Just I have to say Amen to you, Anthere. I see your point.
In addition, chapters need some time to make his job, that is, to involve relevant people, to create a local structure that engages people to the real benefits for an enterprise, a council, an academic institution with free knowledge. This is a very big challenge since some goverment or academic institutions, or even relevant people in that institutions are unwilling to adapt themselves to this new way of thinking budgets, programs... There's a lot of thechnophobia overthere...
Fundraising must not be an obsession for chapters in the beggining. We're idealist, we don't need money. Support in reaching academics, outreach, educational are far more important to us.
Medicos Mundi Spain have more or less the same budget as the entire WMF. This is a point to think about.
2011/8/10 Florence Devouard anthere9@yahoo.com
On 8/9/11 4:46 PM, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
2011/8/9 Delphine Ménardnotafishz@gmail.com
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Kirill Lokshin<kirill.lokshin@gmail.com
wrote:
Well, let's be clear here: in what sense are the chapters
"participating"
in
the fundraiser, rather than merely being its beneficiaries? The
underlying
fundraising work -- the actual solicitation of donations, in other
words
--
is performed by WMF staff directly. The chapters do provide some level
of
administrative and accounting support, obviously; but that could just
as
easily be done by the WMF as well, and likely at lower cost.
Wow, this is a gross misrepresentation of the reality.
While Foundation staff has provided an invaluable support to make the fundraiser a success, it probably wouldn't have been such a success hadn't there been dozens of volunteers, among which _many_ chapter board members and simple members who spent uncounted hours of localizing and adapting messages, providing stories, refining landing pages, answering donors questions etc.
You may want to look at the fundraising pages on meta to see the level of involvement of the community as a whole in making it a success, and even that does not give a real idea of how much chapters' communities have participated (much happens on their chapters' mailing lists for example).
I'm not suggesting that the success of the fundraiser isn't due in large part to broad community involvement; my assertion is that this community involvement would take place whether or not a formal chapter was
involved.
I think that on this very point, even the WMF would disagree with you. Actually, the very fact that WMF explicitely put in the fundraising agreement that the Chapter *has to* provide translations of the fundraising messages (which include as well stuff such as Jimbo's letter) suggests that translations may not as magically appear as we would hope. It rather suggests that chapters actually do have an invaluable role in making sure that the fundraiser is not 100% in English langage (even though members of the community who are not members of the chapter clearly help in translation). In short, community, both within and not within chapter realm, support the entire system.
Aside from this, I am quite shocked when I read
<quote>in what sense are the chapters "participating" in the fundraiser, rather than merely being its beneficiaries? The underlying fundraising work -- the actual solicitation of donations, in other words -- is performed by WMF staff directly. The chapters do provide some level of administrative and accounting support, obviously; but that could just as easily be done by the WMF as well, and likely at lower cost. The only real advantage a chapter's involvement can provide over a fully WMF-operated fundraiser is the availability of tax benefits in a particular jurisdiction; and, given the small size of the average donation, it's unclear to what extent such tax benefits are a significant consideration for the average donor.
</quote>
But I'll forgive you because you obviously are not totally aware of what's going in the various chapters. Having been involved in fundraising for Wikimedia France, I can certainly assure you that the chapter is not merely being a "beneficiary".
The actual sollicitation of donations is not only performed by WMF staff (are you aware that chapters also provide a specific landing page for sollicitation ? specific messages ? Localized press release ? payments methods are adapted to local situation ? ). The one thing that chapters can provide to donors in their geographical area that WMF will never been able to provide (at least, not at any reasonable cost) is to talk to them as citizens of the same country. Same langage. Same culture. Local events happening HERE rather than on the other side of earth. Local partnership with institutions they know about. It tells them about THEM. It is about THEM. This proximity can only be provided by chapters.
Claiming that WMF would provide the same job for a lower cost is actually quite laughable given that WMF is actually PAYING staff to do this (it costs money) whilst the majority of that work is being done for free by chapter members (it costs less money to work for free...). And people have staff, in many (not all) countries, staff costs is actually lower than in the USA. So the "likely at lower cost" comes from nowhere and is unlikely to be true.
There is only one point which I will grant you. Some chapters offer tax deduction to their donors. This indeed require work to provide hence expenses. If WMF was receiving those donations with no tax receipt to provide, it would indeed require less work. Hence cost less.
This said, in France, over 90% of our donors ask for this receipt. I expect that many would not give money to an US organization with no tax receipt at all. I have no figure to support this, but I am willing to give it a go for a few weeks. Get the money from French people and tell them afterwards, SORRY GUYS, NO RECEIPT. And then ask them if they will give again next year. Of course, all the complaints will have to be dealt by WMF staff.
Seriously, when it comes to fundraising, the first important thing to keep in mind is that trying to maximize the money collected in a given year is thinking short term. Trying to create a good relationship with happy donors is the way to think long term. An upset or disappointed donor will only give once. And you will only know one year later.
Anthere
I would assume that the volunteers who contributed to the effort
presumably
did so because they believed in the goals of the project and the need to raise funds to support them, not because their particular chapter stood
to
collect a large sum of money in the process?
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