Hello all, In this email, I would like to propose a few ideas for grants and money-raising, in order to get community feedback. The focus of this email will be smaller grants and donations. In the past few months, various people have raised projects that require particular funding. This ranges from the large amount required to put the Ultimate Wiktionary project into motion by developing an appropriate database, to smaller projects such as Amikeco's work in the Ossetian language and Guako's work promoting Wikimedia projects in Mali. Should the Foundation choose to go ahead with these projects—and in some cases, it already has--the potential costs will add to our existing budget for regular maintenance, new servers, transportation and communication expenses, etc. That is not to say that these projects should not be pursued. In fact, some people might have a particular interest in promoting one or another of these projects. 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. The option will work as follows: 1. People interested in promoting particular projects will be asked to create a project page, and to submit a budget for their project. The "Total Cost" will be the amount of money they would like to collect for the project + the additional percentage charged by PayPal. + 10 percent (to be explained below). Budgets should be as detailed as possible to inspire confidence in the project and explain exactly where the money is going. 1. Donors giving to the Foundation will have the option of either giving directly to the general running costs of Wikimedia or perusing the list of specific projects. They can then decide how they want their money to be spent. 1. IMPORTANT: In the event that people decide to give money to a specific project, it will be made clear to them that 10 percent will be deducted automatically for "Overhead," i.e., the day-to-day costs of running the Wikimedia Foundation. In other words, even if someone decides to give $100 toward printing the Wiki-Roadkill-Cookbook with scratch-and-smell recipes, $10 dollars will still be deducted for use by the Foundation as the Board sees fit. 1. Sums collected will be charted on the project page. Once a project has reached its target sum, it will be removed from the list of projects available to donors. Any additional funds earned will be given to the general Foundation fund. Advantages I believe that this proposal has a number of important advantages. 1. This allows us to focus on our goals as a charitable organization, with the objective of giving to others. 2. It allows for projects to grow naturally as a reflection of the interests of the community and the donors. 3. People involved in specific projects will naturally assume the responsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to fill leadership positions 4. Motivated individuals will promote their projects, gaining them greater visibility. 5. Public budgets for projects will foster greater transparency of the financial process. People like to know where their money is going and how it is being spent. 6. With several projects emerging, the Foundation will be able to release a "Catalogue of Giving Opportunities" for potential donors, including large-gift donors. 7. Budgets for these projects will be a genuine reflection of needs, and benefit from being accessible to community comment. Disadvantages Though I am thoroughly biased in favor of this, I have not discussed it with Mav and others involved in finances, and I want to make sure something of this sort is feasible, and that it does not pose too much work on people handling the money. I am very eager to hear your responses to this proposal. More proposals regarding larger grants will be forthcoming over the next few days. Danny Member, Wikimedia Grants Team
daniwo59@aol.com a écrit:
Hello all, In this email, I would like to propose a few ideas for grants and money-raising, in order to get community feedback. The focus of this email will be smaller grants and donations. In the past few months, various people have raised projects that require particular funding. This ranges from the large amount required to put the Ultimate Wiktionary project into motion by developing an appropriate database, to smaller projects such as Amikeco's work in the Ossetian language and Guako's work promoting Wikimedia projects in Mali. Should the Foundation choose to go ahead with these projects—and in some cases, it already has--the potential costs will add to our existing budget for regular maintenance, new servers, transportation and communication expenses, etc. That is not to say that these projects should not be pursued. In fact, some people might have a particular interest in promoting one or another of these projects. 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. The option will work as follows: 1. People interested in promoting particular projects will be asked to create a project page, and to submit a budget for their project. The "Total Cost" will be the amount of money they would like to collect for the project + the additional percentage charged by PayPal. + 10 percent (to be explained below). Budgets should be as detailed as possible to inspire confidence in the project and explain exactly where the money is going. 1. Donors giving to the Foundation will have the option of either giving directly to the general running costs of Wikimedia or perusing the list of specific projects. They can then decide how they want their money to be spent. 