Hi all,
The agenda for the next Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees meeting, on
June 12, 2018, is now available on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_agenda_2018-06
Best,
Charles M. Roslof
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
croslof(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff
members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.
*---- Sending on behalf of Jaime Villagomez ----Hello Everyone, The
Wikimedia Foundation has submitted our annual Form 990 to the US Internal
Revenue Service <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service>
(IRS) and posted on-wiki[1]. The Form 990 is the annual financial
reporting, known as an “information return,” which the federal government
requires nonprofit organizations in the United States to file. In addition
to posting the Form 990 on-wiki, we have also posted an accompanying page
with answers to frequently asked questions related to the form and
information we reported[2]. Almost all financial reports by their very
nature can be confusing, so to add clarity here is a simple breakdown of
key disclosures this form covers. We have previously explained that the
applicable dates for information disclosed on our financial reports can be
confusing, given that our July 1 fiscal year is different from the January
1 calendar year. For example, this "2016 Form 990" covers the financial
activities of the Wikimedia Foundation for our 2016-2017 fiscal year,
which ran from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. However, the calendar year
applies to disclosure of compensation of our officers, key employees,
highest paid staff and independent contractors. Those disclosures are
based on payments made during the 2016 calendar year -- in other words,
compensation paid from January 1, 2016 - December 31, 2106. The
compensation paid to individuals that is disclosed therefore spans part of
Foundation’s 2015-2016 fiscal year and part of its 2016-2017 fiscal
year. The Wikimedia Foundation's total revenue in our fiscal year
2016-2017 was US $89,973,967. Our total expenses during this period were
US $69,076,192 and our total net assets at the end of the fiscal year were
US $113,330,197.The Form 990 also includes information about compensation
paid to the Wikimedia Foundation's five highest paid employees. The
salaries for all paid positions are set according to salary bands which are
determined bi-annually based on independent third party survey data[3].
Executive salaries are subject to this same standard. All executive
salaries, with the exception of the Executive Director's salary, are set by
the Executive Director, using the survey data, and in discussion with the
Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees also uses the independent third
party survey data, as well as comparative data from other nonprofit
organizations, to set the salary of the Executive Director, and to assess
and advise on other executive salaries. This is not only a best practice,
but is a process that is required under applicable law.In addition to
salary information, the report includes other payments made to certain of
the highest employees upon their departure from the organization -- even
where those departures may have occurred in 2016, but prior to the
Foundation’s fiscal year. Following our regular practice for staff
departures, these severance amounts are set on a case-by-case based on a
person's tenure with the organization. We recognize that people have an
interest in this topic, and that there will be some questions. However, as
an employer we are limited in what we can discuss publicly, both because of
legal requirements, as well as respect for employees’ confidentiality. We
are very transparent about executive payments, while ensuring that our
transparency is consistent with a respectful work environment that does not
violate the confidential personnel information of our staff.Through reports
and discussions like these, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue to
strive to provide a responsible level of transparency and accountability. I
imagine there are other questions, and I invite you to review the on-wiki
FAQ[2], or email me if your question is not answered there.Thank you to the
Foundation's Talent & Culture, Legal, Advancement and Communications
departments for their assistance with developing this year's Form 990 and
related communications. A very big thank you to our Finance and
Administration department for their hard work preparing this important
public filing. Jaime VillagomezChief Financial Officer* *[1] Link to PDF
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2016%E2%80%932017_fi…>*
*[2] Link to FAQ
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRS_tax_issues_and_information/2016_Wikimed…>*
*[3] https://www.radford.com/home/surveys/gts/
<https://www.radford.com/home/surveys/gts/>*
--
Tony Le
Wikimedia Foundation
Ph: 415-839-6885 ext 6749
Fax: 415-882-0495
tle(a)wikimedia.org
*We've moved! **Our new address:*
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
This message is confidential and may be legally privileged or otherwise
protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, please
telephone or email the sender and delete this message and any attachment
from your system; you must not copy or disclose the contents of this
message or any attachment to any other person.
Hello everyone,
The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
place on Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel
is #wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net, and the meeting will
be broadcast as a live YouTube stream.[1] We’ll post the video recording
publicly after the meeting.
During the May 2018 meeting, we will hear about languages across the
Wikimedia projects.
Meeting agenda:
* Welcome and introduction
* Movement update
* The Compact Language Links project
* Executive update
* Questions and discussion
* Wikilove
Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about
the meeting and how to participate:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities…
You can also sign up to participate in future meetings on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities…
June 2018 Metrics & Activities meeting will take place on Thursday, 28
June, starting at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM Pacific Daylight Time).
Thank you,
Lena
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE
Lena Traer
Project Coordinator // Communications // Advancement
Wikimedia Foundation
*We at the Wikimedia Foundation are pleased that organizations across the
world are currently rethinking their privacy policies. We have always
strongly valued the privacy of our volunteers, readers, and donors, but
this moment has given us an opportunity to look at our own privacy policy
and see how it can be strengthened.*
We see privacy as an important foundation for intellectual freedom, and we
believe that the trust of our community is deeply linked to several
practices:
* We intentionally collect very little data about readers and contributors,
and provide a transparent view of the data we keep—and do not keep.
* We work with our communities and invite open community vetting of our
privacy-related policies.
* We remain accountable to the community, including a volunteer ombudsman
commission that responds to any reported privacy-related concerns.
* We support our open source platform, which among other benefits, allows
anyone to examine and discover any vulnerabilities in our code.
We do not allow third-party tracking of visitors to our sites. We have
short data retention periods (see our data retention guidelines[1]).
We proactively publish a transparency report[2], informing the public about
requests for data about our contributors. We have a comprehensive privacy
policy[3], developed with community input.
We are always looking for ways to improve our privacy and data security
practices in partnership with our community of contributors and users.
As a result of our most recent review, we are updating our privacy policy,
which now clarifies the definition of “personal information,” and has been
reorganized to improve readability without changing the overall intentions
previously set by the community. As promised[4] in the policy, we are
providing these minor changes with three (3) calendar days’ prior notice.
These changes will go into effect on May 24, 2018. As always, we want your
thoughts and feedback, and invite everyone to comment on the policy talk
page[5] over the next thirty (30) calendar days. We are also grateful to
our volunteer community, who are actively working on translations of this
policy.
We will continue looking for ways to improve and help make clearer to
everyone our privacy practices and policy as technology and the world
change rapidly around us.
Look out for more updates, both here and on the Wikimedia-l mailing list,
to learn more about our approach to privacy and data security practices.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines
[2] https://transparency.wikimedia.org/
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
[4]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy#Changes_to_This_Privacy…
[5] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy
--
Tony Sebro
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
tsebro(a)wikimedia.org
(415)839-6885 ext. 6784
*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal and ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*
Hi all,
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has approved and published
minutes from its meeting on March 27, 2018:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2018-03-27
Best,
Charles M. Roslof
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
croslof(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff
members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.
Hello everyone,
The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
place on Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC
channel is #wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net, and the
meeting will be broadcast as a live YouTube stream.[1] We’ll post the video
recording publicly after the meeting.
Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about
the meeting and how to participate:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities…
We will follow up early next week with the meeting agenda.
Thank you,
Lena
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vMFUaEeH3w
Lena Traer
Project Coordinator // Communications // Advancement
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
The agenda for the next Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees meeting, on
April 19, 2018, is now available on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_board_agenda_2018-04
Best,
Charles M. Roslof
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
croslof(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff
members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.