Użytkowniczka:Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL)/APG

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period. (NAC? Sybilla? CEE Spring? WikiGap?)

Background

2018 has brought a lot of changes to Wikimedia Polska. We have encountered a big change in our Board composition - three experienced and skillful members (including our long-time serving Chair, Tomasz Ganicz) resigned and were replaced by three new people, serving their first rounds on the Board. This was the moment that we needed to see how we can instill the new energy, skills, ideas, and vision brought by the new members while at the same time keep what we have learned and what has been built by the ones who terminated their involvement in WMPL Board.

Moreover, we have encountered some changes in our staffing - we have lost a valuable and almost irreplaceable colleague, Krzysztof Machocki, and welcomed two new staff members into our midst.

2018 was also a year of learning for us. Entering the Simple APG program for the first time was an important moment of sharing our work with the international Wikimedia community and getting valuable outside feedback. Our new Board members introduced new tools and project management techniques (Scrum and Kanban) reshaping the way we plan our daily work, collaborate, and report.

And finally - thanks to the sAPG program - we started an organizational audit to see what works and what can be improved.

The organizational audit and what we have learned from it so far

The first step to have a good quality process which will help us move forward and understand our organization better is finding the right expert. And we have put a lot of time and sweat into this step. We sent out a detailed brief, containing a lot of information regarding our background, history, current situation and the specifics of the Wikimedia world. It also included a lot about our needs and expectations regarding the audit. We wanted to find a consultant who would look closely at our structure, scope of responsibilities, processes, governance communication patterns, documents; someone who would examine how we work on achieving our goals or plan our projects. And most of all - a person who would be able to see all that in the context of a Wikimedia organization. An organization which strongly values transparency and wants to involve (but not to burn out!) volunteers from the Wikimedia world. And (after reviewing carefully a lot of offers from different sources) we believe that we found someone just right for the job. A trainer and consultant, Renata Muszyńska, who is familiar with the functioning of NGOs and has a lot of experience in consulting and training different organizations and companies, including ones that are undergoing a change that they need to manage. And who has tailored an offer closely related to what we had in mind and showing that she has a good understanding of our work.

Timeline

• July-August 2018 - sending inquires and gathering offers from external experts and consultants
• 1-15 September - selection of the best offer by the Board, signing a contract
• 15-30 September - the expert gets to know the organization, documentation, policies, and processes
• 1-30 October - structured interviews with the members of the current and previous Board, the Review Board and Peer Tribunal, staff members, and community representatives
• 1-15 November - expert works with more documents, organizes gathered input
• 15-30 November - SWOT/TOWS workshop for Wikimedia Polska staff members and volunteers and SWOT/TOWS workshop and Ashridge mission model workshop for the Board
• December - the board receives the auditor's report along with recommendations. The report is published on Wikimedia Polska wiki, the community is invited to discuss and comment on it
• January 2019 - the English version of the report is published on Meta; the report is presented during Wikimedia Polska Winter Retreat, live discussions are facilitated

Contents of the audit

Audit contents
Content	Time	Additional information
28 structured interviews + input analysis and structurization	84 hours	15 interviews with chapter statutory body members (Board members from the current and previous term, Peer Tribunal and Review Board), 5 staff members, 8 community representatives
Document, process, and policy analysis	26 hours
SWOT workshops	16 hours	One 8-hour workshop for the staff and the volunteers and one 8-hour workshop for the Board and the Review Board
Ashbridge mission model workshop	8 hours	For the Board and the Review Board members
Report drawing up	24 hours	Based on the result of the analysis of the documents and processes and the input gathered during the interviews and the workshops

What has been done already?

We wanted the process to be very transparent and inclusive. We have created a wiki page that contains all the information about the audit and the auditor and with up to date information about the process. We did this so our members are well informed, understand why the audit is organized, and what exactly will be done during the process. This way, all interested parties can follow all the goings-on of the process.

The auditor has already started her work and examined our financial documents, reports, annual plans, and budget. We have shown her the tools we use in our daily work (Trello, Discord, Google Drive, IRC) and minutes from some Board meetings (both the ones held by the current and the previous Board).

October will be the month of introducing the organization to our expert through the eyes and words of people engaged in it - Board members (current and former), the Review Board and Peer Tribunal, staff members, and representatives of the volunteer community. All the conversations will be private and we strongly encourage all people who participate in them to use this opportunity to be very honest and open and to be bold in sharing what (in their opinion) could be improved, what does not work well. We make an effort to ensure that as many of those conversations are held face-to-face but if it is not possible (some volunteers have privacy concerns, some do not want to engage in a live meeting) we schedule calls. As for now, we have the full schedule ready. And it was not an easy task - we needed to organize meetings for 28 people, who are from different parts of Poland and (apart from the WMPL staff) have their professional obligations outside the Wikimedia world which makes the amounts of time they can donate to the process limited, as most of them are dedicated volunteers. The meetings will be held in 3 different cities: Warsaw, Cracow (where the auditor is located), and Łódź (where our office is). The auditor will also join us during our Wiktionary and Wikisource conference which will be an opportunity to see directly how we organize events (and to hold some interviews with people for whom it would be difficult to schedule a live meeting without this occasion).

We have seen that the community is showing very positive reactions to the audit - our volunteers are happy to donate their time for the interviews and to share their view of the chapter with the expert. We treat this as a sign that the engaged community that cares about Wikimedia Polska and is ready to help it grow is still one of our most valuable assets.

What is still to be done?

After conducting the interviews our consultant will gather more input during the SWOT and Ashridge mission model workshops. The SWOT workshops will be held separately for the Board and for the staff and volunteers to see whether their views of the organization's strength and potential match or whether they see Wikimedia Polska somewhat differently.

The findings and recommendations gathered in the final report will be published for the community to read and discuss (also in English on Meta). We will also present them during the Wikimedia Polska Winter Retreat conference in January 2019.

Budget

Current spendings and overall budget can be accessed in this document