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endotwracismThe OTW posted their 2023-2026 Strategic Plan on July 24, following up on six years of work since their previous 2017-2020 Strategic Plan. A Strategic Plan is a guiding document that many organizations and companies will develop to outline long-term goals and how to achieve them.
OTW’s Strategic Plan consists of three parts:
We wanted to provide our analysis and feedback on the Strategic Plan from the perspective of our goals to hold OTW to its commitments to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, update their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3, and provide more transparency.
The process for developing the Strategic Plan was opaque for people who are not staff, board, or volunteers with the OTW. The draft version of the Strategic Plan was not circulated to members or AO3 users outside the organization before it was finalized. While it is not unusual for nonprofits to only solicit feedback from their own staff and board on such a document, most nonprofits and websites tend to do other forms of proactive community engagement such as through surveys, focus groups, workshops, and more to understand the needs of people who do not work for the organization. In the absence of that kind of engagement, the Strategic Plan could have been an opportunity for the OTW to seek input from a wider base, including OTW members, AO3 users, Fanlore editors and viewers, editors of and contributors to Transformative Works & Cultures, mods of archives imported through Open Doors, and more.
Additionally, the OTW mentions that they received feedback from volunteers in the year between when the Vision Statement was published in 2022 and when the final plan was published this year, but the Vision Statement itself has not been updated to reflect that input. Given that the Vision Statement guides the organization’s priorities and themes of work, this is also a missed opportunity.
The Vision Statement includes one bullet point under “Diversifying Spaces” on this topic: “Contracting with an individual or organization to consult on issues of racial bias and inequality within the Organization and its projects. Options for this will be researched by a dedicated Diversity Consultant Research Officer, appointed by the Board of Directors.”
The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes goals for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DRCO), the volunteer who was appointed in April 2022 to research diversity consultants. The DRCO is to give their first report to the board in three months (October 2023), a year and a half after being appointed. The DRCO is supposed to then give reports every three months, which will be “shared both internally and externally to users”, and the DRCO and/or consultant are to check in with Volunteer Coalition leaders every six months.
There is no other mention of the goals for the diversity consultant themselves in the timeline, nor a confirmation of the commitment to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, which the OTW Board stated in their July 1 public meeting.
There is no mention of TOS updates to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3.
The Vision Statement included two sections that are relevant here: one on “External Communication” as a priority area, and a section under “Challenges” on “Public Narrative” that included possible goals such as sharing more information about OTW’s history, purpose, and structures in infographics; encouraging committees to create public-facing video content to explain the work that they do; and revising the overall communications strategy to improve transparency and communicate the missions effectively.
The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes two goals that follow up on this in 18 months:
The Strategic Plan also mentions that the DRCO will give quarterly reports to the Board on their progress, which will also be shared both internally and externally.
The Vision Statement’s section on “Diversifying Spaces” also had other strategies intended to address racism, including creating volunteer resource groups who “may suggest, advise, be consulted on, or provide information for OTW policies that may affect their experience within the OTW and our projects”; trying to expand recruitment to diversify volunteer, staff, and board candidate bases; and providing more features to give individual AO3 users more control for filtering and customization.
The timeline in the Strategic Plan included these goals:
The Implementation Support Plan primarily consists of actions that the Strategic Planning Committee and leadership will take to ensure plan implementation, including checking in with teams, evaluating progress on goals and creating documentation, providing support for committees, monitoring the plan’s feasibility, and celebrating goal completion.
OTW’s Strategic Plan consists of three parts:
- Vision Statement 2022-2025, which outlines the mission, priorities, and challenges for the organization, and was published a year ago.
- 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, which gives a timeline for what the organization plans to work on and achieve at various intervals, beginning in July 2023.
- Strategic Planning Implementation Support Plan, which provides guidelines for the Strategic Planning Committee and the entire organization to monitor the progress of the priorities outlined in the plan.
We wanted to provide our analysis and feedback on the Strategic Plan from the perspective of our goals to hold OTW to its commitments to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, update their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3, and provide more transparency.
Strategic Planning Process
The process for developing the Strategic Plan was opaque for people who are not staff, board, or volunteers with the OTW. The draft version of the Strategic Plan was not circulated to members or AO3 users outside the organization before it was finalized. While it is not unusual for nonprofits to only solicit feedback from their own staff and board on such a document, most nonprofits and websites tend to do other forms of proactive community engagement such as through surveys, focus groups, workshops, and more to understand the needs of people who do not work for the organization. In the absence of that kind of engagement, the Strategic Plan could have been an opportunity for the OTW to seek input from a wider base, including OTW members, AO3 users, Fanlore editors and viewers, editors of and contributors to Transformative Works & Cultures, mods of archives imported through Open Doors, and more.
