Hi everyone,
A quick email to announce and explain current WMFr payment processor status.
As some of you know, French regulations makes it hard to transfer ver 50% of the fund raised locally to an international organisation.
Until know, WMFr budget was always somewhat equal to 50% of the money raised. Last year fundraising was "too" efficient in France and we've reached the point when 50% of the funds raised in France are much more than WMFr actual budget.
In face of that situation, Wikimedia France board has asked WMF to stop being a payment processor in 2013, and that until we have found a suitable solution to handle the movement needs. We already have possible solutions, such as asking for having a "super charity" status (reconnaissance d'utilité publique / being recognised as an organisation for general good).
That process is a lengthy and over bureaucratic one, and we don't know how fast it can get to obtain it.
In the coming month, WMFr will work with WMF on explaining to French donors that they can't ask for tax deduction next year and handling their requests.
As said last year in our letter to the board and ED of Wikimedia Foundation, being a payment processor or not doesn't change whether WMFr will support the localisation of the fundraising efforts.
Late 2012, WMFr board decided to start looking for external funding sources. Removing ourselves will also allow us to dedicate more resources to that activity.
Our hope is that in the coming months WMFr will have a stronger fiscal position and will be able to ask to be a payment processor again because we still believe that having local fundraising handled by local organisations is more efficient and more sustainable on the long run.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask even offline if you prefer to.
Best,
Christophe HENNER | Vice-chair ------------------------------------------------------------------- › Mail : christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr › Mobile : +33(0)6 29 35 65 94 › Tel : +33(0)5 62 89 12 01 › Twitter : @Wikimedia_Fr ----------------------------------------------------- Wikimédia France | Association pour le libre partage de la connaissance | Visitez notre blog http://blog.wikimedia.fr
On 29 April 2013 21:28, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr wrote: ...
In face of that situation, Wikimedia France board has asked WMF to stop being a payment processor in 2013
Hi Christophe, thank you for giving this difficult decision some suitable context, and for doing so openly and promptly.
Could someone advise me, is there an official table on meta showing the current list of Chapters with payment processing agreements in place for the 2013 fund raiser?
Independently of any hat I happen to be wearing, I am planning on putting aside some volunteer time to examine the "admin:fundraising:program" ratio for our organizations over the next few months, so it makes sense to ensure this is achieved for the current payment processors, rather than just those organizations that are "easy" to find the figures for or come forward spontaneously. I would support other sensible top level performance indicators should they be identified and become available soon, FDC members may have a view on what might work well as the "top 5" indicators. Hopefully at least the admin ratio can be publicly shared before October this year to help foster a pragmatic discussion on simple dashboards and governance.
I'm hoping that the WMF can set a lead by publishing a calculation of admin ratio for themselves. ;-)
PS staff salaries are not all automatically 'admin', I hope we can agree that some program activities are entirely justifiably supported by paid staff and contractors.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
Christophe,
About this "reconnaissance d'utilite publique" or "supercharity" concept; is there a link to an analysis (preferable) or even just the text of the law/provision/regulation? Even one in French only would be OK, I'm just curious to know more about how it works in practice.
-Dan
Dan Rosenthal
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Fae faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 April 2013 21:28, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr wrote: ...
In face of that situation, Wikimedia France board has asked WMF to stop being a payment processor in 2013
Hi Christophe, thank you for giving this difficult decision some suitable context, and for doing so openly and promptly.
Could someone advise me, is there an official table on meta showing the current list of Chapters with payment processing agreements in place for the 2013 fund raiser?
Independently of any hat I happen to be wearing, I am planning on putting aside some volunteer time to examine the "admin:fundraising:program" ratio for our organizations over the next few months, so it makes sense to ensure this is achieved for the current payment processors, rather than just those organizations that are "easy" to find the figures for or come forward spontaneously. I would support other sensible top level performance indicators should they be identified and become available soon, FDC members may have a view on what might work well as the "top 5" indicators. Hopefully at least the admin ratio can be publicly shared before October this year to help foster a pragmatic discussion on simple dashboards and governance.
I'm hoping that the WMF can set a lead by publishing a calculation of admin ratio for themselves. ;-)
PS staff salaries are not all automatically 'admin', I hope we can agree that some program activities are entirely justifiably supported by paid staff and contractors.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
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Hey Dan,
Sure : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance_d%27utilit%C3%A9_publique and http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/associations/F1131.xhtml
In France all associations are, a priori, charities. The french fiscal services can withdraw that status for many reasons. One of them is if they believe the money raised using tax deductibility is not supporting french citizen/culture enough. Once you have that recognition, this charity status is much much harder to remove.