1. IMPORTANT: In the event that people decide to give money to a specific project, it will be made clear to them that 10 percent will be deducted automatically for "Overhead," i.e., the day-to-day costs of running the Wikimedia Foundation. In other words, even if someone decides to give $100 toward printing the Wiki-Roadkill-Cookbook with scratch-and-smell recipes, $10 dollars will still be deducted for use by the Foundation as the Board sees fit. 1. Sums collected will be charted on the project page. Once a project has reached its target sum, it will be removed from the list of projects available to donors. Any additional funds earned will be given to the general Foundation fund. Advantages I believe that this proposal has a number of important advantages. 1. This allows us to focus on our goals as a charitable organization, with the objective of giving to others. 2. It allows for projects to grow naturally as a reflection of the interests of the community and the donors. 3. People involved in specific projects will naturally assume the responsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to fill leadership positions 4. Motivated individuals will promote their projects, gaining them greater visibility. 5. Public budgets for projects will foster greater transparency of the financial process. People like to know where their money is going and how it is being spent. 6. With several projects emerging, the Foundation will be able to release a "Catalogue of Giving Opportunities" for potential donors, including large-gift donors. 7. Budgets for these projects will be a genuine reflection of needs, and benefit from being accessible to community comment. Disadvantages Though I am thoroughly biased in favor of this, I have not discussed it with Mav and others involved in finances, and I want to make sure something of this sort is feasible, and that it does not pose too much work on people handling the money. I am very eager to hear your responses to this proposal. More proposals regarding larger grants will be forthcoming over the next few days. Danny Member, Wikimedia Grants Team
Hi
I am fully supportive of this proposal, which could help solve what I see increasingly as a problem to us... while technical issues related to running the project every day are seen as a priority by most (if not all actually), how to define whether spending a little part of the Foundation money on a specific project is acceptable by the community or not. This proposal helps the board to take decisions according to the community wishes and at the same time, it allows editors to support certain projects rather than others. In short, both a grant tool and a communication/feedback tool.
Technically, the main issue might well be for the donator to mention where the money should go. If this is in the comment area, this will mean much work for Mav.
On 19/06/05, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@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.
Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's wider goals?
It might make more sense to say we will spend grant money on certain projects, but I'm not yet convinced it makes sense for all donations to have to go towards specific tasks in this way.
3. People involved in specific projects will naturally assume theresponsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to fill leadership positions
I'm not sure how the topic of donations is related to this, nor whether having "Project Heads" is needed.
On 19/06/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
This proposal helps the board to take decisions according to the community wishes and at the same time, it allows editors to support certain projects rather than others.
Would community wishes be reflected by this though? Many donors are not members of the community, or not the editing community anyway, and vice versa. What if a large donor puts all their money towards a project that is not supported by the community? How could that be dealt with?
Angela.
Angela a écrit:
On 19/06/05, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@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.
Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's wider goals?
I do not think so. By projects, it does not mean "money for english wikipedia" or "money for the japanese wiktionary", but rather "money for the ultimate wiktionary", "money for wikimania", "money for bambara development", "money for a wikijunior set" etc...
It might make more sense to say we will spend grant money on certain projects, but I'm not yet convinced it makes sense for all donations to have to go towards specific tasks in this way.
- People involved in specific projects will naturally assume the
responsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to fill leadership positions
I'm not sure how the topic of donations is related to this, nor whether having "Project Heads" is needed.
On 19/06/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
This proposal helps the board to take decisions according to the community wishes and at the same time, it allows editors to support certain projects rather than others.
Would community wishes be reflected by this though? Many donors are not members of the community, or not the editing community anyway, and vice versa. What if a large donor puts all their money towards a project that is not supported by the community? How could that be dealt with?
By previously agreeing on which projects to support or not. If absolutely no one show interest in supporting ultimate wiktionary, it would not be listed.
Angela.
