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It's not causing any form of disruption to make these changes in a deliberate and thoughtful manner. Everyone can take a deep breath. Risker/Anne
The WMF has never claimed that setting out a fixed timetable that their CEO and the Endowment "agents" can be held accountable to is either impossible or bad. They have been talking this change up for years, and failed to move forward for reasons that have been obfuscated deliberately, as demonstrated by "thoughtful" tangential and delaying responses to basic yes/no questions. Considering that the aim here is ethical accountability, any delay is a choice for "non-accountability".
The facts are public, the failure to be transparent or accountable with many millions of dollars is a public failure. The WMF has damaged the reputation of the "Endowment Fund" within its own community of volunteers* and employees, and now risks a loss of public trust in its own claims to its donors and in the media for a declared value of transparency. Let's debunk the myth, as this is now playing pass the parcel with millions of dollars of donated charitable funds, the WMF can no longer have any credible claim to be transparent. This does not pass the sniff test, it wouldn't for any other not for profit or organization that claims to have charitable values or world leading ethics but chooses to hide millions of dollars from correct scrutiny.
* Really, do volunteers believe the Endowment Fund is or has done the things it was set up to do? Do we volunteers have reason to be confident that in 10 or 30 years time, these monies will be spent on the original objectives that were claimed for it by Jimmy Wales and others? I no longer have reason to be confidence in these purposes or that this very large sum of money will not be chipped away by "agents" or the careful re-spinning of what the words in the Endowment incorporation mean by the unelected board of trustees that are responsible for it.
As a polite observation on "take a deep breath", I would never say that to any member of my staff or a customer with a complaint unless I wanted them to walk out or put the phone down on me.
Thanks, Lane