Now that we've had some time for people to sign up for
the list (28 so far), let's kick things off. I'd like to
start with something that's worked well on both the
gendergap and developing countries lists: quick personal
introductions and then description of why we're interested
in this topic and what we hope to get out of the list.
I'll go first.
My name is Stu West and I'm a volunteer on the Wikimedia
Foundation's board of trustees. I am the Board's Treasurer
and chair of its Audit Committee. I've been involved with
Wikipedia for about 5-6 years, and on the Board since early
2008. My day job is in Silicon Valley, where I've worked
for private and publicly-traded technology companies in
roles including CFO.
I'm really interested in
governance/transparency/accountability issues for a few
reasons. In my role as WMF Treasurer, it's my
responsibility to focus on these. More broadly though, my
personal point of view on Wikimedia is very long term. I'm
really amazed at what our community has accomplished, and
want to ensure we continue to have a huge and growing impact
for the next 100 years. To do that, I think we'll need to
give our community the best
possible organizational/legal/governance support.
As for this list, I'd like it to be a place for high-quality
sharing of ideas and best practices
around governance/transparency in our movement. I hope we
can attract a significant portion of the treasurers,
finance staff, and even Audit Committee members. I hope it
can be a great way for all of us to learn from each other
and hope we can have lots of emails asking for
advice/support/ideas from one another. Finally and most
importantly, I hope we can use this list to plan Wikimania
beers and other in person get-togethers.
Who's next?
-s
Begin forwarded message:
Subject: New "treasurers" mailing list
Date: November 10, 2011 12:15:12 PM PST
I
set up a new public mailing list called treasurers@lists.wikimedia.org for
discussing and sharing best practices in financial
reporting and financial transparency across the
Wikimedia movement. The primary intended
membership is treasurers, audit committees, and
finance staff of movement organizations, but the
list is public and anyone interested in financial
reporting and transparency is welcome. This list
is archived publicly.
You can subscribe here:
Please take a moment to forward this on to
your favorite Treasurer or finance staffer.
Thanks.
(I thought about just using internal but
decided against because a) there's lots of
traffic on it already and b) i'm not sure all
our various treasurers both subscribe to and
read internal regularly.)
-s
===============
Stuart West
Board Treasurer
Wikimedia Foundation