Thanks for your input, Tom - you raise some important points.
And a question for whoever understands company law:
would the following be
possible in theory:
1) I find a group of 5 people who want to stand for the board on a
platform of giving back the entire earnings of WMUK to the membership...
I would personally very much welcome your experience and approach back
on the board! However, I'm afraid, no, the plan wouldn't work. Wiki UK
is founded as a company limited by guarantee which means its funds can
only be used to finance its mission. Unlike companies limited by
shares, the company is not able to pay dividends to members or
benefits to board members. You could, for instance, stand on a
platform of donating the entire funds to the Foundation, if you
wanted, and abandoning the plan to professionalise the chapter and
employ staff.
A question for the treasurer while I’m paying some
attention to this stuff:
what interest rate are we currently earning on our half million? If they’re
less than around 4% or something how do you justify this.
We are currently earning only 0.20% on cash held in our current
account and no interest on cash while it is in PayPal. Most of the
money is only intended to be there for a short time, but we are
looking into investing the balance that will be held on reserve.
Having said that, 4% is a very generous rate at the moment, even for
half a million.
This is yet another reason
why our current level of income is a bad thing not a good one. I was
sceptical about entering the first fundraiser before we were ready. Given we
failed to spend that money we clearly weren’t, so doing the second one
really wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
I'm inclined to agree - which is why I want to give any surplus funds
we dont manage to use effectively to the Foundation. It's interesting
that the history of WMDE is quite similar to ours in that they also
underestimated their income and significantly underspent in the first
few years.
Even assuming the WMF is
completely efficient, that’s over 20% of expenditure going to admin.
The admin to project expenses ratio, whilst crude, is one that a lot
of people look at, particularly the Charity Commission. Personally,
I'm not sure the chapter manager, if he focusses on the things I've
started to list, should be counted as "admin". On that basis, we could
end up with quite a healthy ratio - which reflects the fact that
nearly everything is and will still be done by volunteers. Something
like the GLAM-WIKI or British Library events had very little overhead
expense.
On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Tom Holden
<tom.holden(a)economics.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> I am looking at the budget. £123k on admin, £455k on programme expenditure,
> of which £290k is going straight to the WMF anyway. Even assuming the WMF is
> completely efficient, that’s over 20% of expenditure going to admin.
>
>
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2011_Budget
>
> Looking at income is irrelevant since we seem to be consistently missing our
> expenditure targets and thus ending the year with money left over. (If the
> £455k target is missed as seems likely then the admin expenditure chunk will
> be higher still.)
>
A question for the treasurer while I’m paying some
attention to this stuff:
what interest rate are we currently earning on our half million? If they’re
less than around 4% or something how do you justify this.
>
> And a question for whoever understands company law: would the following be
> possible in theory:
>
> 1) I find a group of 5 people who want to stand for the board on a
> platform of giving back the entire earnings of WMUK to the membership
>
> 2) We stand, we’re voted in because everyone there wanted £500 (which
> is about our assets to members ratio at the moment).
>
> 3) We change the constitution as necessary, getting it past an EGM
> again because people want £500.
>
> 4) We do it.
>
> With our current company status I’m worried this might be possible. And
> obviously the more money we have sitting in our bank account the more
> tempting this starts to look for our membership. This is yet another reason
> why our current level of income is a bad thing not a good one. I was
> sceptical about entering the first fundraiser before we were ready. Given we
> failed to spend that money we clearly weren’t, so doing the second one
> really wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Roger Bamkin
> Sent: 27 February 2011 17:12
> To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] job descriptions
>
>
>
> Tom, you are not comparing next years budget are you with last years
> activity? Staff paid for last year was one person part time I understood and
> income was around 500,000 pounds. That seems pretty efficient to me or am I
> missing something?
>
>
>
> regards
>
> Roger
>
> On 27 February 2011 16:53, Tom Holden <tom.holden(a)economics.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Gulp. If people knew WMUK's overhead to activity ratio do you think they'd
> still be happy to donate? Or a similar question, do you think a £1 given to
> WMUK does more for the interests of UK Wikimedians than £1 direct to
> Wikimedia? I note that the bulk of your programme expenditure is going
> straight to the WMF anyway, so all that's happening is that the money's
> being processed by WMUK's (less efficient, due to lower scale) system, then
> going to the WMF (with additional overheads from them). Indeed it seems that
> it's only going to their international projects which is arguably further
> from the interests of UK Wikimedians than server/code expenditure is.
>
> I don't know the details of what you're doing at the moment so maybe I'm
> completely wrong. But my distinct impression at the moment is that UK
> donations would be much more effective if they went straight to the WMF then
> groups of users petitioned them for money for UK specific projects. Perhaps
> something like WMUK could intermediate, but it could certainly be a much
> lighter organisation.
>
> Admittedly charitable status if it ever arrives will change this story,
> providing the gains from gift aid outweigh the relative inefficiencies of
> WMUK. Even this isn't totally obvious at the moment, particularly as unclear
> whether the things WMUK is spending money on are more useful to the average
> user of Wikimedia projects than what the WMF project is spending money on.
>
> I hope to hear some serious arguments about the chapter's efficiency at the
> next AGM. I also hope for the chance for some significant input from the
> membership on expenditure priorities.
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew
> Turvey
> Sent: 27 February 2011 15:57
> To: WMUK-L
> Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] job descriptions
>
> In advance of the board meeting next Tuesday, I've started drafting up some
> job descriptions on the wiki at
>
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Job_Descriptions for the new members of staff
> that we are recruiting.
>
> Please add your contributions on the main and talk page to develop this.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Andrew
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
>
> --
>
> Roger Bamkin
>
> (aka Victuallers)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
>