Additionally, the OTW mentions that they received feedback from volunteers in the year between when the Vision Statement was published in 2022 and when the final plan was published this year, but the Vision Statement itself has not been updated to reflect that input. Given that the Vision Statement guides the organization’s priorities and themes of work, this is also a missed opportunity.
Strategic Planning Timeline and Actions
Diversity Consultant
The Vision Statement includes one bullet point under “Diversifying Spaces” on this topic: “Contracting with an individual or organization to consult on issues of racial bias and inequality within the Organization and its projects. Options for this will be researched by a dedicated Diversity Consultant Research Officer, appointed by the Board of Directors.”
The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes goals for the Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DRCO), the volunteer who was appointed in April 2022 to research diversity consultants. The DRCO is to give their first report to the board in three months (October 2023), a year and a half after being appointed. The DRCO is supposed to then give reports every three months, which will be “shared both internally and externally to users”, and the DRCO and/or consultant are to check in with Volunteer Coalition leaders every six months.
There is no other mention of the goals for the diversity consultant themselves in the timeline, nor a confirmation of the commitment to hire a diversity consultant by the end of 2023, which the OTW Board stated in their July 1 public meeting.
Anti-Harassment Policy Updates to TOS
There is no mention of TOS updates to address racist harassment and abusive content on AO3.
Transparency
The Vision Statement included two sections that are relevant here: one on “External Communication” as a priority area, and a section under “Challenges” on “Public Narrative” that included possible goals such as sharing more information about OTW’s history, purpose, and structures in infographics; encouraging committees to create public-facing video content to explain the work that they do; and revising the overall communications strategy to improve transparency and communicate the missions effectively.
The timeline in the Strategic Plan includes two goals that follow up on this in 18 months:
- “Strengthen Overall Communications Strategy: International and multilingual external communications strategy is clarified and further developed.”
- “Strengthen Consistency and Reach of Public Messaging: Clear guidance for consistency across our platforms to support raising awareness of the OTW mission is developed.”
The Strategic Plan also mentions that the DRCO will give quarterly reports to the Board on their progress, which will also be shared both internally and externally.
Other relevant areas
The Vision Statement’s section on “Diversifying Spaces” also had other strategies intended to address racism, including creating volunteer resource groups who “may suggest, advise, be consulted on, or provide information for OTW policies that may affect their experience within the OTW and our projects”; trying to expand recruitment to diversify volunteer, staff, and board candidate bases; and providing more features to give individual AO3 users more control for filtering and customization.
The timeline in the Strategic Plan included these goals:
- Recruitment: In 6 months, “each committee will have reviewed research on and taken action to improve diversity and decrease bias in candidate selection processes.”
- Volunteer Coalitions: In 12 months, “research into volunteer coalitions is completed and initial volunteer coalitions start being formed”; and every six months from there, the DRCO and/or consultant will check in with the Volunteer Coalition leaders.
Implementation
The Implementation Support Plan primarily consists of actions that the Strategic Planning Committee and leadership will take to ensure plan implementation, including checking in with teams, evaluating progress on goals and creating documentation, providing support for committees, monitoring the plan’s feasibility, and celebrating goal completion.
Our recommendations
- Given that the hiring of a diversity consultant has been lagging for three years, and since it is not in these documents, the commitment to hiring a diversity consultant by the end of 2023 should be reiterated in other official OTW communications.
- When the DRCO and Board have developed a scope of work for the diversity consultant, the Strategic Plan timeline should be updated to include key milestones and expected deliverables for the consultant within the 2023-2026 time period.
- The regular updates that are currently assigned to the DRCO in the timeline should be extended to the diversity consultant once hired, to ensure transparency.
- The Strategic Planning Committee should provide more specifics on how they are evaluating progress on the plan’s goals, and ideally give updates at regular intervals on that progress.
- For the next Strategic Plan, the OTW should engage with the Volunteer Coalitions, particularly those that are intended to support volunteers of color and non-western volunteers, as well as reach out to stakeholders outside of the organization itself, including OTW members and people who engage with OTW’s projects (AO3, Fanlore, Open Doors, and Transformative Work & Cultures).
- The next Strategic Plan should also be completed in a timely manner to prevent missing coverage of years, which was what happened for 2021 and 2022.
