On 21 May 2014 13:19, Richard Symonds <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
...
This means that the WMF would need to establish an independent
fundraising institution in the UK in order for it to be a registered
charity. This would be in exactly the same ways as other global
charities successfully manage it under UK law.
3. I'm not sure where the 50% figure came from,
but it is incorrect. The
correct figure for that year is 69%. For this past quarter, the correct
figure is even better, at 80.24%. In addition, our fundraising costs as a
percentage of total spend have dropped from 22% to 10%. If anyone wants
more information on this, our treasurer is happy to discuss it with them by
email.
A strange response from WMUK as Russavia included a link to the
analysis in his email, so this seems to be a tangent to the issue of
the most recent accepted and analysed financial report, showing that
more than 50% of funds are spent on non-project activities. Just in
case people missed it, the link was
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/…
The technical way of redefining English words in such a way so that
the significant expenses of running trustee board meetings with staff
support, or paying for highly expensive lawyers and management
consultants as part of governance issues, gets reported as a
deliverable open knowledge Wikimedia project, is unhelpful as a way to
convince the Wikimedia community, or the WMF, that the UK charity is
efficient compared to WMDE or the WMF. Using words this way undermines
the value of the reports.
As a bizarre example the SORP way of conveniently redefining English
words, I could re-employ Jon Davies as a temporary "management
consultant" rather than a "permanent employee", even giving him twice
the income to take home, and yet this could be reported as a
significant increase in the efficiency of the charity, as an expensive
line item would move from administration to programme costs. I doubt
that many Wikimedians are taken in by this management jargon, as
opposed to common sense or plain English use of words.
4. As for the planes - it is indeed fantastic and a
good example of how,
even where we may disagree, we can still all pull together to do great work
for the movement. Speaking personally, it's a shame we don't have something
similar for ships!
...
On this, we can agree. The Avionics Project represents less than 0.1%
of funds handled by the UK charity, yet these volunteer centric and
cheap-as-chips projects now represent the significant majority of
tangible outcomes for Wikimedia Commons, if one, say, counts the
actual number of media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, rather
than soft (so-called "narrative") measures, or internal facing
measures of success like supporting the Wikimania conference. As for
ships, I have uploaded many thousands of historic images of ships to
Commons which are highly valued by other unpaid Wikimedia volunteers,
however these were not supported by Wikimedia UK due to previous
concerns raised about my volunteer uploads from a potential partner
institution that might have employed a WIR and might have done
something similar. If the charity wishes to extend the project to
media such as this, the trustees know how to find me.
PS For those unfamiliar with my background, I was previously a trustee
of Wikimedia UK and even served time as the Chairman, until I resigned
after lots of political unpleasantness. My awareness of WMUK figures
comes from that hands-on experience, not so long ago.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae