On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:35 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk@effeietsanders.org> wrote:


2011/3/2 Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com>
A few comments:
<snip> lots of interesting points </snip>

>> <nowiki>*</nowiki> A possible model would be for chapters in the region
>> where these partners operate to offer the possibility to donate a percentage
>> of the money to support these groups' activities --what would obviously need
>> fundraising agreements between chapters and partner organizations. For
>> instance, people donating to WM Irak from Irak could have the option to
>> state that they want a percentage of their donation to support the efforts
>> of a partner organization focused on promoting Kurdish language contents,
>> should such an organization and WM Irak exist.

That is possible.  Or there could be a great political and social
disagreement between a non-Kurdish "WM Iraq" and a "Kurdish Wikimedian
Organization", and they could refuse to share resources (even if they
had a nominal cooperation agreement to share information).

I am not sure if this is what you are suggesting, but to be totally clear: I do not think that we should as a movement accept donations to be "not spent on/in XXX" or accept that we have organizations in our movement that are on bad terms together. To accept an organization just for non-kurdish Iraq is going in a very very dangerous direction because it gives off a signal that we treat it as a seperate country - which is a political standpoint I would not like Wikimedia to take. That is independent of my personal opinion on the matter, which is irrelevant here, but rather a general idea that Wikimedia should be neutral on such political issues. The same goes for an "ethnic Serbians chapter" etc - I would personally also not accept that as a non-chapter association. But lets have this discussion on a real public forum and let others participate!

So basically I think we should be moving forward - we have this draft now, and I might not agree on every detail but it is most important that we get it out there. 

Best,

Lodewijk


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I believe we are conflating two separate issues here. The example of WM iraq and a Kurdish entity doesn't take into account the geo-political situation surrounding ethnic groups in Iraq, a similar situation might exist in Ethnic Serbian or even Catalan entity to a variable degree. Either way, supporting one over the other would be making a stance that I agree no one in the group would be willing to take.

So, the question becomes about fundraising, how one sub-national organization can share funding from a national one. The solution suggested earlier is giving an option for sub-national entities to opt-in to the national fundraiser. Although this might seem like a simple solution, it would bring a lot of issues associated with it. Chapters and national entities would not like to receive funding with strings attached to it, the sub-national entities might not have a good relation with the chapter and would be placed directly under them in this hierarchy. There are a lot of geo-political, social, legal issues with the sub-national entities. An alternative solution would be using the foundation to bridge this gap as an outside, completely unaffiliated entity for some of the sensitive issues.

Theo