[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Nathan]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:43 AM,  <Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  Funding chapters by grants from WMF so that they all use the money in the same WMF approved way is a systematically bad idea in the same way sending shoes to Africa is a bad idea.  Redefining the chapters who participated in a joint fundraiser with WMF as WMF's "payment processors" is straight-up insulting.  Writing about ethical concerns while at same time being blind to anything that does not maximize donations is laughable.  The obvious solution to the stated concern that is being raised is returning to the split screen fundraiser landing page which has been ruled out for not maximizing donations. The seemingly underlying and unstated concern about wanting to make sure that WMF leads and maintains control of the movement is actually undesirable and should not be pursued.
>


The WMF has a legal and ethical responsibility to ensure that funding
it channels to other organizations is not being wasted or misused. The
appropriate way to do that is to affiliate and direct funds only to
organizations with acceptable financial controls and public reporting.
I think the tax deduction and post-summit timing issues of the recent
letter can be debated, and have been, but it's just simple fact that
the WMF controls the funding stream and thus shares responsibility for
how the funding is used - not to mention any misuse of funds by a
chapter using Wikimedia marks would reflect back on the Foundation.