Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
(I must admit that i tested the job a year ago, the product was fine, the shipment fast. A bit expensive for my taste.)
Expensive? The profit adds funds the WMF, surely.
This is a logical fallacy that many charities fall into, and end up damaging their reputation in the tabloid press when it turns out that 80%+ of donations "disappear" in costs such as commercial fees, paying chugger agencies and bonuses and six-figure salaries for fundraising/marketing directors, rather than going to the intended beneficiary.
Here's a highly likely pragmatic scenario... if, say, a $20 "donation" to get a WMF merchandise tee-shirt disappeared as:
- $ 12.00 basic transaction and product costs
- $ 6.00 profit/fees to intermediary organizations
- $ 1.80 WMF administration costs
- 20 cents is the outcome "donation" to WMF causes (1%)
Then yes, the transaction adds funds to the WMF, but in a really crappy way where the system probably cost several times more in WMF staff time to set up than it will make over many years, comparatively huge profit margins are going to unnamed parties (at least unnamed for the purchaser or WMF volunteers), and in a non-transparent way too.
Your point is made much more succinct in the Trademark Pol- icy (cf. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_policy#policy-commercialmerch):
| You may make merchandise with the Wikimedia trademarks for | commercial use, if:
| - You obtain a trademark license from the Wikimedia Founda- | tion; | - You follow our Visual Identity Guidelines; and | - You truthfully advertise to customers how much of the | selling price, if any, will be donated to Wikimedia sites.
The problem is the belief that a charity with a focus on distributing knowledge must have its own t-shirt shop, probably fostered by firm disciples getting free mugs.
Tim