[Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

Mon Jan 30 00:57:00 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:
> It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO
> in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the
> CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I
> would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this
> position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an
> organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a
> highly participatory community.

I think that the title "CEO" is probably misleading, because in general
the CEO provides a great deal more guidance to the overall vision and
mission of the organization than the position which is being
contemplated here.

I think that "Executive Director" or "COO" or "Business Manager" is a
more appropriate title.

We have amazing opportunities before us to achieve our charitable goals,
and in order to take advantage of them we have to do a much better job
going forward of behaving like a serious professional organization on
the business end of things.

A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes,
decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity
with a strong volunteer component.  An ideal candidate should have
extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory
compliance, international chapters, donor relations management,
staffing, budgeting, etc.

Upon being hired, it is absolutely true that this person needs to be
thoroughly and extensively trained in how the website functions, how the
volunteer community works, and they absolutely must understand that
without the community, there is no success.  But hiring and training
someone in this area is not difficult -- the best Wikimedians are able
to pick it up in a week or two of editing, and after a few months can
understand it all quite deeply.

--Jimbo