Every nonprofit organization says that they have a mission, but actually there is always another concern which they do not publicly discuss. The public facing goal is always to advance the mission of the nonprofit movement with which it is aligned. For example, an educational nonprofit organization might say their mission is to promote education, or a health nonprofit organization might say that their goal is to improve community health. However, the first goal of nonprofit organizations frequently comes into conflict with the second secret goal of the organization, which is to sustain the nonprofit organization itself to its own benefit and potentially at the expense of its stated nonprofit mission.
A nonprofit organization and its mission are not the same thing, and what is good for one may not be good for the other. One might assume that a nonprofit organization is a steward of some cause, and that is often true, and it can happen that a nonprofit organization for a cause needs long term stability so that its mission can develop over a long period of time. It is difficult to say what should happen when the self-preservation of an organization or its staff come into conflict with the nonprofit mission.
Conflict between nonprofit mission versus self-preservation
To give a simple example of conflict between organization and mission, consider the Wikimedia Foundation. An example of conflict in the past is that there have been software projects in development which have been released prematurely to serve needs within the Wikimedia Foundation, but in such a way that the software release created a burden on the Wikimedia community and was contrary to the best interests of the Wikimedia movement for the ill-will, bad press, and anti-community feelings that were generated in the process. From the community’s perspective, software ought to be released when it is likely to be most useful and least harmful for most users, and at the time when releasing it is likely to give more benefit than it is to cause harm. There have been software releases by the Wikimedia Foundation which have resulted in harm, and the Wikimedia community responded to the harm with a user revolts, and there were other costs to the movement as a result. There have been retracted Wikimedia software releases, and a retraction is only a negative outcome except that perhaps it creates closure on a development idea, and it demonstrates an outcome to avoid in the future. In thinking about retractions, a good way to reflect on the experience is considering whether the Wikimedia Foundation ought to have expected a user revolt in response to their actions. Because there have been several high-profile user revolts, and because anecdotally it seems like a lot of Wikimedia community members seem to be able to make accurate predictions about when a user revolt will be more or less likely as the outcome of an action, some people might say that the Wikimedia Foundation ought to be able to assess when its actions or more or less risky, and be conscious of when it is taking actions that are likely to lead to a user revolt. There are complaints in the community that say that many people can predict revolts, but for whatever reason, historically decision makers at the Wikimedia Foundation have seemed to be unaware of the degree of controversy they choose as they select different courses of action. I am not sure what the defense in the Wikimedia Foundation is – perhaps they say that community sentiment cannot be predicted, but whatever the case, so far as I know they never discuss such things publicly.
Another cause to explain Wikimedia Foundation willingness to do risky things against community approval could be that the blame is on a lack of coordinated decision making process, and that when bad decisions come from the Wikimedia Foundation, the bad decision is actually a consequence of certain individuals making their own decisions for their own benefit without regard for the organization or the nonprofit mission. For example, suppose that there is a junior-level software developer whose job it is to develop some software project. From this person’s perspective, they want to do coding. However, maybe Wikimedia Foundation marketing or funding development has been making promises to funders that certain software functions will complete on a certain schedule then be released at a certain time. Now pressure comes to the developer who ought not think about these things, and maybe they contact community relations to solicit for public support for the project even though on the demanded schedule the project is doomed. Junior level staff just want to do their jobs peacefully, so the major pressure on them is to do the best they can on the schedule and follow orders even if they can see a user revolt as a likely outcome. From the perspective of the Wikimedia Foundation, and to its own benefit, perhaps it would like to please its funders even if that threatens its “social license“. Bad decisions sometimes originate at the level of lower level workers and job morale. The Wikimedia Foundation has a history of sending good workers into projects without any paid staff realizing that the work products could not be useful to the Wikimedia community and would attract protest if they came to be seen publicly. I pity the workers – they want meaning in their work, and their own professional development, and they certainly do not want 6-24 months of their work to be described online as misuse of funds. Lower level employees need protection from management that if they do their work well as directed, then Google searches for their names will not lead to criticism that employers and colleagues read for the rest of their lives. If individual workers have been developing a doomed project that does not serve the Wikimedia mission, there is a conflict in that the Wikimedia Foundation is pressured for its own benefit to do whatever it can to make the project seem useful. Spinning the issue, of course, is further contrary to the nonprofit mission and further in support of the self-preservation mission. It is a difficult cycle to break and it is also true that if the self-preservation mission is not upheld, then that is bad for the nonprofit mission.
