As many of you know, the Foundation has an Audit Committee which represents the Board in oversight of financial and accounting issues, including planning, reporting, audits, and internal controls (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Audit_committee for details). The Committee typically serves for one year, starting in May/June and ending a year later when the Foundation files its annual tax return in the U.S. (the IRS Form 990). For the past year, the committee has consisted of two Board members (Michael Snow and me as Committee chair) and one long-serving and incredibly helpful community member, Ad Huikeshoven. We've recently started forming the 2009-2010 Audit Committee, and the current team has generously agreed to serve another year.
We are keenly interested in increasing community participation. The time commitment is modest, as far as Wikimedia goes: review the Foundation's general financial practices and draft financial statements/filings, and then participate in three or four conference calls during the year with the staff and our independent auditors, KPMG. The one requirement for membership is "financial literacy", usually some kind of professional experience with finance, accounting or audit.
If you're interested in serving on the Committee, please email us at audit-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org and let us know how you think you could contribute. Thanks.
-s
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Stu West
Wikimedia Foundation
Trustee & Board Treasurer
stu mailto:stu@wikimedia.org <at> wikimedia.org
[User:Stu]