State of Mozilla Clubs – what’s left for 2015?

Since the launch of Mozilla Clubs at the beginning of the year, we have been in an ever developing lean model of create, test, adapt and share. As we continue through this cycle and develop a new program, we’ve had our share of learning.

Throughout it all, a lot has worked! In the last few months we solidified the offering of Mozilla Clubs as a leadership and educational program, along with that of the greater Mozilla Learning Network team. Within that offering we have seen our programs be a forcing function driving towards our curriculum, content and resources. You can see that coming together at teach.mozilla.org, which is always evolving as we continue to test and build. We’re getting better at documenting what we do and how others can replicate our values in their programs. Above all, we’ve generated excitement in the Mozilla universe and outside with hundreds of people wanting to start a Mozilla Club and a lot of partners joining in the work.

Developing a global club program is no easy task, and has very rarely been done at the scale we had planned. Global means understanding how multiple languages, locations, cultures and laws can be modeled into one fine-tuned program. That obviously has taken understanding and time, and while not at perfection yet, we’re on the road to developing. Also, the need for thorough digital training and on-boarding is critical for the hundreds that raise their hand to run a club and need the skills and knowledge to do so. When the system became overloaded, we realized we needed better coaching to get individuals through the funnel and quickly activated.

After taking time to reflect on the past eight months, we’ve used our learning to shape what the next four months need to look like in order to continue to develop the Mozilla Clubs program. Here’s a snapshot of our current framing and objectives for the remainder of 2015.

The two-faces of a Mozilla Club applicant

From inception we have had a lot of applications from individuals wanting to run a Mozilla Club. Over time, we’ve created guidelines, pledges and even interviews to manage expectations and responsibilities of those individuals. In doing so we have learned a lot about why they want to be apart of the program and what they want to receive by being involved. We’ve identified two unique categories; 1) An individual or group wants to self-identify as being a Mozilla Club and agrees to the guidelines and pledge set forth by our team, 2) An individual or group already self-identifies with another affiliation and their brand but wants to access Mozilla Club resources, curriculum, guides and information to bring more value to their existing programs. These groups are not something we promote on the site but are a group we organize behind-the-scenes and use to get our materials out into the world. By identifying these groups we can develop plans to address both their needs.

What next:

Adapt our sign-up process on teach.mozilla.org/clubs to acknowledge both groups and allow them to self-select when signing up as either a club or affiliate. The existing clubs sign-up form can remain the same though the additional sign-up form can gather information on affiliation and location.
We will also have to update management systems on the back-end of the site to represent the two groups and allow for possible transferring within groups.
Create communications plan to continuously share Mozilla Clubs resources as they become available. Share curriculum, guides and stories so other clubs or affiliates can model practices and to appeal to potential new clubs and organizations.

	Active Clubs	Affiliated with another org; wants Clubs resources	Pledge to teach
Value to Mozilla	They live our mission! They identify with our brand, use our materials.	Build a list of partners and others who respect our brand, but already have a brand identity. Can draw upon this group for potential leadership opps in the future (CCs, Fellows, etc.)	Building a list of interested, but not-yet-committed, people; offer a low-bar point of entry
Why they join	They want personal support and brand and resources	They want resources, w/o support (already have a brand)	Just want to indicate interest
What they get	Regional Coordinator, 1-1 attention, first access to resources; announcements about tools, curriculum, prof dev	Email alerts for new Club guides, resources, curriculum and role opportunities; announcements about tools, curriculum, prof dev	Announcements about tools, curriculum, prof dev
Frequency	Weekly or Bi-weekly (mostly via their RC)	Monthly (from Mozilla)	No more than once every 3 months (from Mozilla)
Presence on site	Sign-up form, showcase of approved Clubs	Sign-up form	Pledge form (once there are a lot, we should show a count on site)

On-boarding and training of Club Captains and Regional Coordinators

We’ve got a lot of people in the door; including 100+ Club Captains, 15 Regional Coordinators and a handful of partner organizations. Each range in knowledge of Mozilla practices and ability to run successful events. Now that we have demonstrated the potential and built excitement, we need to focus on developing the leaders who are a part of Mozilla Clubs.

