Art+Feminism User Group/Planning/Staffing2019

This is the staffing plan for the Art+Feminism Simple APG for 2019-2020. The main grant page is here.

Legal Status of Workers and Fee Rationale

Most positions will be 1099 contractors. For the Executive Director role, we are waiting on legal counsel and accounting advice as to what would be preferable. As such, we have budgeted on the high end in case we need to shoulder the additional costs of a full-time employee.

Executive Director

Why

As we detailed in our 2016-2017 APG grant application, the lead co-organizers of Art+Feminism (Sian Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, and Michael Mandiberg) were all at their bandwidth in terms of the amount of time they could spend on this project, on top of their other work. However, the project continued to grow. So, for the 2016-2017 cycle, we brought on McKensie Mack as the Art+Feminism Program Coordinator and newest member of the Core Leadership Team. You can see the details of our hiring and on-boarding process in our 2016-2017 APG Midpoint Report. You can also see a description of their role in 2017-2018 here.

In our 2018-2019 APG grant application we promoted McKensie from a Program Coordinator to a Director in order to align their title with the responsibilities they had undertaken. As we have now moved to an official 501c3, in order to align with non-profit norms, we propose increasing this role from Director to Executive Director and from part- to full-time. The move from part-time to full-time is also in response to our repeated reporting that McKensie would blow through their hours well before the year was up.

What

Founded in 2014, Art+Feminism is an award-winning do-it-yourself campaign to improve coverage of gender, feminism and the arts on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s gender trouble is well-documented; in a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10% of its contributors identify as women. This lack of participation has led to significant gaps in the content on the world’s most popular online research tool. Since 2014, over 14,000 people at more than 1,100 events around the world have participated in our edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 58,000 articles on Wikipedia. Our events range from small gatherings at coffee shops to hundreds of folks at the largest cultural institutions in the world, and take place on all six inhabited continents. Our organizing practices are horizontal and rhizomatic and our feminism is trans-inclusive and intersectional.

The Executive Director sets the strategic vision and executes the annual plan in collaboration with the Lead Organizers and manages relationships with the Board of Directors. The Executive Director, Lead Co-Organizers, and the Project Administrator form the Core Leadership Team of Art+Feminism. The Executive Director must have strong project management skills, a demonstrated history of work at the intersection of the arts and social justice, an understanding of intersectional feminist organizing principles, experience generating diverse financial support, and a knowledge of the Wikimedia community or another open source/online community. Art+Feminism is entering into its seventh year but this will be our first year as a non-profit. While we do have great systems in place for community organizing, we seek an Executive Director who is also skilled at operations and development, and committed to developing leadership among other members of the team. Because the position requires international outreach and coordination, fluency in at least one language other than English is preferred.

The Executive Director's responsibilities include:

Leadership

Work with the Core Leadership Team to provide a strong day-to-day leadership presence that incorporates our mission, vision, and values into our everyday operations.
Work with the Board of Directors and the Core Leadership Team to develop the project’s mission, vision and values.
Draft strategic planning documents alongside the rest of the Core Leadership Team.
Represent Art+Feminism at art and social justice conferences, events, and Wikimedia Community gatherings.
Manage all staff and contractors, including the Project Administrator
Collaborate with the lead organizers to plan and implement the annual campaign.

Development

Lead development goals and activities including grants administration and reporting.
Lead various fundraising activities.
Write grant proposals and compile supporting documents.
Recruit Board Members and cultivate Board.
Work with Core Leadership Team and Regional Organizers to identify and cultivate new funding sources.

Marketing and Communications

Work with the Core Leadership Team to oversee the development and execution of an annual communications plan, including marking, social media, and educational programming.

Operations

Co-manage key institutional partnerships, such as with the Museum of Modern Art.
Maintain and ensure the execution of project timelines.
Establish, improve and maintain efficient operations and project management platforms.
Direct and administer all financial plans and work with the Project Administrator to manage accounting processes for grant reporting and federal reporting.
Oversee regular meetings with Core Leadership Team members
Compose budgets for specific programs and processes.
Oversee risk management and legal activities, such as contracts
Work with the Project Administrator to analyze and improve operations and workflows.

