--- daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
I therefore suggest that donors have the
possibility of earmarking their
donation. That is to say, they will have the ability to specify where they
want their money to go. In that case, one donor may give specifically for
servers, while another donor may give specifically to promote a language,
print a particular wikibook, or whatever.
Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much more
difficult than necessary, IMO. The board in consultation with its various
officers are the body by which budgeting is done. Feedback from donors can and
should be collected in a systematic and easy to parse way, but should not tie
the hands of the board (grants excepted). That type of information should
*inform* the board's decision - not dictate it.
Most of the annual California state budget, for example, has been dictated by
various voter initiatives. Thus lawmakers have very little to work with while
crafting budgets. This is one reason often cited for California's on-going
financial crisis.
So while this at first sounds like a neat idea, in practice it just makes our
budgeting less flexible and thus less able to adapt to changing conditions,
IMO.
I very much agree that targetted funding brings its own set of
problems. Funding with strings attached could threaten the independence
of the wiki if those funds become too important. This doesn't mean that
all special funding should be avoided. Microfunding articles in certain
languages could probably be handled by national chapters. But when you
can pay $1.00 for a reasonably good article, having $1,000.00 in the
bank may bew too much.
Ec