Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Kalman Hajdu]

I 100% agree with Pine. I have read very impressive annual reports without
any factual data. This 4 point as a small spreadsheet will specify the
reports and make there comparative.

With regards



On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 4:11 AM Pine W  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> This email is mainly addressed to Affcom and WMF but I would like to hear
> others' comments also.
>
> Some background information regarding the context for this email: the
> recently published annual reports from user groups reminded me of some
> issues that I first considered a few years ago. I believe that user group
> annual reports are currently not standardized, and I think that the public
> and WMF might like to have standardized quantitative and comparable ways to
> understand affiliates' work, including use of volunteer hours and
> per-program benefits, while minimizing the burden on volunteers for
> administrative tasks.
>
> I would like to suggest that Affcom and WMF require that all affiliates'
> annual reports include:
>
> 1. A list of programs which the affiliate supported in the past year. For
> each program the affiliate should state the financial costs to the
> affiliate including overhead costs and overhead person-hours attributable
> to the program, how much time the organizers and participants spent on the
> program, the Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results of each program, and
> results for any custom-defined measures of success. Auditable performance
> information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
> on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
> regarding their participation.
>
> 2. A financial summary for the year that states all sources of income and
> amounts from each source, how funds were spent, funds payable, funds
> receivable, debts, reserves, assets, etc.
>
> 3. Total annual organizer and participant person-hours and a summary of how
> those hours were used, for both programmatic and non-programmatic
> activities.
>
> 4. Total annual Wikimetrics/Global Metrics results for the year, and total
> annual results for any custom-defined metrics. Again, auditable performance
> information can be made public and/or shared privately with WMF, depending
> on privacy rules and the willingness of participants to share information
> regarding their participation.
>
> This information is important enough that I would support reasonable staff
> or contractor expenses to produce reports with these details. I am mindful
> of how precious volunteer time is, and I do not want to burden already
> generous volunteers with administrative work that could be done by
> contractors or staff. Some cooperation and support for reporting from
> volunteer organizers may be necessary, such as when gathering information
> from participants at individual events. Some affiliates may have such
> generous volunteers that they can do all of the reporting with volunteer
> time. But for many affiliates I would support reasonable expenses for
> producing standardized quantitative information in annual reports while
> minimizing the administrative burden on volunteers.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> --
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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[Wikimedia-l] Mobile fundraising ads

[GorillaWarfare]

Hey all,

I feel a little bad raising this because I know there was some community
vetting of fundraising initiatives that I ignored, but please forgive me. I
brought this up in the Wikimedia Weekly Facebook group asking where best to
raise the issue, and it was suggested I post here.

I was looking something up on my phone just now, apparently not logged in
to Wikipedia, and I discovered that mobile users in the US (and presumably
elsewhere) are being shown enormous ads. It took four full page scrolls for
me to reach the content of the article I was hoping to read. Even once I
made it past the ads at the top of the page, I was greeted with a pop-in
banner from the bottom of the page, as if I could possibly have not noticed
the four pages of text asking me to donate. (Screenshots attached).

I understand that we need donations to keep the site running and all, but
this seems excessive. I particularly worry for people who use assistive
technology who are having to listen to or try to skip through four pages'
worth of text-to-speech before they can get to what they want to know. The
WMF needs donations, but I think we need to weigh the need for cash against
the goal of providing free and accessible information to our readers. A
couple of page scrolls might not seem like much, but I assume if they're
off-putting to me (a reader with good vision and generally high tolerance
for WMF money pleas) they'll be off-putting to others.

So much of this text could be cut out. I work for a marketing/sales company
in a non-marketing role, and I've heard from colleagues that it's
frustrating when people writing copy like this hear from people who are not
educated about appealing to people, so I don't pretend to know better than
you at the WMF or your consultants about how to write good donation copy.
But to my (admittedly uneducated eye), copy like "It's a little awkward to
ask you, this Friday, as we're sure you are busy and we don't want to
interrupt you." and "We can't afford to feel embarrassed, asking you to
make a donation—just like you should never feel embarrassed when you have
to ask Wikipedia for information." seems like at best it's not adding
anything besides more words to have to scroll past, and at worst it's
pretty cringey to read. Are you really expecting people will read all four
pages?

– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mobile fundraising ads

[Joseph Seddon]

Hey Molly,

Thank you for your feedback, it is really appreciated. There are a fair few
points you’ve raised so I will do my best cover them all. For some
background, mobile fundraising is vitally important. Desktop page views
have been in decline for the past 2-3 years from 4.36 billion (Oct 2016) to
3.64 billion (Oct 2018). Likewise, the relative effectiveness as of mobile
as a fundraising platform has historically been substantially lower
compared with desktop. So we’ve been working hard to ensure that as user
behaviours shift we are well prepared and that the future of the movement
is safeguarded.

We show two types of banner to users on both desktop and mobile. The first
banner is larger and shown only once to user in their browser followed by a
second banner that is show to the user typically up to a maximum of 9 times
and is substantially smaller.

