OERF:Operational plan

Executive summary
The OER Foundation has implemented a 3-year planning horizon for its operations. The operational plan is derived from our high level strategy where our targets for the first 3-year plan are focused on achieving a financially sustainable OER initiative. We have developed an operational plan where:


 * Contributing institutional members will receive quantifiable benefits of services provided by the OER Foundation in excess of the dollar value of their membership contribution from the onset of their membership.
 * The OER Foundation commits to an operational business plan where 80% of membership contributions will be reinvested back into OER content and course development by 2011 for the benefit of its members
 * The school sector can participate without restrictions with the option to contribute through a voluntary contribution targeted at $50 per school.

Operational plan: Key performance indicators, milestones and target outputs
This section documents the proposed business plan for the three years ending 31 December 2011. The plan targets the achievement of three major milestones:


 * 1) Achieve the prime cost break-even point - 31 December 2009
 * 2) Consolidate contributing members for scalable OER creation and reuse - 31 December 2010
 * 3) Financially sustainable OER initiative achieved incorporating funding for future investment in OER growth and reuse -  31 December 2011

The business plan is conservative. The plan is based on confirmed grants and contracts as of 1 August 2009. We have adopted a prudent disposition regarding funding targets restricting funding projections to a realistic number of contributing members and what is conservatively achievable with an open public donation drive.

Key performance indicators for the "three-year" plan ending 31 December 2011
The OER Foundation proposes to implement a "three-year" planning cycle, however the inaugural planning cycle is 2.67 years with the official registration of the OER Foundation on 28 April 2009. The OER Foundation specifies the following key performance indicators for the "three-year" plan:


 * To increase the number of registered users on WikiEducator from 9,600 to 21,375 by the end of the three year plan.
 * To increase WikiEducator's international website ranking from a top 100,000 website to a top 50,000 website.
 * To train 1,750 educators in wiki skills for OER content development through a minimum of 35 Learning4Content training workshops.
 * To increase proportional investment in OER content development from 12% of total operating expenses in 2009 to 35% by 31 December 2011.
 * To develop and implement an operational model where the dollar value of quantifiable services and benefits provided by the OER Foundation to contributing institutional members exceeds the cost of membership by 150%.
 * To develop and implement an operational model whereby 80% of institutional membership contributions are reinvested back into OER content development and reuse by 2011.
 * To reduce the proportional cost of running the OERF office from 47% of total expenses in 2009 to 38% by the end of the three year plan.
 * To achieve operational break-even for the OER Foundation where break-even is defined as an economically self-sustaining operation to cover operational costs from institutional membership contributions, corporate sponsorships and voluntary donations (excluding grant funding and contract funding).
 * To increase the number of commissioned OER course equivalents (100 notional learning hours) from a zero base-line in May 2009 to a target of 15 commissioned course developments for the 2011 fiscal year by 31 December 2011.

Milestone 1: Achieve the prime cost break-even point
The baseline break-even point is defined for the purposes of this business plan as the point where confirmed revenue equals the prime costs of OER Foundation operations and services. Prime cost includes, for example, the direct costs of hosting the WikiEducator servers including salaries for technical staff; costs associated with providing training through the Learning4Content project, and direct overhead costs of the OER Foundation in supporting these services. However, the prime cost break-even point does not include surplus revenue for reinvesting back into OER content development or full recovery of indirect overhead costs. This milestone is sub-divided into two phases:


 * 1) Achieving going concern status where the OER Foundation can support the hosting of the WikiEducator websites and provide free training for educators.
 * 2) Achieving operational break-even where the cost of OER Foundation operations are covered, taking into account the technical foundations required for future scalability and growth.