Qualifications:

Must be passionate about and have experience with the arts, intersectional feminism, and open source culture.
Must have demonstrated commitment to developing leadership among other members of the team.
Requires proven fundraising and development experience.
Requires minimum 3 years of non-profit leadership experience or equivalent experience; 5 years preferred.
Requires strong self-awareness and high emotional intelligence.
Must have the ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Requires demonstrated ability to develop and maintain productive working relationships with colleagues (e.g. staff, volunteers, donors, and board members.)
Preferably have strong financial management skills and analytical abilities.
Preferably have experience editing, organizing, or analyzing Wikipedia.
Preferably have experience with metrics/analytics tools.
Preferably have experience with project management and customer relations tools (we use Slack, Streak, and Trello.)
Requires flexibility to work evenings and weekends, and to travel for the role.

Executive Director reports to the Board of Directors. This position is entirely remote; the Core Leadership Team, which is located in four different cities, meets weekly via videochat. The candidate must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Due to our funding structure, this role is currently a one-year contract beginning September 1, 2019, with an expectation for renewal, pending the successful accomplishment of the above tasks.

When and How to apply

Salary Range: $60-75,000/year This is currently an independent contractor position but may be transitioned to employee status, depending on our legal and accounting advice.

Art+Feminism provides equal employment opportunities to all without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability or genetics. Candidates from groups underrepresented in tech are especially encouraged to apply.

To apply, please send a cover letter and resume to us at info@artandfeminism.org.

A note on shift from PT to FT

This is an increase from a part-time to full-time position from 2018-2019, given that the Director used all of their hours for a one year grant (September 1-August 31) by mid-May in the 2018-2019 grant cycle.

Project Administrator

Why

As we detailed above for the 2016-2017 cycle, we brought on McKensie Mack as the Art+Feminism Program Coordinator and newest member of the Core Leadership Team in our 2016-2017 grant cycle. In our 2018-2019 APG grant application we promoted McKensie from a Program Coordinator to a Director in order to align their title with the responsibilities they had undertaken. We then proposed that a Community Fellow handle the remaining organizational and administrative tasks that are key to Art+Feminism's success. And while our Community Fellow has gone above and beyond, she had already exceeded her allotted hours by May. Due to this, we are proposing a more permanent Project Administrator role.

What

The Project Administrator manages the Art+Feminism campaign in order to ensure its success and effectiveness.

The Project Administrator's responsibilities include:

General Manage Art+Feminism campaign, which in its last year had more than 300 events worldwide. Manage all of the administrative tasks of the organization.

Administrative Work with the Executive Director to project manage the annual campaign. Field all incoming email to info@artandfeminism.org account; depending on funding structures, this may include supervising a Community Fellow who assists with this correspondence. Collect, update and maintain the organization's databases and statistical information to present to the Executive Director and the leadership collective. Manage the organization's data and metrics management platforms: CRM, Dashboard, and Trello. Update and maintain the accounts and repositories of information of the organization: email accounts, Google Drive, website.

Equipment/staff management

Working with a representative from the Core Leadership Team to oversee and support the Project Assistants, Fellows, and Consultants.
Working with a representative from the Core Leadership Team to support and nurture the network of Regional Ambassadors in their work of assisting the organizers of Art+Feminism events; this involves communicating with them in a timely manner and according to established deadlines.
Co-ordinate with institutional partners internationally to ensure execution of edit-a-thons.
Work with the Executive Director to develop an internal communication strategy so that all members of the organization are clear about their responsibilities.
Support the Executive Director in day-to-day operations.
Work with the Executive Director to analyze and improve operations and workflows.

Finances

Track event funding notification and reimbursement.
Work with the Executive Director in financial reporting.
Liaise with the accounting firm to ensure that all payment requests are processed as quickly possible.

Qualifications:

Must be passionate about the arts, intersectional feminism, and open source culture.
Strong self-awareness and high emotional intelligence.
Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Strong organizational and project management skills.
Proficiency in Word, Google apps, and Wikipedia. Preferred experience with analytics tools such as WikiData.
Proficiency in project management and customer relations tools such as Slack, Streak, and Trello.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.

Web Developer/Web Master

Why

As detailed below, we have had significant issues with our website over the past few years and need an overhaul of some of the pain points, as well as a dedicated contractor to maintain the website through the year. This work has previously been done primarily by one of our Lead Co-organizers and has been a significant drain on our organizational capacity.

What

We need a web developer to rebuild our Wordpress website in order to streamline our organizing tools and workflows. We also need someone to maintain the website during the run of the campaign. Lastly, we need someone to maintain and run a series of custom Wikidata analytic tools. This role could be assumed by one person, though it is also possible that one person with a build/dev focus could build the system, and another with less dev skills but a greater long term interest in the project could maintain the website, integrations, and wikidata tools.