We've been planning to ask for that status in 2013 for few month, Sébastien Baijard, our fundraiser, had that as one of his goal when hired. We didn't before because the process is a really complex one. We actually rewrote our bylaws in 2010 and 2011 to best fit RUP needs (it includes information about board member being forbiden to get paid, the rules for employees to run for board once they leave their paid job in the association, and other informations like that).
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask -- Christophe
On 30 April 2013 12:37, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Christophe,
About this "reconnaissance d'utilite publique" or "supercharity" concept; is there a link to an analysis (preferable) or even just the text of the law/provision/regulation? Even one in French only would be OK, I'm just curious to know more about how it works in practice.
-Dan
Dan Rosenthal
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Fae faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 April 2013 21:28, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr wrote: ...
In face of that situation, Wikimedia France board has asked WMF to stop being a payment processor in 2013
Hi Christophe, thank you for giving this difficult decision some suitable context, and for doing so openly and promptly.
Could someone advise me, is there an official table on meta showing the current list of Chapters with payment processing agreements in place for the 2013 fund raiser?
Independently of any hat I happen to be wearing, I am planning on putting aside some volunteer time to examine the "admin:fundraising:program" ratio for our organizations over the next few months, so it makes sense to ensure this is achieved for the current payment processors, rather than just those organizations that are "easy" to find the figures for or come forward spontaneously. I would support other sensible top level performance indicators should they be identified and become available soon, FDC members may have a view on what might work well as the "top 5" indicators. Hopefully at least the admin ratio can be publicly shared before October this year to help foster a pragmatic discussion on simple dashboards and governance.
I'm hoping that the WMF can set a lead by publishing a calculation of admin ratio for themselves. ;-)
PS staff salaries are not all automatically 'admin', I hope we can agree that some program activities are entirely justifiably supported by paid staff and contractors.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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AFAIK , WMDE and WMCH are the last ones. I do not remember an announce about WMUK for the next fundraising.
but I don't understand what's the link with the FDC. In general I would encourage to avoid to speak about paiement processing out of its specific context, that's mean fundraising process only.
Cheers
Charles
Le 30 avr. 2013 à 12:00, Fae faewik@gmail.com a écrit :
On 29 April 2013 21:28, Christophe Henner christophe.henner@wikimedia.fr wrote: ...
In face of that situation, Wikimedia France board has asked WMF to stop being a payment processor in 2013
Hi Christophe, thank you for giving this difficult decision some suitable context, and for doing so openly and promptly.
Could someone advise me, is there an official table on meta showing the current list of Chapters with payment processing agreements in place for the 2013 fund raiser?
Independently of any hat I happen to be wearing, I am planning on putting aside some volunteer time to examine the "admin:fundraising:program" ratio for our organizations over the next few months, so it makes sense to ensure this is achieved for the current payment processors, rather than just those organizations that are "easy" to find the figures for or come forward spontaneously. I would support other sensible top level performance indicators should they be identified and become available soon, FDC members may have a view on what might work well as the "top 5" indicators. Hopefully at least the admin ratio can be publicly shared before October this year to help foster a pragmatic discussion on simple dashboards and governance.
I'm hoping that the WMF can set a lead by publishing a calculation of admin ratio for themselves. ;-)
PS staff salaries are not all automatically 'admin', I hope we can agree that some program activities are entirely justifiably supported by paid staff and contractors.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Fae faewik@gmail.com wrote:
I'm hoping that the WMF can set a lead by publishing a calculation of admin ratio for themselves. ;-)
PS staff salaries are not all automatically 'admin', I hope we can agree that some program activities are entirely justifiably supported by paid staff and contractors.
This is tangential to the main thread, but relevant to this point. Fully
agree that all staff salaries are not automatically 'admin'. Some institutional donors outside the wikiverse are now asking for activity-based budgets instead of traditional line item budgets to separate salaries into 'admin' and 'programmatic'. So in this kind of budget, a programmatic salary is budgeted under that programmatic activity along with other program components as programmatic input (and often called a 'program resource', rather than a salary, which is somewhat vague.)
But just wanted to make the point that donors are recognizing this issue overall, specially since some program activities are labour or human-intensive.
Best Bishakha
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org