Anthere wrote:
Angela a écrit:
...
Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's wider goals?
I do not think so. By projects, it does not mean "money for english wikipedia" or "money for the japanese wiktionary", but rather "money for the ultimate wiktionary", "money for wikimania", "money for bambara development", "money for a wikijunior set" etc...
If the pet project of a Board member isn't supported by the donors, it shouldn't be paid for with the donors' money. The "Foundation's wider goals" were set by Jimbo when he wrote the bylaws, to date donors have been told they must fund all of these goals or fund none of them. This is certainly part of the reason why I have never donated to Wikimedia, and by extension this initiative may lead to increased donations generally.
The Board may be anxious about losing control over part of their funding, that's understandable. But this could be considered a form of direct democracy, and as such, desirable outcomes depend on the competency of the donor to make budget decisions. The Board could take on a role of persuading the donors that certain projects need funding, rather than simply dictating a budget as they do now.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
Angela a écrit:
...
Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's wider goals?
I do not think so. By projects, it does not mean "money for english wikipedia" or "money for the japanese wiktionary", but rather "money for the ultimate wiktionary", "money for wikimania", "money for bambara development", "money for a wikijunior set" etc...
If the pet project of a Board member isn't supported by the donors, it shouldn't be paid for with the donors' money. The "Foundation's wider goals" were set by Jimbo when he wrote the bylaws, to date donors have been told they must fund all of these goals or fund none of them. This is certainly part of the reason why I have never donated to Wikimedia, and by extension this initiative may lead to increased donations generally.
The Board may be anxious about losing control over part of their funding, that's understandable. But this could be considered a form of direct democracy, and as such, desirable outcomes depend on the competency of the donor to make budget decisions. The Board could take on a role of persuading the donors that certain projects need funding, rather than simply dictating a budget as they do now.
-- Tim Starling
I am not sure why you make such an overgeneralization, since Angela is apparently not very supportive of this proposal, I am supporting it to a fair extent, and Jimbo did not comment yet :-)
I do not feel though that there is "anxiety" of losing control. On the contrary, I fear that Angela and I might both be slightly too anxious to push to spend money in a direction where we feel editors might be upset.
I do not know for Angela, but as for myself, a problem I meet is extreme difficulty to estimate whether a spending would be approved or not generally (I refer to unusual spending). I feel I lack information/feedback from the community. I would welcome any suggestion of how to get this feedback (while avoiding a plain global vote... which is frankly not something I find a great solution).
Ant
On 20/06/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not sure why you make such an overgeneralization, since Angela is apparently not very supportive of this proposal, I am supporting it to a fair extent, and Jimbo did not comment yet :-)
I'm not saying I don't support the proposal. I just have a lot of questions about how it is going to work and I would like discussion about those before agreeing to such a large change in the way we handle donations.
Perhaps arranging a meeting with the grants committee would be a better way to develop the proposal rather than trying to make any sort of decision here based on Danny's initial suggestions?
Angela.
Angela a écrit:
On 20/06/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I am not sure why you make such an overgeneralization, since Angela is apparently not very supportive of this proposal, I am supporting it to a fair extent, and Jimbo did not comment yet :-)
I'm not saying I don't support the proposal. I just have a lot of questions about how it is going to work and I would like discussion about those before agreeing to such a large change in the way we handle donations.
Perhaps arranging a meeting with the grants committee would be a better way to develop the proposal rather than trying to make any sort of decision here based on Danny's initial suggestions?
Angela.
I entirely agree with your view Angela. There are many good questions raised. Perhaps a few more people could comment to have more arguments and views in hand, then Danny could plan a meeting in the future to talk more about this.
Afaik, the next fundraising is rather for september, so there is no hurry ;-)
ant
--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I do not know for Angela, but as for myself, a problem I meet is extreme difficulty to estimate whether a spending would be approved or not generally (I refer to unusual spending). I feel I lack information/feedback from the community. I would welcome any suggestion of how to get this feedback (while avoiding a plain global vote... which is frankly not something I find a great solution).
