Who We Are
The Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup (OCR) is responsible for developing and supporting the implementation of a roadmap of goals to make volunteering for the OTW more fair, accessible, and equitable. This includes planning, drafting, and proposing new processes or changes, and either carrying them out directly or collaborating with other committees to do so.
The roadmap was originally developed based on feedback from an external audit by an organizational culture consultant working directly with OTW volunteers. The OTW (including the Board of Directors) underwent a months-long organizational culture audit that included interviews with volunteers at every level of the organization and in every committee. It included surveys of 265 volunteers (from a total of 922 volunteers at the time) including Chairs and Board, as well as more in-depth interviews with 50 volunteers who wanted to share more information.
From the results of that audit, the OTW Board, alongside the Board Assistants Team, Legal, and Strategic Planning committees, worked with the culture audit firm to establish six key areas needing improvement to promote a healthier and safer OTW and a roadmap to address these themes. Since then, OCR has been hard at work trying to address these areas and build a better OTW. You can find examples of goals OCR has worked on in past Board minutes, such as September 2024 and July 2025, or shared as part of our monthly update in the OTW Newsletter.
Completing these goals requires a lot of cross-committee collaboration. This is important to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved in completing these goals and have their voices heard at the table. As part of our work, we connect with every single committee at some point and in some way, whether it be notifying them of a document relevant to their purview, asking them to have input on a policy, or working directly with them to complete a goal. We also regularly share our documents for OTW-wide feedback from all volunteers to make sure that volunteers are consulted about changes that will affect them.
Internal Structure
Within OCR, our team usually consists of between five and ten volunteers, separated into three roles:
- Heads are in charge of overseeing the workgroup as a whole and are responsible for ensuring OCR work is completed and high quality. They provide leadership, handle project management, and oversee the committee personnel.
- Goal Supervisors provide general assistance to OCR Heads and lead specific goals from the roadmap. This includes providing directional guidance to their goal’s project team, handling tasks related to the goal directly, and more.
- Volunteers are the main role within OCR. Volunteers handle all the main areas of our work and assist with as many different goals as they would like. They do the bulk of our tasks and ensure we keep moving.
Goal Themes
The culture audit which prompted the creation of the roadmap that guides our work identified six themes for improvement in the OTW:
- Accountability at all levels;
- Volunteer safety and security;
- Making the OTW internal chat tool a safe, welcoming space;
- Global accessibility and cross-cultural sensitivity;
- Open and transparent collaboration;
- Organization-wide management standards.
In order to make progress on these six themes, we follow a roadmap of goals that is divided into tasks under each of these themes. It includes not only a list of specific goals, but also next steps and indicators of who’s responsible for each goal so that changes are transparent to Board members, Chairs, and volunteers alike.
The roadmap is flexible and allows for us to periodically conduct a round of feedback and review to ensure that we’re still remaining on target and completing the tasks that are most needed by the OTW.
Contact Us
If you want to learn more about the Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup, are interested in volunteering with us, or if you have any other questions, please contact us—we will be happy to hear from you.