Re: WMF Board of Trustees: Board Selection Process Update

Since there is more board news today, sending a long-drafted followup:

On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 7:45 PM Erik Moeller via Wikimedia-l <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Wikimedia Foundation needs folks with relevant governance experience
> for an organization of this scale, but it also needs voices that
> challenge it and push it in new directions on the Board. The trick is
> to find the right balance between those goals. Requiring that people
> advance along an internal functionary ladder towards the possibility
> of standing for trusteeship is not that balance; it is the kind of
> requirement structure you find in institutions that drift towards
> stagnancy and self-reinforcement, often out of institutionalized fear.
>
> A compromise proposal:
> * Change the word "must" to "should" when it comes to the governance
> experience criteria
> * Require that candidates indicate comparable or equivalent experience
> in their candidate profile if they do not meet these criteria.
>

To echo and add to what Erik said: Governance of an organization like WMF
is a wickedly complex problem, requiring many different skillsets. It's not
enough to have good *ideas* - you have to have the *skills* to make those
ideas happen: how to understand an auditor's report; how to think through
the human politics of governance; employee management skills; etc. etc.

So I think tightening skills and experience requirements is pretty
reasonable.

I like Erik's suggestions, and would add: WMF should invest in board skills
development, not just restrict those who don't yet have the skills.  Among
other things, this could be formal training through services like
https://boardsource.org/; or experiential learning through board observer
seats/fellowships like Haas does for their b-school students:
https://haas.berkeley.edu/cssl/programs-events/board-fellows/ The former
would be good skills development for the movement, and the latter would
double as a transparency move.

I mean *invest*, not "commit to invest"; the Foundation should do a few
years of this investment and *then* put in stricter rules, since otherwise
the temptation for new board members to say "this is not necessary" and
pull the drawbridge up after them would be very strong.

I would also add, beating my recent drum: much of the energy that goes into
Foundation board questions should instead be going into making the
Foundation less central to the movement. That goes for the board -- who
should be following through on the "infrastructure for open" commitments of
2030, not re-centralizing, so that the exact composition of the board is
less important -- and for many movement leaders: *you can be a movement
leader without being on the WMF board*. There are so many ways to lead.

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