It's now transpired that the WMF actually received IRS approval for the new non-profit organisation intended to take over the Endowment over eight months ago, in June 2022.[1] The October 2022 announcement that approval had been received was made four months after the fact.
Two years ago, in April 2021, we were told that the Foundation would "move the endowment in its entirety to this new entity once the new charity receives its IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter".[2] Yet even with the letter received last summer we still seem to be no nearer to having our $100 million Endowment in the hands of a transparent organisation that publishes audited statements of the Endowment's assets, revenue and expenditure, along with a Form 990. We still don't have a date for when the money will be transferred from Tides. We're merely told it will still take "months".
So it looks like we will have had another full year of millions of dollars of donations bypassing the Wikimedia Foundation's books.
None of this would be an issue if the Foundation had released audited financial statements for the Endowment during the past seven years. But all we've ever had is promises of transparency in the future, and requests for more money now.
Remember, Anne, all donations to the Endowment are treated as a "pass-through", so "they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets".[2] That means they're essentially invisible to us, because the Tides Foundation doesn't publish separate financial statements for the Wikimedia Endowment showing us how much money has come in and how much has gone out.
Moreover, all planned gifts willed to the Wikimedia Foundation have also been going to the Endowment for some time now, wherever the terms of the will allow.[3] I am not sure whether that means that these planned gifts are now also processed as "pass-throughs". I suspect they are. If so, that means that these amounts flowing into the Endowment have also become invisible.
Am I mistaken on any of the above? If not, are you really satisfied with that degree of transparency over a fund reportedly holding more than 100 million dollars of donations? Would you accept such conduct from any Wikimedia chapter?