 * Objective: Secure baseline funding for core activities of the OERF and WikiEducator project for the next two years.
 * Target Date: 31 December 2009
 * Output targets
 * Registered WikiEducator users: 12,375
 * Develop strategic and operational plan: Open development of OERF strategic and operational plans
 * Develop operational budget: Cast budget for the three-year plan
 * Marketing strategy: Develop visual identity, promotional brochures and prospectus and commence with recruitment of members
 * Number of educators registered for wiki training: 350
 * Number of training workshops: 9
 * WikiEducator taster sessions: 10
 * OER demonstrator lessons: 50
 * Heywire8 Think Tanks: 2
 * Support WikiEducator Community Governance: Convene Community Council Meeting and support policy development work
 * Finances and staffing:
 * Recruit contributing members: 6
 * Grant Funding: Secure funding for hosting technical infrastructure and Learning4Content training initiative (Achieved)
 * Donation Drive: $50,000
 * Corporate Sponsorship: $10,000
 * Staffing: Director, Software Engineer, Consultants (Training facilitators, graphic design and marketing)

Phase 1: Achieve going concern status

 * Staffing


 * Founding director appointed
 * Learning4Content training facilitators identified and commissioned

Phase 2: Establish technical foundations for scalability and prime cost break-even for OER Foundation operations
Drawing on the WikiEducator experience over the past 3 years, the project has identified technology related investments that will establish the foundations for scaling-up participation, OER creation and reuse within the education sector. These include:


 * Improve usability of the technology to lower initial barriers to participation
 * Improve content interoperability of OER among eLearning delivery platforms so as to provide greater choice for institutions to host static instances of OER developed through peer collaboration approaches and increased autonomy for localised peer review mechanisms
 * Refinements in the capabilities of producing customised textbooks in preparation for scaling-up open textbook development in the formal education sector


 * Staffing


 * Founding director
 * Learning4Content training facilitators contracted
 * Consultants (Graphic design and promotional literature) contracted
 * Lead Software Engineer appointed

Milestone 2: Consolidate contributing members for scalable OER creation and reuse

 * Objective: Work towards achieving the break-even number of contributing members for scaling the growth of commissioned OER creation and reuse thus avoiding dependencies on donor funding for future operations.
 * Target Date: 31 December 2010
 * Output targets
 * Registered WikiEducator users: 16,875
 * Operational planning: Recalibrate operational plan based on outputs achieved during 2009
 * Operational budget: Recalibrate budget based on fiscal performance in 2009
 * Marketing strategy: Ongoing marketing for contributing members, commence strategic relationship building with print on demand publishers and introduce a regular publication for WikiEducator users.
 * Number of educators registered for wiki training: 720
 * Number of training workshops: 19
 * WikiEducator taster sessions: 10
 * OER demonstrator lessons: 125
 * Heywire8 Think Tanks: 2
 * Support WikiEducator Community Governance: Convene Community Council Meeting and support policy development work
 * Finances and staffing:
 * Recruit contributing members: 14 new members (Total 20 members)
 * Grant Funding: Secure funding for hosting technical infrastructure and Learning4Content training initiative (Achieved)
 * Donation Funding: $70,000
 * Corporate Sponsorship: $50,000
 * Staffing: Director, Software Engineer, Consultants (Training facilitators, organisational development)


 * Staffing


 * Founding director
 * Lead Software Engineer
 * Administrator and project manager
 * Consultants: Learning4Content training facilitators, organisational development and support

Milestone 3: Financially sustainable OER initiative achieved incorporating funding for future investment in OER growth and reuse

 * Objective: Achieve a financially sustainable and scalable international OER content initiative where 80% of membership contributions are reinvested back into OER content development and reuse without reliance on external donor funding for OER Foundation operations.
 * Target Date: 31 December 2011
 * Output targets
 * Registered WikiEducator users: 21,375
 * Operational planning: Recalibrate operational plan based on outputs achieved during 2010
 * Operational budget: Recalibrate budget based on fiscal performance in 2010
 * Marketing strategy: Ongoing marketing for recruiting contributing members, extending strategic relationships with print on demand publishers and establishing an advertising revenue stream for the WikiEducator quarterly publication.
 * Number of educators registered for wiki training: 720
 * Number of training workshops: 20
 * Heywire8 Think Tanks: 2
 * Support WikiEducator Community Governance: Convene Community Council Meeting and support policy development work
 * Finances and staffing:
 * Recruit contributing members: 20 new members (Total 40 members)
 * Grant Funding: Secure funding for hosting technical infrastructure (Achieved)
 * Donation Funding: $100,000
 * Membership contributions from tertiary institutions: $200,000
 * Corporate Sponsorship: $100,000
 * Staffing: Director, Software Engineer, Consultants (Training facilitators, organisational development)

