During the last weekend of January, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee came together with the aim of finalizing the updates on the previously written drafts. The Committee’s sessions in Atlanta were designed collaboratively, covering discussions, drafting, and planning sessions.
In January the MCDC met five times, including meetings with key movement stakeholders before their in-person convening.
- January 4 – MCDC’s regular meeting: The Committee discussed proposals on the Affiliate structure as well as the Global Council with a focus on grantmaking. The support staff conducted a “Committee health check” to hear how the Committee members felt about appointing new members and overall the workload. Note: You can read more about membership below. It was also suggested to invite copy-editors for the full charter draft.
- January 8 – Some MCDC members joined the meeting with WM DE on the Wikimedia Summit plans.
- January 11 – MCDC’s regular meeting: The Committee walked through the plans for their in-person meeting, and continued their discussions regarding the Affiliate proposal as well as the Global Council (grantmaking).
- January 12 – Several MCDC members joined an informative call on the Affiliate Strategy updates with the Board of Trustees liaisons to discuss the points of convergence and divergence between the MCDC proposals for Affiliates and the Board’s Affiliate Strategy.
- January 18 – MCDC’s regular meeting: The Committee discussed key questions that needed to be addressed in their upcoming in-person meeting. Content-wise, the members discussed the functions of the Global Council, and reviewed the Roles & Responsibilities draft, among others.
- January 26-28 –The Committee convened for an in-person meeting, engaging in collective work that included both discussions and drafting sessions. MCDC members were joined by the BoT liaisons Nataliia Tymkiv and Lorenzo Losa, and for the first time, the General Council of the WMF Stephen LaPorte to support the Committee on legal questions.
Among the important questions for the Committee to agree on were the functions and purpose of the Global Council, its structure, and membership, including a comparison of the Small Body model and the Assembly with a Board model. Hubs discussions included revenue generation and funds distribution; while Roles & Responsibilities discussions included a new idea about the function to mediate and arbitrate disputes between members and other bodies in the movement. The changes will be reflected in the draft of the full charter, which will be shared for community consultation in early April.
In other news
Update on membership: Érica Azzellini stepped down from membership for personal reasons (see full announcement). The MCDC resolved that starting from January 2023 there will be no further replacements of its members. In their post-Wikimania 2023 meeting in Singapore, the Committee revisited this conversation and concluded that onboarding new members at this point in the drafting process will take a lot of time and energy away from the drafting. At the same time, the Advisors have been following the MCDC’s process and sometimes have had the opportunity for the first review and feedback on the content. The list of 30+ Advisors from all over the world is expected to give the drafting committee the diverse perspectives and experiences required.
Community Feedback Summary:
The summary of feedback received on the Movement Charter drafts collected throughout its events and conversations period on wiki and in community calls spanning September 3 – December 31, 2023, is available Meta.
Participate in the survey regarding the Global Council
Based on the suggestions from the MCDC’s monthly open community calls, the support staff has put together a straw poll to gauge the perspectives on some of the expectations related to the purpose, role, and function of the Global Council. This poll will propose some of the areas of accountability and decision-making derived from the historic resolutions of global nature from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation to define where movement participants think these decisions should be made in the future.
The deadline has been extended, you can fill out the survey until February 24. You can respond to the survey publicly on Meta or use the anonymous Google Forms survey. All the responses will be accounted for in the MCDC’s discussions related to the Global Council.
What’s next: Draft of the full Movement Charter will be published in April for community engagement
February – March: The MCDC is working on finalizing the draft of the full charter, including sharing a preliminary version with Advisors, former MCDC members, and the WMF Board of Trustees for review before the MCDC updates the draft again. Then, the updated draft will go through copy-editing, legal review, and translations before it is published for community engagement.
February 22: A closed call with Advisors and the other reviewers is scheduled to give feedback to the MCDC about the preliminary draft.
In March, the MCDC members will prepare for the Wikimedia Summit, attend the WMF Strategy Meeting in NYC on March 7-8, and prepare for the upcoming community consultations.
March Open Community Call: TBD
April 2-22: Draft of full charter is shared on Meta, and community engagement period commences! (Details forthcoming).
May: Preparations for the voting period, including finalizing the Charter text based on community feedback
June 12-25: The ratification voting period on the full charter. The details on voting will be provided closer to the date.
Please note: If you want to host a conversation with your community and invite MCDC members to your conversation, please reach out to: movementcharter@wikimedia.org or leave a message on the Talk page.
Any suggestions or questions ahead of the community engagement? Please let the MCDC communications sub committee know by reaching out on Telegram: Wikimedia Movement Strategy or via email: movementcharter@wikimedia.org.
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