I think Lee's idea is best of all ; better transparency combined with better ways of getting input from donors. Adding a questionnaire to the thank you page that donors are sent to after they donate would be a way to help. As would giving them links to our latest financial reports.
-- mav
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Hello Danny,
earmarking is something I generally support, with some caveats. My main concern is that not everything we *should* do will necessarily be directly funded by the community. This is especially true for bootstrapping investments that benefit projects that currently don't have a large supporting community yet. So I suggest that beyond overhead costs, a substantial amount of money of every donation is also allocated to a general bootstrapping fund to be used at the Foundation's discretion.
It could be split into different (broad) areas, e.g.: Bootstrap - Documentation: $5K Bootstrap - Development: $5K
I think that operational costs should take top priority. There's not much point in asking people to fund development if we can't afford to keep the servers running. So during a fundraising drive, only after our goal is met, the "slots" for targeted donations should be opened. This might also add some excitement to the drive.
My other concerns are usability-related. I think if we do this, we need to plan the implementation properly. I'd be glad to assist with that, though not immediately (perhaps after Wikimania there will be some time). In fact, I can envision this to eventually become a project of its own and extend beyond Wikimedia's own needs, to fund open source development and free content. But that's very long term thinking (years).
Best,
Erik
Hello,
It's great to see a public discussion of grants and donations. Thanks for starting one. You suggest interesting ideas, some of which can be implemented indepently of the others.
On 6/18/05, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@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.
This has been discussed before, with the idea that people could earmark where half of their donations go -- in the context of more general divisions such as "hardware / software / content / language development". I think starting with a simple earmarking scheme like this will make it easier to tell whether this is useful for small donors.
People should be encouraged to give to the project as a whole; it makes life easier for budgeters, and keeps the process of making a donation simple. On the other hand, people who really want to fund a particular project should have a way of doing so.
< 1. People promoting projects [should] submit a budget for their project. Budgets should < be as detailed as possible...
Most current projects don't require a budget. To the extent that they incur more maintenance and hardware costs, their promoters aren't in a position to evaluate what the costs will be over time. Do we want to encourage people to assess every new project in terms of financial cost? I agree that projects which lend themselves to a separate budget (A VIBBER-box upgrade, a new-language microfinancing initiative) should have lots of detail; including a budget in currency and man-hours, a tentative timeline, etc.
2. Donors giving to the Foundation will have the option of giving directly to thegeneral running costs of Wikimedia or perusing the list of specific projects.
This sounds like a bad idea. I agree that donors who *already know* what subproject they want to donate to should have a way of supporting that project in particular - perhaps a separate form linked to from that project's page, or a separate link on the donations page. But I'm not sure that readers who just love Wikimedia's work and follow a "suppor this site!" link should be encouraged to express themselves through project choice.
< 3. IMPORTANT: 10 percent will be deducted automatically for "Overhead," < i.e., the day-to-day costs of running the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikimedia is not a normal non-profit. The "operating costs" you mention are not salaries, stationary, international phone bills, and rent. They are the costs of *running the primary projects* which make Wikimedia useful and successful. Far less than 10% of the foundation budget goes towards true overhead (salaries, travel).
It seems reasonable to require more than 20% of subproject donations to go towards the main projects -- general-use hardware and software development, for instance -- to ensure that the trunk and roots of the wikimedia projects grow in proportion to new, tentative branches. And it seems reasonable to require a true overhead of 5% or so from each donation to go into a long-term Wikimedia trust. The core Wikimedia projects and structures /still need much support/, and this should not be forgotten in a rush to create new ones.
4. Sums collected will be charted on the project page. Once a projecthas reached its target sum, it will be removed from the list of projects available to donors.
