User:Mike Cline/USCAN Working Group Drafts/Executive Summary

In June 2012, the Global Development Group of the Wikimedia Foundation chartered a working group to explore and propose a new structure for the future of the Wikimedia Education Program in the United States and Canada. The working group adopted a strategic planning process to develop specific recommendations and action plans to achieve the deliverables in the Working Group charter. The working group met twice in person, collaborated on-wiki with the Wikipedia community and via other internal communications to establish the strategy laid out in this document and put forward the specific recommendations herein.

The Working Group is asking the Wikimedia Foundation to approve this strategy and support the creation of an independent, non-profit, Thematic Organization, affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation with financial and professional resources as necessary to ensure ultimate success of the US Canada Education Program over the next two years.

The Working Group is asking the Wikimedia Foundation to specifically act on the following recommendations:

1. Organize and support a resolution to the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee to approve the creation of the US Canada Education Program as a Wikimedia Thematic Organization
2. Support the creation of a Board of Directors and the creation and adoption of by-laws for the new organization
3. Support the creation and filing of the necessary legal documents required to establish the new organization
4. Support the establishment of a two-year financial budget, funded in part by the Wikimedia Foundation, for organizing, staffing and sustaining operations of the new organization as outlined in the Future Picture and Task Force proposals.
5. Support whatever actions are necessary to transition the current US Canada Education program responsibilities to the new organization.