Staffing


 * Founding director
 * Lead Software Engineer
 * Administrator and project manager
 * Consultants: Learning4Content training facilitators, organisational development and support

Staffing
The OER Foundation will evolve and develop as a virtual organisation with the majority of its staffing needs subcontracted through the international WikiEducator community and contributing members around the world. We envisage that the key staff of the OER foundation will be limited to 3.0 FTE members by 2011:


 * Director (Leadership and OER strategy innovation)
 * Lead Software Engineer (To manage and implement technology innovation)
 * Administrative support and project management.

We have adopted a very tight and conservative budget. The OER Foundation recognises that we can scale and improve return on investment for our members by recruiting dedicated staff for:


 * Organisational Development / Business Development (Facilitate strategic, administrative and organizational change to increase performance and build organizational capacity among contributing members).

The budget proposal for the current 3-year plan is presented as a conservative baseline budget. In the event that we exceed the membership numbers presented in this budget, the OER Foundation will prioritise the recruitment of organisational and business development services.

We envisage that the following services will be subcontracted as the project continues to grow and surplus funds become available:


 * Authoring for commissioned OER projects
 * Learning design services
 * Software development
 * Training facilitators
 * Monitoring and evaluation services
 * Bureau services for technology support in digitising materials
 * Editorial services
 * Project managements
 * Multimedia development
 * Translation services
 * Graphic design
 * Web journalism and communication

Overall revenue plan
The OER Foundation is a philanthropic organisation committed to facilitating social change in education through the principles of "openness" in general and OER in particular. The OER Foundation has made a value-based commitment to providing free hosting services for the creation, reuse and remixing of OER including a commitment to provide free training to educators who want to learn how to use wiki technology for the creation and remixing of OER. In practical terms this means:


 * We will not refuse the registration of any educator for free training in our online workshops
 * We will not carry advertising on the WikiEducator.org site
 * We will not convert our free services into a user pay model at a later date.

The strategic objectives of our budgeted revenue plan for 2009 - 2011 as depicted in Figure 1 are:


 * To reduce dependency of donor funding for operations, restricting applications for external donor funding to strategic projects (Blue curve in Figure 1). Under the current three-year plan, 49% of confirmed donor funding is committed to strategic projects.
 * To develop contributions from the higher education sector as a prime revenue stream with the understanding that tangible benefits from OER Foundation membership must exceed the costs of membership (Yellow curve in Figure 1).
 * To build general public donations and voluntary contributions from schools as a sustainable revenue stream (Green curve in Figure 1).
 * To develop corporate citizenship sponsorship and corporate revenue streams as an important component of the revenue strategy taking into account appropriate exposure and benefits for corporate sponsors in line with the values of the WikiEducator community (Purple curve in Figure 1).
 * While contract income is potentially an important revenue source for the OER Foundation, our current three-year plan is both realistic and prudent restricted by our capacity of planned staffing to deliver on third party contracts (Red curve in Figure 1).

To fund operations in providing these services, the 2009 - 2011 "three-year" plan specifies the following revenue targets:

Budget


Notes


 * 1) Income budgeted under grants and contracts is restricted to confirmed contracts as of 1 August 2009, and therefore does not include any speculative income. This is to avoid dependencies on donor funding for operational expenditure in achieving a financially self-sustaining model for the OER Foundation.
 * 2) Membership fees for contributing tertiary education institutions are based on 6, 20 and 40 contributing members for 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively.
 * 3) The OER Foundation is an independent non-profit entity and Otago Polytechnic's membership contribution is included under income for contributing members.
 * 4) Office of the OER Foundation includes the salaries of the Director and project management/administration support, office expenses, premises and limited national travel.
 * 5) Technology support includes the salary for the Lead Software Engineer and systems administrator, costs of hosting and infrastructure support for the WikiEducator project. Contributions in kind from Athabasca University for hosting services are not included.