Hi affiliate officers and board members,
AirBNB offered me a $50 coupon to let them know my work email address.
Since I travel with AirBNB for Wikimedia-related business, I used my
Cascadia Wikimedians address. It's too late for me to get $50 coupon for my
upcoming trip, but you might try taking advantage of this if you travel
with AirBNB for Wikimedia business. Because this $50 coupon is due to my
relationship with Cascadia Wikimedians, I plan to donate the coupon or the
savings from it to Cascadia. You might encourage or require affiliate
members who use their email address this way to do the same. Effectively,
this will get your organization either a $50 coupon or $50 in cash for each
person who does this.
My personal opinion is that any financial benefit, such as a travel coupon
or refund like this one, that someone gets because of their relationship
with a Wikimedia affiliate, should be handled carefully because of the
potential for someone to take personal advantage of the benefit without
telling the affiliate. I would consider that to be an improper personal
gain. You might check to see if your affiliate has policies that address
situations like this, and make sure that anyone who might receive gifts or
other benefits related to their Wikimedia work is aware of those policies.
Please note that
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_guide_for_Wikimedia_mo…
says: "Implement a gift policy to avoid the appearance of bias. Consider
prohibiting staff and board members from accepting gifts, money, or
gratuities from: (1) anyone receiving benefits or services from the
organization; (2) any person or business performing or looking to perform a
service under contract with the organization; (3) any person who is
otherwise in a position of receiving a benefit from the actions of an
employee." While the COI policy appears to focus on the potential for
improper influence on business decisions due to gifts, in this case the
potential problem is someone receiving a personal financial benefit without
informing the affiliate. In this case, I am treating the coupon as if it is
the property of the affiliate rather than my personal coupon.
So, I would encourage other affiliates to take advantage of this coupon,
but make sure that the coupon is used for the benefit of the affiliate (or
whichever organization is paying for travel) rather than for the personal
gain of the person who receives the coupon.
If any of the WMF Legal team want to comment on how to handle situations
like this where a benefit (which should be encouraged for the good of the
affiliate) might be converted to personal use, I would welcome hearing from
them. Perhaps this is a situation that could be addressed more specifically
in the COI policy than it currently is.
Regards,
Pine
In case Wikimedia affiliate board members or officers are interested, here
is a high-level overview of accounting. Although the software demonstrated
here is Xero, the same terminology applies to other accounting software. To
access the video, click "Pre-recorded video" on the lower left side of this
page:
https://www.xero.com/training/1844-small-businesses/1870-business-owners/26…
Pine