I open this discussion as this issue arise for WMFr and its
professionalization, and I believe same for others chapters.
I would like to know if the foundation or others chapters who have
recruited or will do it have define a wage policy and have decide a public
transparency for this wages.
Wikimedia France had an employee during less than one year before we
separated through a negociation.It's salary was not published but easy to
find in our accounts as he was our only employee. We then recruited within
a short period, 3 employees with a permanent contract and one with
fixed-term contract in charge of the fundraising. So it raised the question
of wage policy, equity between employees, and transparency of wages. Even
more because some of this employees are former WMFr volunteers.
In France, the practice is that the wages in charities or NGOs are generally 15
to 20% below market value. Difficult to check for small
organizationsbecause in France,
it's culturally not easy to speak/disclose personal wage even if things are
changing. Difficult also because some jobs in charities are very specific
and sometimes do not have their equivalent in the job-market.
If a charities or NGOs received more than 50 000 € of public money (from
public administration, cities, etc.), the organization has to disclose it's
more 3 highest wages, post and name of the post-holder. But most of the
time, this disclosure is not easy to find for an ordinary donator as you
should do where to find it, most of the time in an annex, lost in the
middle of accountings documents.
We have discussions on this point on WMFr board, and personaly I'm a for
the higher wages transparancy we can, for our members and donators, despite
cultural curbs.
Thierry
--
Thierry Coudray
Administrateur - Trésorier
Wikimédia France <http://www.wikimedia.fr/>
Mob. 06.82.85.84.40
http://blog.wikimedia.fr/
FYI a great outcome in Wikimedia Estonia's efforts to obtain tax-exempt status.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Raul Veede <raul.veede(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Internal-l] Fwd: ERR News (Estonian Public Broadcasting): Tax Board Backs Down in Wikipedia Exemption Case
> Date: March 28, 2012 1:26:58 PM GMT+02:00
> To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Reply-To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination \(closed subscription\)" <internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> Actually, the original verb after my citation was "grumbled", but no news outlet has yet dared to publish that word.
>
> Well, we basically intimidated our Tax Board, carrying our disupte into media on the very first day and bragging about support by WMF. Many thanks!
>
> Indeed, this outcome was good for WMEE, but it would have been even better if we could have a clear decision from the court that could be used by other non-profits to claim tax exemptions. Theoretically, Estonian legal system does not depend on precedents, but practice is a little bit different. We hoped to be useful for the whole 3rd sector, but at least everyone knows now it pays to be bold.
>
> Raul
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 2:01 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 28 March 2012 12:01
> Subject: ERR News (Estonian Public Broadcasting): Tax Board Backs Down
> in Wikipedia Exemption Case
> To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Well done WMEE!
>
> http://news.err.ee/culture/72556373-ba16-4ac5-82f3-b4a155a5a2a0
>
> Tax Board Backs Down in Wikipedia Exemption Case
> Steve Roman
> Published: 13:27
>
> picture: In Estonian, it's called 'Vikipeedia.'
>
> The Tax and Customs Board decided on March 27 to grant Wikimedia
> Eesti, the not-for-profit organization that runs the Estonian
> Wikipedia, tax-exempt status, thereby averting a court hearing on the
> issue that was to take place the same day.
>
> The organization had taken legal action against the government because
> of changed rules that deny it tax-exempt status as a non-governmental,
> philanthropic organization.
>
> "For Wikimedia Eesti, this is certainly happy news, but unfortunately
> it doesn't especially help matters for other NGOs who could have used
> our court precedent in the future," said Wikimedia board member Raul
> Veede.
>
> Veede noted that a broader goal of initiating the court case was to
> draw attention to the Tax Board's narrow interpretation of what
> comprises a charity organization which, he said, was leaving a number
> of NGOs and volunteer groups subject to tax, uudised.err.ee reported.
>
> He had earlier explained that, while the text of the law had remained
> the same, a few years ago the Tax Board changed its interpretation of
> what counts as a charity eligible for tax-exempt status.
>
> Veede said that the new interpretation now rests on two conditions:
> first, the charity must distribute material goods; and, second, it
> must serve people who are disadvantaged as compared to the rest of
> society. However, the Estonian-language website of Wikipedia, with its
> mission of content creation and information dissemination, does not
> meet these criteria.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Internal-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l
>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l
At our WMF Board meeting last weekend, the Board followed up on one of the recommendations from the movement roles team and asked the WMF Audit Committee to work with community to help create a set of movement wide accountability/governance/transparency standards. I took a first shot at putting some up on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Audit_committee/Draft_Accountability_standar…
Please take a look and jump in and help with some edits. I know many of you have spent a lot of time thinking through these issues and am looking forward to creating something really useful for all our chapters and movement organizations.
One question I had was whether we should somehow segment these into goals for new organizations (say in the first year or two) and goals for more mature organizations. What do you think? How could we set that up without somehow suggesting some "standards" are less important than others?
-s
===============
Stuart West
Treasurer
Wikimedia Foundation
stu(a)wikimedia.org
hi,
how much sense does it make to *compare donations and spending against the
population and the economic power of a country*? we already have such
numbers? i tried to put some together exemplary for 2011 fundraiser, with
2012 budgets, comparing germany, india, united states. but i am quite
unsure if such a table makes sense ...
for the spending, it seems that *twice as much money is spent in the united
states, than in germany*. india is far, far, away. but, i _think_ this
might be true for most of the countries. just to make it clear, if somebody
living in the u.s. travels to india, it would be counted as an expense in
the united states, not india.
for fundraising, in *countries like germany and switzerland 50% - 100% more
is donated than in the united states*, depending if one counts GDP or
population. people in india, despite having a much bigger GDP than germany,
do not donate a lot of money to the movement.
*de*
*in*
*us*
80
1210
310
population, mio
5400
190
14400
donations, thousand
3089
4469
15065
gdp, billion
3640
50
28000
spending, thousand (local people, living in the country)
38
4
48
gdp/capita, thousand
*68*
*0.16*
*46*
*donation/capita*
*1.75*
*0.04*
*0.96*
*donation/gdp*
*45*
*0.04*
*90*
*spending/capita*
*1.18*
*0.01*
*1.86*
*spending/gdp*
references:
* 2011 donations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah1QkDyemcHbdHNFZEs0ZEgxWHF2cV…
* budget wmde 2012:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Wirtschaftsplan_2012_WMD…
* the above table in google docs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amy296SGLxdvdHVSNkZoSGFFV2dmOX…
rupert.