Website update

We currently have a custom Wordpress theme whose primary function is to allow organizers to submit events, which a lead organizer needs to review and approve. At present certain aspects of the code have ceased to function as designed; additionally, the use scenarios have changed, as our volume of events has grown fivefold to about 300 events per year.
Some pain points include the difficulty of updating event posts, dealing with multiple posts, finding images for posts, linking directly to posts, accurate search/filter of posts, and the vulnerability of the system sending an email for the notification (and as the “paper trail” backup). We need a more sophisticated system that would allow approved users to update their posts, and returning users to post without requiring administrative approval.
And we need to review the site design for Accessibility.

Data integration

We seek to integrate our different tools and data to reduce organizer headaches and improve efficiency. At present, our data lives in multiple places: Wordpress database tables for our custom content type; jotform submissions which lead to a google sheet; Streak boxes and contacts; and the Wiki Ed Foundation’s Programs and Events Dashboard.
We seek to build integrations across these different platforms so that we can automatically sync data. At present we have to manually cross-reference each data set, and would like to develop more efficient and accurate processes for platform integration and data analysis.

Wikidata

As part of our reporting process we use a set of custom python scripts that work with wiki data and Wikipedia APIs in order to label the articles that we want to track over the long term. You can read more about that process here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Theredproject/2018_Workplan this code needs to be run at the end of every campaign cycle. Additionally, this code will need to be updated from python version 2.5 to version 3.7.

When and How much

Project budget: $25,000. This includes the cost of a one-time overhaul as well as web maintenance through the year.

This is currently a one-year independent contractor position.

This position reports to: Executive Director.

Grant Writer

Why

In order to diversify our funding streams, we need to hire a position to work with the Executive Director to identify grant opportunities and compile proposals.

What

Core responsibilities:

Work with Executive Director, Core Leadership Team and Regional Organizers to identify and cultivate new funding sources.
Write grant proposals and compile supporting documents.

Qualifications/Requirements:

Bachelor's Degree
1-2 years grant-writing or similar writing experience

Skills:

Excellent grant writing and organizational skills
Ability to translate project budgets and draft concepts into concise grant narratives
Self-starter with the ability to jump right in and go!
Deadline oriented
Strong time management skills

When and How much

At a rate of $25/hour we have budgeted $7,000, which adds up to 280 hours total.

Lead and Regional Organizers

Job Description for Lead Organizers here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FUVsVnwNrkAM0_7Hzdh1kszb0eu2QV_FYNATe1brCn8/edit?usp=sharing

Job Description for Regional Organizers here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LO0Azj0qJenTHYnVusImf9Cz3i_uOOd2vteUWbJqp8c/edit

Our previous experience has shown that both Regional Organizers and Lead Co-organizers will work more hours than budgeted; part of our goal in increasing the number of lead and regional organizers is to reduce the workload per person, to fairly compensate for this work. See below for a break-down of labor, per title.

For the past two years, the fee for the Lead Co-organizers has been based off a rate of $35 per hour for a total of 686.4 total collective hours per year (roughly 13.2 hr/wk or 4.3 hr/wk per Lead Organizer). We recognize that the Lead Co-organizers work much more than 4.3 hours per week; incidentally, as part of a Quantified Self project, one of our Lead Co-organizers determined that they worked 600 hours in 2016, which was before we switched from a 6 to a 12 month grant cycle. We have set a goal for future years of fairly accounting for the full scope of the work that the Lead Co-organizers do. Because this year involves the onboarding of two new positions, as well as the transitions to a 501c3, we propose an increase of this honorarium to $15,000, to move towards more equitable compensation of this organizing labor.

2019-2020 Lead and Regional Organizer staff includes:

4 Lead Co-organizers
15 Regional Organizers returning.

Below, you will find detailed our rationale for the addition of these roles:

See our 2018-2019 APG grant application for the rationale for this structure. We plan to continue to build out our Regional Organizer program so we can continue to build capacity for future growth.

Communications Fellow

In our 2018-2019 grant cycle, we implemented a fellowship program and hired two fellows: a Community Fellow and a Communications Fellow. Much of the work of the Community Fellow will be folded into the Project Administrator. But, we will continue with a Communications Fellow, to work with our Executive Director to build out our social media and communications strategy. In 2018-2019, this work was paid at $15 an hour for 200 hours over the course of 3-6 months, which we consider a living wage for an apprenticeship. We propose increasing this budget to $5,000 to extend the duration of the apprenticeship to 6-9 months.