Phoebe,
(please note I am no longer a board member of WMUK so speak with no particular knowledge of the situation other than what is publicly known)
In practice I think the impact of this decision is more significant than you make out. WMUK, as with all chapters, is established as a legally and operationally independent organisation and as such has significant fiduciary duties to its members and donors. One of the key risks that the chapter has had to manage for a number of years now relates to the dependency on the Foundation as the sole source of funding. If you look, for instance, at the draft five year plan that was written months ago, it includes the following section:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Five_Year_Plan#Fundraising
<quote>
Fundraising
Wikimedia UK is a young and rapidly growing charity. At the moment, we are reliant almost entirely on the WMF annual fundraiser for our operating funds. We do not consider this to be a sustainable situation, since it involves a significant concentration of risk. We therefore need to diversify our revenue....
Three year target
- ... To have no more than 70% of our revenue coming from the WMF annual fundraiser, or any other single source
Five year target
- For our core committed expenditures to be financially independent of the annual fundraiser...
<quote/>
It was bad enough when it was the annual fundraiser that was the course of concentration risk, which could, at any time, be withdrawn by the Foundation, albeit within a multilateral framework. To turn this into an FDC grant would be to exacerbate this risk.
I hope, when the chapter comes to quantify the amount of their FDC grant application they seriously consider scaling back the amount requested and redoubling efforts to source alternative funding routes.
Regards,
On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 1:33 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Wow. I honestly didn't think the conflict of interest issue was this serious. What does giving up the next fundraiser due to the WM-UK budget? Does this change reflect a lack of trust between the WMF and the current WM-UK leadership?
Hi Nathan,
Just on the fundraiser point -- the idea of the new FDC (funds dissemination committee) process is that chapter budget allocations would be totally independent of how much they do or don't raise via payment-processing -- on the principle that funds should be allocated according to need/impact, rather than tied to or based on in-country fundraising stats. So WMUK's budget planning process shouldn't be changed, aside from maybe how they plan for the fundraiser, since they would prepare a project budget for review either way.
-- Phoebe (not speaking for anyone!)
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