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_mov... 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