Our mobile large banner changed last November from a splash style banner to
the current text message style. Since then one of the things that has
constantly surprised us, is that people seem to genuinely read the extra
content. We’ve repeatedly tested over the past year removing content and
every time, the shorter banners loose. Now this could just imply that it’s
length that was producing move effective banners. So we decided to confirm
if people were actually reading our banners. We tested two banners of
similar length, one with our best copy and one where we replaced some of
the lower paragraphs with copy had historically lost out in previous
testing. Our best copy won and confirmed that people are actually invested
in reading our banners. So the copy is long and we are continuing to try
and shorten it but we genuinely believe its not just impactful of genuine
value to our readers and donors.

When we implemented this style of banner we made sure to add a toolbar to
the top that enabled users to skip straight to the article. You mentioned
on facebook that you didn’t notice that we will look to see if we can make
the toolbar a little more visible to users.

Regarding the bottom red banner, that is something that was retained from
previous versions of this banner. We actually have just instrumented our
banners so that we could track the effectiveness. We got data that this
additional call to action was not performing as originally expected, most
likely due to the format of the banner having changed since last year. We
re-tested removing this and the effect was minimal and so we have removed
this in our large banner on the first impression.

We completely agree that it’s vitally important to ensure our readers who
use assistive technologies are supported and we are going to look at how we
can improve our banner content to ensure compatibility and provide a good
experience including improving descriptions, providing better descriptions
and maybe look at suppressing some content for screen readers to reduce
some of the impact for them.

I will copy this to your cross post on wiki too :) Thank you again for your
feedback, it is genuinely appreciated and the fundraising team are actively
acting on it.

Regards

Seddon


On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 4:52 PM GorillaWarfare <
gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I feel a little bad raising this because I know there was some community
> vetting of fundraising initiatives that I ignored, but please forgive me. I
> brought this up in the Wikimedia Weekly Facebook group asking where best to
> raise the issue, and it was suggested I post here.
>
> I was looking something up on my phone just now, apparently not logged in
> to Wikipedia, and I discovered that mobile users in the US (and presumably
> elsewhere) are being shown enormous ads. It took four full page scrolls for
> me to reach the content of the article I was hoping to read. Even once I
> made it past the ads at the top of the page, I was greeted with a pop-in
> banner from the bottom of the page, as if I could possibly have not noticed
> the four pages of text asking me to donate. (Screenshots attached).
>
> I understand that we need donations to keep the site running and all, but
> this seems excessive. I particularly worry for people who use assistive
> technology who are having to listen to or try to skip through four pages'
> worth of text-to-speech before they can get to what they want to know. The
> WMF needs donations, but I think we need to weigh the need for cash against
> the goal of providing free and accessible information to our readers. A
> couple of page scrolls might not seem like much, but I assume if they're
> off-putting to me (a reader with good vision and generally high tolerance
> for WMF money pleas) they'll be off-putting to others.
>
> So much of this text could be cut out. I work for a marketing/sales company
> in a non-marketing role, and I've heard from colleagues that it's
> frustrating when people writing copy like this hear from people who are not
> educated about appealing to people, so I don't pretend to 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [foundation-optional] Wikimedia Foundation External Audit and FAQ for fiscal year ending 30 June 2018

[Eileen Hershenov]

Congratulations, Jaime!!

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 7:46 PM Jaime Villagomez 
wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> The Independent Auditors’ Report of the Wikimedia Foundation for the
> fiscal year ending 30 June 2018 is now available at:
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
>
> We have also posted on Meta-Wiki answers to frequently asked questions
> (“FAQ”) about the Independent Auditors’ Report:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audits/2017-2018_-_frequently_asked_questions
>
> The external audit is conducted annually by an independent third-party
> audit firm (KPMG) as a part of our financial oversight, and provides an
> overview of basic information about the organization's financial position
> and its financial activities. This Independent Auditors’ Report has been
> approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee -- a board
> subcommittee -- and presented to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> for their review.
>
> Saludos,
>
> Jaime
>
> Jaime Villagomez
> *Chief Financial Officer *
> *Wikimedia Foundation*
> *1 Montgomery Street
> *
> *San Francisco, CA 94105
> *
> *415.839.6885  ext 6628 <415.839.6885%20%C2%A0ext%206628>*
>
> *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.Donate.
> *
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Foundation Optional" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to foundation-optional+unsubscr...@wikimedia.org.
>
-- 
Eileen B. Hershenov
Of Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600

San Francisco, CA 94104

Registered In-House Counsel, State Bar of CA
Licensed in NY State
ehershe...@wikimedia.org
(US) 415-483-6676

*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
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[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation External Audit and FAQ for fiscal year ending 30 June 2018

[Jaime Villagomez]

Hello Everyone,

The Independent Auditors’ Report of the Wikimedia Foundation for the fiscal
year ending 30 June 2018 is now available at:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

We have also posted on Meta-Wiki answers to frequently asked questions
(“FAQ”) about the Independent Auditors’ Report:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audits/2017-2018_-_frequently_asked_questions

The external audit is conducted annually by an independent third-party
audit firm (KPMG) as a part of our financial oversight, and provides an
overview of basic information about the organization's financial position
and its financial activities. This Independent Auditors’ Report has been
approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee -- a board
subcommittee -- and presented to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
for their review.

