Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Ukraine/2019/Program story for Final report
Program story
editDeveloping a multi-year strategic plan
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We think it would be safe to say that developing a strategic plan for 2020—2022 was among Wikimedia Ukraine’s most important achievements in the previous year.
In 2019, Wikimedia Ukraine celebrated its 10th anniversary, having been founded back in May 2009. However, before 2019 we have not implemented long-term planning and have been working with one-year plans. Thus, producing a multi-year strategic plan was an important task for us leading up to 2019.
Developing our first multi-year strategic plan was a challenge for us because we wanted to give a voice to everyone interested in the future of Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia projects in Ukraine in general. Thus, we decided that the strategy process should be long enough so as to incorporate as much community input as possible. While the first preparations started in January, the strategic plan itself was finalized and approved in mid-October.
Throughout the year, we had a core team consisting of six volunteers who worked on the strategy process along with the support of Wikimedia Ukraine’s staff. For offline strategy sessions, we also worked with external facilitators.
The key parts of the strategy development process were two offline strategy sessions for Wikimedia Ukraine members, an online discussion and survey among Wikimedia Ukraine members, and an online discussion for the broader community.
The main milestones of the process were the following:
- First strategy session — mid-February
The first session was held for Wikimedia Ukraine’s members before the regular General Assembly. This session was more of an introductory one. Its goal was to familiarize Wikimedia Ukraine’s volunteers with the strategy process; it was largely devoted to surveying the positive experience of the Organization’s work and to establishing communication.
- Online discussion and survey for Wikimedia Ukraine members — May-June
The next stage was conducting an online discussion among Wikimedia Ukraine members. Thinking about strategy informed other events we were organizing (such as the training session on governance in March), but the main point of this stage was an online survey aimed at Wikimedia Ukraine’s members. It was the first-ever global survey for WMUA members about their vision of the Organization and their personal role in its activity. It turned out to attract a lot of interest from our members: 51 out of 66 WMUA members answered the survey.
The survey’s design is available here (in Ukrainian).
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- Second strategy session — late June
The aim of the second strategy session was to develop a draft of the Organization's vision, mission, values, and strategic goals. It was a standalone, two-day event for Wikimedia Ukraine’s members.
- Online discussion for the broader community — July-September
The second strategy session gave us a lot to work with, and the next stage was extensive online work. Its main part was a public discussion of the drafts developed in June. We invited everyone to participate in the discussion, with both general calls on social media and specific addressing of Ukrainian wikiprojects’ communities.
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Links to the discussions (in Ukrainian) — 1, 2, 3
- Finalizing and approving the strategic plan — October
Following all the steps outlined above, the strategy team worked in early October to finalize the strategic plan. Based on the results of the second strategy session and bearing in mind the online discussion, we came up with a draft of the plan.
In order for the strategic plan to be approved, we called an Extraordinary General Assembly. For logistical convenience, we combined it with the Wikiconference in Kharkiv, which was already attended by a lot of Wikimedia Ukraine members.
On the 12th of October, the General Assembly voted to approve the plan.
In late 2019, we worked on specific ways to better implement the strategic plan. The strategy has informed our plan for 2020, particularly the 2020 grant application. One of the most important things we are working on in the short-term perspective in relation to strategy is paying more attention to research and long-term analysis, such as working on identifying specific content gaps we need to be aiming to close.
With one month in, we already see that having a strategy has made planning easier and less erratic, which frees up resources and allows for higher effectiveness. While it is, of course, too early now for long-term assessments, we will work on making sure our strategic plan is being executed and is up to date. Wikimedia Ukraine’s next strategy session, which will allow for discussions on how Wikimedia 2030 recommendations affect us, as well as some first assessments, is planned for February 22nd.