I like the idea of asking projects to set budgets for themselves before raising money through the foundation directly, and of tracking their fundraising success. Of course each project can still go out and solicit grants and support on its own, as was done for Wikidata; but the promise of foundation support will help get better and more organized information about budding projects.
Any additional funds earned will be given to the general Foundation fund.
This, unfortunately, is hard to do. The whole downside to constrained giving is that you can't as a Foundation later decide it should be spent some other way.
I believe that this proposal has a number of important advantages. 3. People involved in specific projects will naturally assume the responsibility of "Project Heads" and naturally grow to fill leadership positions 4. Motivated individuals will promote their projects, gaining them greater visibility.
How does this depend on the proposal above? People active in a project already naturally grow to fill leadership positions. I'm not sure it's a good idea to encourage a first-mover advantage here. The best project head is not necessarily the person most skilled at 'monetizing' and promoting a project.
Do we want motivated individuals to see creating a budget for a project, and trying to raise strings-attached money for it, as a necessary step on the road to personal visibility and project ownership? Do we want to promote project ownership?
5. Public budgets for projects will foster greater transparency of thefinancial process. People like to know where their money is going and how it is being spent. 6. With several projects emerging, the Foundation will be able to release a "Catalogue of Giving Opportunities" for potential donors, including large-gift donors.
Right on. These things don't require the above proposal, but having better public budgets for every project requiring specific funds -- and clear line-items in financial reports -- will make everyone feel better about donating.
#6 is what I would like to see the Grants Team tackle : making the soup of Wikimedia projects make sense to external donors. We could create public budgets and a catalogue out of existing projects, without implementing any new proposals; and a focused group is probably better at writing the needed copy than individual project enthusiasts.
I hope such a Catalogue would have a few broad avenues for donation, mentioning some specific projects associated with each; not a dozen detailed initiatives. This would make it less complex, and leave the Foundation with fewer frustrating liquidity constraints. ( For instance, if 2,000 Euros have been earmarked specifically for Bambara project A, and the coordinator disappears; we won't be able to use those funds for Bambara project B, or for an identical project in Twi.. )
-- SJ
P.S. Now if only we could get some big-picture hardware, software, content, and usability discussions going as well...
--- daniwo59@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.
-- mav
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(daniwo59@aol.com) I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their donation....
(mav) Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much more difficult than necessary, IMO.
Designing an organization is much like designing software: it's a big mistake not to listen to your users, and it's a bigger mistake to do exactly what they tell you. In other words, your customers are generally expressing a genuine need, but their ideas about how to provide that need are often bad. That's to be expected--they're not designers, you are. It's your job to figure out a better way to provide their need than the one they thought of.
What the users are saying here is that they hate dumping money into a black hole with no idea how it will be used. And they're right-- the traditional way charities are run makes that a big problem, but the proposed solution (earmarking) doesn't solve the problem, it just complicates managing the foundation.
The better solution is simple: total transparency. It's something we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to provide. We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world frequently and archive indefinitely. Anyone who wants to know how his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/ spent; if he likes that, he can donate. If he doesn't, he can tell us why and suggest how me might improve. But in either case, he has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't interfere with our management needs.
The better solution is simple: total transparency. It's something we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to provide. We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world frequently and archive indefinitely. Anyone who wants to know how his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/ spent; if he likes that, he can donate. If he doesn't, he can tell us why and suggest how me might improve. But in either case, he has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't interfere with our management needs.
I totally agree and this is something that is being worked on. We already only have fund drives *after* we draft a budget and we advertise that budget during the fund drive. We are now working on better ways to publish our records on what was actually spent, on what, and when. In fact, during the last fund drive this was in place but did not get a final OK from the board (mostly because I did not push too hard for that). See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2004
But the idea of adding a pick list to the donation form asking for non-binding input on how donors think their money should be spent, is a neat idea. The big issue is that PayPal only allows for two options on form data sent to them. We therefore might need to create our own form and database system to handle that part of the donation form. The problem with that is that the data could not be trusted since anybody could fill it out such a form, hit the send button, and then not complete the PayPal transaction. To link donation amounts with feedback, names would need to be cross-checked ; something I am not keen on having to do unless it can be automated.