Saludos,

Jaime

Jaime Villagomez
*Chief Financial Officer *
*Wikimedia Foundation*
*1 Montgomery Street*
*San Francisco, CA 94105*
*415.839.6885  ext 6628 <415.839.6885%20%C2%A0ext%206628>*

*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.Donate.
*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Contents of annual reports from Wikimedia affiliate organizations

[Jane Darnell]

As a learning organization, it is already the case that the reporting
burden is often higher than the invested resources. It's been that way for
years. Fortunately, we have had the luck over the years to attract
dedicated volunteers all over the world to help out with the burden or give
feedback and tips how to cope, and most hired hands by now are used to the
WMF changing the reporting rules with each passing year. I think that is
inherent in a mostly volunteer-staffed worldwide multi-lingual network of
people trying to comply both with local community needs/desires, local tax
authorities, and the WMF.

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 8:40 AM Bence Damokos  wrote:

> Dear Pine,
>
> Just as a thought experiment try to think through how your proposal would
> work for an all-volunteer organisation:
> A small group of volunteers starts some programme, and at the same time
> they hire a contractor (issue an ad, check CVs, hold interviews, draw up a
> contract, monitor and pay invoices, pay any applicable taxes and social
> security contributions) whose job it is to keep track of the hours and
> money the volunteers spend on the programme and on the administration of it
> (including the resources spent on hiring, managing and overseeing the
> contractor), plus the global metrics. (The situation is not much better if
> the contractor is hired at the end of the project and his job is to
> interview everyone, and for the volunteers they need to keep records in
> order to be able to reply to the questions.)
>
> In the end, you have to retain proportionality of invested resources vs.
> level of reporting burden.
>
> Best regards,
> Bence
>
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2018, 01:12 Pine W 
> > I'm going to respond to both Chris and Gerard in one email.
> >
> > Gerard:
> >
> > * I agree that it's possible to over-bureaucratize projects, including
> > small projects. This is one of the reasons that I think that performance
> > analysis should mostly be done with staff or contractor time rather than
> > volunteer time. I don't want small projects to get exempted from
> > accountability, but I also don't want small projects to be weighed down
> > with unreasonable administrative overhead.
> >
> > * I agree that WMF Community Resources has room for improvement. I may
> have
> > accidentally implied that I think that WMF always does things well and
> > always makes good decisions. I too have had experiences of WMF Community
> > Resources staff taking far too long to respond to inquiries. However, WMF
> > has the money for grants for Wikimedia activities, and there are few
> > alternatives to WMF for financial support of Wikimedia affiliate and
> > individual projects. If WMF Community Resources' level of responsiveness
> is
> > going to improve then WMF will need to choose to make changes.
> >
> > Chris:
> >
> > * I make a distinction between the formation of a user group, and that
> user
> > group running programs. If a user group runs a single small program, and
> > correspondingly has little money, then there should be little to report.
> A
> > user group which runs multiple programs and is handling many thousands of
> > dollars' worth of funds will have more extensive reporting requirements.
> I
> > think that staff or contractors should complete most of the reporting and
> > analysis so that volunteers are not burdened with that work. I would like
> > volunteers to be able to focus on mission, on the creation and execution
> of
> > programs, on developing supportive relationships, and on the strategic
> > decision-making for their user group, rather than spending significant
> time
> > and effort on administrative activities like writing reports.
> >
> > * I don't see a way to get out of having multiple reporting systems, such
> > as for national tax authorities and for grantmakers such as WMF. Many
> > charities deal with this. I think that most of the reporting work can be
> > done with staff or contractor time rather than volunteer time.
> >
> > * Regarding "There is no consensus around what metrics actually matter.
> > Global Metrics were only ever presented as a first draft of an answer,
> and
> > for many projects they are simply poor metrics. The movement's focus for
> > the last 3-4 years has been on movement entities developing their own
> > metrics that are relevant to their own activities. Standardising on naive
> > metrics would be a step backwards.", I partly agree and partly disagree.
> I
> > think that we should have ways to compare performance of programs
> > affiliates, so that everyone can learn which affiliates and programs tend
> > to be especially good or problematic. Over time, as affiliates learn from
> > each other, ideally this should lead to more efficient uses of resources,
> > and to more effective programs and affiliates. Having common metrics
> goes a
> > long way toward determining which practices are most effective and which
> > should be changed or discontinued. I agree that custom metrics may in
> >