Dear Sam,
Money cannot be in two places at the same time. Either it has been moved, or it has not been moved.
The Rai journalists specifically asked "Why the Wikimedia Foundation didn't move it to a separate 501e3 entity?"
Here is the complete question again:
Q:
The Wikimedia Endowment is today still entrusted to the Tides Foundation. According to SignPost
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-05-29/Opinion) on March 2017
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell said: “The WMF board has already given us the direction to move it into a
separate 501c3 once the endowment reaches $33 million. [...] WMF's Executive Director is supportive
of moving it to a new 501c3 once it reaches $33 million."
The Endowment has reached $33 million and passed them reaching $100 million today. Why the
Wikimedia Foundation didn’t move it to a separate 501e3 entity? Being entrusted into the Tides
Foundation is not available to the public any financial report about Wikipedia Endowment. Don't you
think there is a lack of information and transparency about a fund that is created through worldwide
donations?
If the picture you paint in your post describes the actual state of affairs – i.e., the 501c3 has been set up, but it takes time to get the org ready, so for now the money is still with Tides – then the answer should, I feel, have looked something like this:
A:
We were planning to move the Endowment to a separate 501c3 entity when it reached $33 million, but then our board decided to postpone that move. We have now revived the plan to move the funds. We have established a new organisation for that purpose, which received its 501c3 status in 2022. We are currently getting that organisation ready to manage the Endowment and expect to move the funds from Tides to the new org in (month/year).
Instead, Nadee said Rai had it wrong, and made it sound like the money had already been moved. And that is what the programme communicated to the Italian audience – that the WMF said the Endowment had been transferred to a dedicated new entity a few months ago in 2022.
This is contradicted today both by the Endowment website and the Endowment page on Meta-Wiki, which says that the Endowment is "currently managed by the Tides Foundation as a Collective Action Fund".
There are really two issues here:
1. Where is the money? There are now contradictory messages about this in the public domain.
2. How comfortable are we with how the WMF is communicating?
As regards the second point, Nadee also told Rai:
A: The Wikimedia Endowment was founded on and upholds principles of transparency common to our
movement. Our financials are available for public review and we ensure our community and benefactors stay
informed on developments related to the endowment by publishing regular information such as the list of
donors, announcements about Endowment Board members on the Endowment Website. We also publish
current updates and new policy updates on Wikimedia Meta and regular updates on our Diff blog, as well as
on the Wikimedia Foundation website.
I disagree with that statement. The most recent info we have had on the Endowment reflects January 2022 status – figures describing where things stood a full year ago. And even then, nobody added the updated info to the Endowment page on Meta. I added it, sourced to board meeting minutes.[1]
And as I have mentioned before, we have not seen a single audited financial statement for the Endowment showing revenue and expenses etc. in all the seven years it has existed. To me this falls short of the "principles of transparency common to our movement" (a point that, incidentally, was also made in the Italian programme).
I (and others) also asked questions about Tides Advocacy several weeks ago on Meta.[2] There has been no reply from the WMF to date.
As you may recall, in 2019/2020, Tides Advocacy were given $4.223 million that were to be used for Annual Plan Grants to Wikimedia affiliates in the July 2020 – June 2021 financial year.[3] I have looked through the Form 990 disclosures Tides Advocacy has filed for the 2020 and 2021 calendar years (their 2021 Form 990 only became available a few weeks ago), hoping to find US and non-US expenditure items corresponding to that 2020/2021 APG amount over Tides Advocacy's 2020 and 2021 calendar years. I have not been successful. My sums fall about $400,000 short of the $4.223 million total.
Absent a clarification from the WMF, would you (and anyone else reading in who feels so inclined) be able to have a look through the forms as well, to see whether you come to a different result? The forms are linked in the discussion.[2] It is always possible that you with your WMF board experience might see an error I made or an item I have missed that happily resolves the apparent discrepancy.
Regards,
Andreas