As a newly appointed secretary of FDC and just back from San Francisco
after a four days deliberation session, where these thing has been in
focus I can give you some facts from what I have understood.
The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for
30,3 MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly
engineering and thing like fundraising support.
The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.
The narrowed focus in practice means that The WMF part funded through
FDC is changed in composition, so less in direct activities by WMF
personnel and more money in Grants to be allocated to chapters and
individuals.
The narrowed focus is only a issue for WMFs internal budget. The planned
funds dissemination to chapters is not effected and the actual result of
the the implementation of the Narrowed focus is that more money will be
used by community/chapters via grant then was earlier planned
Anders Wennersten
Lodewijk skrev 2012-11-02 12:05:
Thanks Bishakha,
while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at, for
me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.
The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably better
executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be supported
more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
is considered.
I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed focus.
I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will be
put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible and
take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before it
will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is being
provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit on
this?
Best,
Lodewijk
2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
Dear all,
At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
Director.
This vote has been published at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
Best
Bishakha
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