience in volunteer engagement, organisational development, working with strategic partners, media, education, and securing external fundraising from trusts and foundations.

This process is now fully complete, and Lucy will start with us on 7th October.

Over the course of her career Lucy has worked in both the charitable and public sectors, including most recently Head of Outreach at the House of Lords where she was strategic and operational lead for education and outreach activities. Before that, she worked at Arts Council England, initially developing strategic partnerships before setting up a new area office with local government and schools partnerships. As Refugee Week National Co-ordinator for the British Refugee Council, Lucy chaired the UK steering group of NGOs and charities, led on media activities, and facilitated hundreds of volunteer cultural events each year. Lucy is passionate about education and learning and is deeply committed to ensuring open access to knowledge and information.

Lucy says:

“This is a significant time for Wikimedia UK and for the open knowledge sector more broadly, with the potential to create unparalleled access to educational content, coupled with threats to limit public access to information and knowledge. With nearly 18 years' experience in the arts, charitable and public sectors, I'm passionate about participation, and excited about the opportunity to facilitate greater public engagement with online content and information through Wikipedia and its sister projects, and other Wikimedia UK initiatives”.