Social license to operate
“Social license” is the concept that an organization has the right to peacefully share in the commons with the support of the public. When an organization does not have social license, then the public restricts it from sharing in the commons. When a nonprofit organization seeks to fulfill its nonprofit mission, the public grants it a social license to proceed. If it happens that a nonprofit organization seems to focus too much on itself and less on its nonprofit mission, then the public might restrict that organization’s social license to operate. In the case of the Wikimedia Foundation, its community of supporters are especially sensitive to the boundaries of the social license in which the organization operates. The sensitivity is high and continues to grow because the community has various powers to grant or remove social license. One of the community powers is to elect some or all of the board of trustees.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s board of trustees is organized in a strange manner as compared to almost another other similar nonprofit organization. Right now there are 10 seats on this board. 3 of those seats are elected by popular vote among Wikipedia editors. 2 of those seats are elected by Wikimedia community organizations; currently there are 42 of those organizations with a right to vote. 1 seat is called the “founder seat”, and is reserved for Jimbo. The remaining 4 seats are filled by consensus of whomever is on the board at the time they come for election. All seats are for 3-year terms. This entire system is bizarre. No other nonprofit organization would be established with this sort of management. The definitions of what the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees can or must do are not set, but in general, a board of trustees oversees the work of the organization’s executive director and it approves the annual budget. The board of the Wikimedia Foundation does this too, and the executive director needs continual approval of the board and the annual budget must always be approved by the board. The strange part about this that this structure leaves the nonprofit organization itself compromised against the ideals of the Wikimedia movement. With this structure, the Wikimedia community of volunteers will always be close to the board for the organization, and the organization itself is never too far from being beholden to the wishes of the Wikimedia community as expressed either in elections or in the wishes of those appointed by those who are elected.
We have a Wikimedia community contributor named Risker, whom I regard as one of the more respected commentators on Wikimedia community governance. Concerning the current “affiliate-selected board seat” process, commonly called the “chapter election”, this person says this:
…the two individuals selected by the chapters do not represent the chapters. They’re selected by them, but their job is exactly the same as that of every other Board member. They are not on the board to represent the interests or perspective of chapters. They’re there to look out for the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and through that the Wikimedia movement. (See the mission statement for the exact wording of the WMF’s purpose.) Chapters, thematic organizations, and other movement groups are only one small part of the big picture – less than 10% of active Wikimedians are chapter/THORG members.
I agree with Risker from one perspective but disagree from another. I confirm that when anyone accepts an appointment to the board of a nonprofit organization, they make a commitment to serve in that role representing the interests of that organization over other interests. I disagree with Risker that the elected board serve the best interests of the WMF as a way of advancing the Wikimedia movement. Instead, I think that the board should advance the Wikimedia movement as a priority, and use the Wikimedia Foundation as a resource for doing that. Sometimes advancing the Wikimedia mission in the long term might mean a short term set back for stated Wikimedia Foundation goals or individual staff at the Wikimedia Foundation. It is unfortunate whenever there is a conflict, but when there is a conflict, the nonprofit mission should come first. The board serves the organization by advancing the Wikimedia movement because the organization is in better condition when the long term Wikimedia mission remains the goal for action. The Wikimedia Foundation has had community oversight on its actions as a founding principle and it was intentional and fundamental to the community’s granting of social license that this unprecedented governance system was put into place.
Elections focus on the nonprofit mission
The election process for seats on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees does not guide the voting process to consider the betterment of the Wikimedia Foundation in any way except what might spontaneously happen in the election process. In the case of the affiliate election, the motivation of voting organizations will typically be that they vote in a way that benefits the community of voting organizations as these organizations in solidarity advocate for their own collective development and their collective interests. The Wikimedia chapter system was established on the premise that local Wikimedia organizations around the world could identify and represent the needs of regional participants in the Wikimedia movement. When the board of trustees election process was established to give these chapters a vote for board seats, that process was established on the premise that when Wikimedia organizations have control of two of ten board seats by election, then that control would advance the Wikimedia mission and Wikimedia movement. There was never any concession in place to say that chapters should vote to some certain end; in the process, they vote as they like, for the candidates they like, by the criteria they like. In such a system, I think it is unreasonable to assume that organizations would seek to vote in any way other than for their own interest. I think that it is reasonable to assume that in the founding of this system, the intent behind doing things this way is that if the chapters vote to their own benefit, then that is to the benefit of the Wikimedia mission and movement. Even now I think this is still the common perception. Since the concept of “advancing the Wikimedia mission” is defined as “using 2 board seats to advance the interest of Wikimedia chapters”, the foundation of Wikimedia Foundation governance is a precedent for using the chapters as overseers for a share of the Wikimedia Foundation’s power.
The affiliate selected board seat process is designed to for the selection of candidates who would act in a way that gets approval from the constituency that elected them. When seats on the board are selected by election, then the design of the board must recognized that board members have some loyalty and obligation to meet voters’ expectations. Voters may not prioritize the goals set by the staff or leadership of the Wikimedia Foundation if those goals are perceived as misaligned with the nonprofit mission.
A few weeks ago Denny Vrandecic, board member, said in the mailing list “the loyalty of a Board member is towards the organization, not the movement.” Other people challenged his statement. What he said is a natural thing to say in the context of typical nonprofit governance, but in the Wikimedia movement, we need to develop thought further. Obviously when there is an election, the candidates in the election are selected to fulfill some desire of the voters. It is only reasonable to expect that the outcome of an election process is the selection of candidates who make promises to serve the interests of the voters. When the Wikimedia Foundation election process was established, then that also established the idea that the point of the election was to select candidates who would promise to act in a way that got the support of the voters. The voters are the Wikimedia community, and the social license they give guides the Wikimedia mission more than the Wikimedia Foundation itself.