What next:

Develop on-boarding system for new cohort of 18 Regional Coordinators and on-going recruitment of new Club Captains. For a Club Captain this involves everything from when they sign up on the site, to getting matched with a Regional Coordinator to successfully running the first few club events. For a Regional Coordinator this involves understanding the role, how to manage multiple groups, how to provide guidance and measure success.
Create a Web Literacy training program that all individuals involved in the Mozilla Clubs (as well as Mozilla Learning Network) can benefit from.
Create a Regional Coordinator and/or Club Captains specific training program that gives individuals the coaching they need to run a successful club and develop their skills.
Create systems for on-boarding and training online.

Guides and resources to running a club

We always knew that a repository of information on how to run a Mozilla Club would need to be produced. In the past few months we’ve developed GitHub-based guides on how to brand your club, your first month as a Club Captain, how to interview Club Captains and more. This is the tip of the iceberg. We are in the process of developing and scoping many more. By the end of the year we can expect to have 20-30 guides that cover a variety of topics.

What next:

Finalize (and in some cases scope) the next 5 guides: How to market your club, how to tell the story of your club, how to share your club on social media, how to manage time at a club event and how to design local activities.
Create 10 new guides alongside the 10 sessions within the Mozilla Clubs pathway at Mozfest. Sessions within the pathway have been strategically picked based on current club needs. It is our hope to work with session leaders to simultaneously turn their session into guides. This will allow for new guides on how to encourage participation/collaboration, running a club in the open, practices for on-boarding new club attendees, growing your club community, using arts as a form of participatory learning, tips to sustain your Mozilla Club after the first year, and others.
Create an online repository that links to all available guides.

Developing the Club Captain to Regional Coordinator relationship

The dynamics between Club Captains and Regional Coordinators has been one of the most interesting to observe over the past few months. In some cases the individuals know each other and in some cases they don’t but have been matched based on location or interests. In situations where they know each other, individuals were generally able to work better together because each group felt more connected to the work they were doing individually and together. Since the reality is that you might not always know your Regional Coordinator, we need to focus on how to improve this relationship and collaboration for those that are going in blind. The better the relationship, the greater the success.

What next:

Develop systems for when individuals get matched. Provide a sample outline of joint storytelling, sharing and continuous meetings. Test with small sample and roll out within the program.
Monitor on-going relationships between Club Captains and Regional Coordinator and research behavior patterns.

Localization of curriculum

Having clubs around the world means Mozilla Clubs are being run in multiple languages. Though many Club Captains and Regional Coordinators are proficient in English, there are barriers for many others who want to teach in their local language (after all, many of their club participants are not English proficient!). By December we aim to have the Web Literacy Basics Module translated in 5-10 languages.

What next:

Finalize list of top languages of current Club Captains and/or Regional Coordinators.
Run localization campaign with community to translate Web Literacy Basics into preferred language.
Develop system or place to share localized content.
Create guide on how to create activities so that individuals can create local content quicker.

Storify our early clubs and partners

We need to start documenting what is happening! For starters, document stories of club participants, Club Captains and Regional Coordinators so we can learn what they are doing and how they are developing. Also, we’ve been working with a variety of partner organizations since we launched such as UN Women, Equity Group Foundation, Ford Foundation, Telecenter, National Writing Project, Sproutfund and Mozilla Reps. Some of our most successful Regional Coordinators are through these partnerships and we want to be able to replicate the model for future Regional Coordinators to get potential funding, network and support for their work locally.

What next:

Organize stories of club participants, Club Captains and Regional Coordinators from various paths to be able to show their leadership and development. We should be identifying these stories and sharing them through blogs and our network.
Create stories, business plans and budgets for grant-funded partnerships. We can use this package to leverage potential future grants by showcasing the impact of current funding in a specific area.
Develop a model for working with established key partners such as Spoutfund and National Writing Project.

Adjusting 2015 goals

As we learn more, we have to adjust our expectations and continuously remind ourselves to strive for quality over quantity. Our organizational goal is focused on building the best Web Literacy leaders. In light of the developments over the past eight months, we’ve adjusted our objectives to have by end of Q4:

30 trained Regional Coordinators each overseeing 2-10 Club Captains.
150-200 trained Club Captains running on-going local Mozilla clubs in their communities.
150-200 individuals using Mozilla Club resources in their existing programs.