On 27 July 2011 13:11, Michael Peel <michael.peel(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
I'm 100% sure that the chapter would part-fund a
UK wikimania - but it would need to be in conjunction with external sponsors. The money
would come from the appropriate year's budget, though, not the current one (which
covers spending between 1 Feb 2011 and end Jan 2012). Funding to support the creation of
the bid over the next 6 months (e.g. travel to meet potential sponsors, scout out venues,
etc.) would fall under the current budget, if this would be of use.
I disagree. Something as big as Wikimania should be saved up for. The
first step in putting together a bid would be working out a rough
budget, including costs during the bidding process. You can then work
out how much of that it is reasonable to pay out of general chapter
funds and how much we need to fundraise specifically for (most likely
through corporate sponsorship, although there are a few other
options). The bit we're going to pay for out of chapter funds can then
be saved up for over several financial years. The current underspend
could be re-allocated to be the first installment if the board wished
to do that.
The one big problem with this is what happens if we have an
unsuccessful bid. I think we would need to take steps to ensure that
doesn't happen. At the very least, we can talk to other European
chapters and make sure there are no competing European bids by getting
them to support our bid (that could be anything from a letter of
support to a pledge to contribute £X). Less formally, we can start
letting people know of our intention to bid (maybe even handing out
leaflets and badges and things at Wikimania 2012) and try to get
people to view 2014 as our year even before the bidding starts.
I know it's not exactly in the spirit of the thing to go out of our
way to avoid any real competition in the bidding process, but with
such a short timescale from the winning bid being announced to the
conference starting, we don't have much choice if we want a large
amount of corporate funding.