Gulp. If people knew WMUK's overhead to activity ratio do you think they'd still be happy to donate? Or a similar question, do you think a £1 given to WMUK does more for the interests of UK Wikimedians than £1 direct to Wikimedia? I note that the bulk of your programme expenditure is going straight to the WMF anyway, so all that's happening is that the money's being processed by WMUK's (less efficient, due to lower scale) system, then going to the WMF (with additional overheads from them). Indeed it seems that it's only going to their international projects which is arguably further from the interests of UK Wikimedians than server/code expenditure is.
I don't know the details of what you're doing at the moment so maybe I'm completely wrong. But my distinct impression at the moment is that UK donations would be much more effective if they went straight to the WMF then groups of users petitioned them for money for UK specific projects. Perhaps something like WMUK could intermediate, but it could certainly be a much lighter organisation.
Admittedly charitable status if it ever arrives will change this story, providing the gains from gift aid outweigh the relative inefficiencies of WMUK. Even this isn't totally obvious at the moment, particularly as unclear whether the things WMUK is spending money on are more useful to the average user of Wikimedia projects than what the WMF project is spending money on.
I hope to hear some serious arguments about the chapter's efficiency at the next AGM. I also hope for the chance for some significant input from the membership on expenditure priorities.
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Turvey Sent: 27 February 2011 15:57 To: WMUK-L Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] job descriptions
In advance of the board meeting next Tuesday, I've started drafting up some job descriptions on the wiki at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Job_Descriptions for the new members of staff that we are recruiting.
Please add your contributions on the main and talk page to develop this.
Many thanks,
Andrew
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org