[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 10:55, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org> wrote:
> John is unfortunately right. The (currently not publicly available as I
> understand) draft includes clauses that require every chapter that receives
> a grant to abide all US law, including but not exclusively US anti terrorism
> laws and trade bans (unless a court has ruled that... etc). This puts imho
> chapters in an awkward position - being forced to follow laws they cannot
> reasonably know about unless they hire expensive expertise.
>
> It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I don't
> know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar
> requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the
> board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise.
>
> Because although it is claimed differently (and although Thomas seems to
> hope differently) the interpretation by the staff is clearly that no chapter
> except WMDE should fundraise - no matter how hard they work to improve.
>
> The exact reason for this seems to be vague to me. I really do hope the
> board will step forth and makes clear what their reasoning was and is - and
> doesn't hide behind staff (board members who already did so are being
> appreciated, but I'm still missing important voices). Is the reason really
> transparency? Is it about transferring money? Because that is important, but
> (sometimes easily) fixable. Or is the reasoning you don't like the projects
> the chapters work on? Because *then* we should have a discussion about that,
> and not hide behind non-reasons.

I don't see that as chapters' problem, but Foundation's. Chapters
should present what do they want to do and if Foundation doesn't
complain, then to do that. If WMF thinks that it is feasible to build
infrastructure for handling hundreds of applications and testing them
on anti-terrorism laws, that's up to it.