Gerard, this is called "narrowing focus" by WMF, you see. But you wanted a comment on the FDC. The only thing I can say is: To base such a decision on things like "the FDC feels" and "to appear" and "it is likely" (all quotes from their text within a single paragraph) makes me think that they get very poor information and instead of trying to get it richer (for example by talking to *all* relevant people), they make a very poor decision out of it. Th. 2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>:

Having carefully read through some of the FDC rationales I thought they were appropriately strategic and made it pretty obvious exactly what those chapters that did not get what they were hoping for, need to change in order to bid more successfully. I found them encouraging and a good demonstration of why the FDC is a better process than the 100% WMF directed one that used to exist. As a long past Chapters Association chairman, who is definitely out of favour with WMF unelected big-wigs due to being controversial, I do not get any impression that this is driven by a WMF-centric agenda. Quite the opposite, most of the comments the FDC have made push us all to be more volunteer centric and away from either pointless centralization, empire-building or becoming scions of the Foundation. Chapter boards who are responsible for less successful bids, may need to consider this is a good time to not only take another bite at their strategy, but empower themselves to reconsider how they grow their organization rather than being led by growth alone. Too often we see measure such as employee counts or bigger budgets getting significantly more oxygen as being good things compared to volunteer* support, volunteer leadership, better transparency or even the reduction of programmes that fail to be volunteer centric or deliver healthy volunteer engagement. * For those chapters that make this an issue by counting volunteers in exceedingly creative ways, by "volunteer" I mean "unpaid volunteers". Fae On 23 November 2014 at 10:37, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote: -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On 23 November 2014 at 22:30, pajz <pajzmail(a)gmail.com> wrote: Just noting here that I think this is an excellent point. It's not entirely clear in some cases why the allocation has been cut by a specific amount. I can appreciate that the FDC has good reasons for not giving an entity what it has asked for, but at the same time it should be able to explain clearly how they arrived at the reduced figure. The other danger of across the board cuts like this, especially where the rationale is not clear, is that entities may start to inflate their requests, factoring an expected 10% or 20% to be shaved off the top by the FDC, thus leaving them with the figure that they *really *want. If the rationale is clearly explained, this will probably be less of a factor. Cheers, Craig Franklin

Hi, apologies for the lengthy answer. 2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: Can you please elaborate on where you get this feeling from, Gerard? 2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: Possible scenarios have been discussed, the final decision is, of course, in the hands of the upcoming WMDE's board. I think that the recommendation given highlights some strong and some week points to work on (and I think this is the point of the recommendation). 2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: prudent and careful planners but they are punished for not being actively involved in fundraising. On one hand the need of diversifying the sources of funding is for sure something that the FDC want to push organisations on, I want this to be as clear as possible on this point. I can say that all FDC members are aware that this message has not been given clearly in the past and that fundraising is a difficult endeavor where capacity needs to be built and result can not expected to be immediate. The main point is that "diversification of funds and resources mitigate risks and maintain sustainability, and also allow organizations to build meaningful local partnerships and shared ownership around goals." On the other hand we considered the fact that WMNL has a significant amount of reserves, while some reserves are definitely a good thing, we have to consider the fact that this money are, in some sense, frozen in their use. We can not ignore this fact. Also remember the the medium size of IEG is 7500 $[1] (but I recalled an even lower figure). As Dariusz noted, the so-called "payment processing" from the websites does not necessarily equate fundraising /tout court/. I disagree on this, but I may add that if this would be the case it would be one more reason to develop a local fundraising strategy. I disagree. Basically *all* the non-profit organisations in the world raise funds in a number of ways, including applying for grants to different organisations (at a local, national and international level), and I can assure you (through personal experience, i.e. projects done with Wikimedia Italia) that for doing such a thing you are required to present a (project) proposal, to prepare reports and basically do all the steps that are part of the FDC process. This is a risk associated with any fundraising activity other then having a very large number of direct small donors. I can also point out that you have to face the vagaries of the Board, too ("6. We should ensure the diversification of funding for our movement, and not rely solely on movement resources through our annual fundraiser.")[2]. In the recommendation for Wikimedia Foundation in May, the FDC asked for the start of the new strategic process. The Wikimedia Foundation as an organisation needs its own strategy, I do not know at the moment if this will be called "the Wikimedia movement strategy" or not. I do not know at the moment if this two strategies are better being one or not. The point is, whatever the Wikimedia Foundation's strategy will be this will affect the whole movement with a magnitude much greater than the strategy of every single other Wikimedia entity or group. One point of this is: make sure that WMF strategy is sensible for what you as a chapter want to do, or make sure that we have a movement strategy we agree on. The other point is: "WMF strategy will affect all of us, whether we like it or not" (cit. Delphine, I hope you don't mind me quoting this in public), so participate in the WMF strategy process when the time comes. I don't think chapters are second class citizens and I think that all committee members are aware of the fact that "sharing in the sum of all available knowledge" goes beyond English (for 7 out of 9 members English is not the native/primary language) and goes beyond Wikipedia, this even goes beyond online since many of the very cool projects the chapters do need a significant offline activity. (as in?) 2014-11-23 9:34 GMT+01:00 Thomas Goldammer <thogol(a)gmail.com>om>: Thomas, I think that what you are pointing out is just a matter of prose. 2014-11-23 10:37 GMT+01:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>rg>: I am not sure I understand this sentence, Lodewijk, it sounds like retaliation to me, and there is no such thing. If there is no feedback, this process is pointless. C [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grantmaking_Impact_Assessment,_2013… [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-04-18#Guidance_for_the_FDC

hi Gerard, you seem to mix two things: one is the FDC, the other is WMF and its funds processing practices. I can only speak for my part in the FDC (but I generally agree that funding scheme and policies require thinking over, and I definitely do not think there should be a "second class citizenship" approach). I am confident that none of the FDC members wanted to "punish" WMDE. However, we did have very serious concerns about governance, frugality, effectiveness of the programs. Is it your view that we should not reduce our recommendations based on these in any case, when staff or activities reductions would follow? Similarly, no-one is "punishing" the Dutch chapter. The FDC would only like to encourage more efforts in fundraising (and often just making an effort will be fine, results may be a bit contingent, as we all know), just so that we have more diversification of sources. This is valuable for our movement as a whole, as we should not assume that the current model of funding will certainly stay with us forever (many other organizations, including F/L/OSS ones, face trouble in global fundraising; if there are possibilities to get some local support, it is better to check them when the times are still good). Thomas: On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Goldammer <thogol(a)gmail.com> wrote: I am puzzled that you assume that we based our recommendations on poor information just because of polite wording. Not making definitive, absolute statements about reality does not indicate our uncertainty about data. In previous rounds whenever we felt the need to get more data, we reached out to get it (and sometimes even received it from chapters in time). However, I have insist that it should be primarily the responsibility of the people preparing projects to make them as detailed as needed. In this respect, I have to really commend and appreciate many of the projects in this round - as a volunteer myself, I really can recognize the amount of work needed to prepare detailed budgets and projects. This is particularly impressive when compared to projects developed by large, "professional" chapters, which at least in theory should be light years ahead in terms of detail and accuracy. best, dariusz "pundit"

2014-11-23 13:50 GMT+01:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>om>: You are: «Wikimedia CH has been very successful in offline activities/Kiwix, and is effectively developing tools for broader activities extending beyond their community, for example in GLAM. It is creating tools and content that can have impact on a global scale. The offline work done by the chapter is a very good example of collaboration and cross-coordination among different movement groups for creation of a universal tool and its implementation (e.g, the work with Wikimedia South Africa to implement offline tools).» C