Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Advisors

Overview

Recommendations

Implementation

Reports

FAQ

In addition to the full membership model, groups will want to tap into expertise and perspectives from advisors for specific questions or dedicated parts of their journey. The role of an advisor is not only to provide advice upon request, but also to bring in diverse voices and perspectives into the conversation.

Advisors can be brought in for a one-off consultancy or peer-review for a specific topic, or can be involved over a longer period of time and across different topics of the working group. Depending on that, the intervention can be participating in a call or commenting on a document, but also a long-term engagement including participating in a series of calls or meetings, being available for interviews or providing written content for the working group to include in their analysis.

The advisor will make suggestions and provide perspective, but will not take part in making decisions, as this is the mandate of the working group members.

To be considered when defining the need for advisors

• Need for expertise in a specific area, diversity in background and perspective, connections within and outside of the movement, experience from change processes or processes around organizational structures;  
• The evaluation of expertise and diversity that the working groups did as part of the diversification process; updated according to needs and gaps that surfaced recently;
• Advisory role can be defined as general profiles or specific individuals;
• Each advisory role can be different; it can be our friends and allies from the free knowledge ecosystem, it can be professionals that we contract to provide one specific deliverable (like Whose Knowledge?), and it can be experts that offer to work with us pro bono.