-- mav
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Lee Daniel Crocker a écrit:
The better solution is simple: total transparency. It's something we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to provide. We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world frequently and archive indefinitely. Anyone who wants to know how his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/ spent; if he likes that, he can donate. If he doesn't, he can tell us why and suggest how me might improve. But in either case, he has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't interfere with our management needs.
I rather agree
This said, this suggests me the following improvement. Till now, our financial reports have been break down in "types" of spending, rather than "goals" of spending. For example, we currently have an item called "travel expenses", but that is all we get to know. Maybe some of these are entirely Jimbo, or perhaps are they also the board, or perhaps also some developers travel costs covered for a special occasion, or perhaps even money spend for travel costs of participants to come to Wikimania.
But right now, all is mixed.
Another perspective we could focus on is rather the issues on which money is spent.
For example, we should see how much was received (as sponsorship) for Wikimania, and how much was spend. This would involved possibly technical costs, perhaps travel costs, perhaps public relation costs. But it would be nice to see overall how much the whole envelop was in the budget.
Same for any big relevant issue (which we might have to determine).
Ant
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
The better solution is simple: total transparency. It's something we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to provide. We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world frequently and archive indefinitely. Anyone who wants to know how his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/ spent; if he likes that, he can donate. If he doesn't, he can tell us why and suggest how me might improve. But in either case, he has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't interfere with our management needs.
I agree this is something we should have, but I don't think directed donations are mutually exclusive. In many cases, people simply like the option, and will not actually take it---if the organization looks well-run, such that they trust that it knows how to spend money well, people will be willing to donate funds for "unrestricted use" or "general fund" or something of that sort, even if given an option to donate specifically to something else. But it may pull in other donations from people who want to fund specific things. We already accept such donations from large institutions in the form of grants for a specific purpose; why not give individual donors the same option?
(I know I personally would not donate to my alma mater if I could not earmark the funds for a specific purpose, because I disagree with some of the things they spend their money on.)
-Mark
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- daniwo59@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
Daniel Mayer a écrit:
--- daniwo59@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.
-- mav
I generally agree with what you say Mav. It is true it might be dangerous to be hand tied due to part of our resources being mandatorily allocated for a specific issue and not enough left for operating costs. Maybe this 10% is not satisfying.
However, I'd like to mention that currently if "small" donators are not able to say how they would prefer their money to be spend, "big" donators may. Fortunately, most money offered came with no strings attached, and I guess most editors could prefer to do just as well.
But it is not always the case, and some money we receive is for a specific goal. Till today, I do not think we ever felt stuck and not adaptable due to this. Still, these donators somehow "dictate" us how to use the money.
ant
Hi,
There are several interesting proposals here which shouldn't be confused, even if there are related. Earmarking a donation is something, finding new financial resources for new projects and ideas is something else. I understand that the former might be a problem for managing the funding in some cases, although a possibily to express a support for a particular project would be nice.
I am particularly interested about funding some languages not very active (or not active at all) in Wikimedia projects upto now. I am thinking about African and Asia languages such as Swahili, Pashto, Urdu, most Indian languages, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, etc. There are possibilities to find new financial resources in this area, both from persons and organisations, which would not support the general cost of running Wikimedia projects. I think that should be separate from funding for the general projects because it might be seen as a way towards paying editors.
But even with funding it might not be so easy to find editors for these languages. So far I only have three contacts who answered a mail about writing Indian languages articles after some requests to the main Indian universities. I think it better to find editors first, and then see if they need some financial support.
Regards, Yann
Le Sunday 19 June 2005 01:00, daniwo59@aol.com a écrit :
Hello all, In this email, I would like to propose a few ideas for grants and money-raising, in order to get community feedback. The focus of this email will be smaller grants and donations.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org