Now that the annual fundraiser is complete, we have started to decide on the main things
that the chapter should its money on in the forthcoming year. In line with our philosophy
of open decision making, the board would like to share these proposals with you for
feedback and consultation before making any final decisions. Please let us know what you
think to these ideas, by replying to this message, by personal email or by commenting on
the wiki page [1]
We raised around £85,000 in the fundraiser. [2] Of this, half will be remitted to the
Foundation, subject to legal clearance, which leave us with £42,500 to spend on projects,
administration and to keep in reserves. We also have the remainder of our existing £5,000
start up grant from the Foundation, but that money is already earmarked for particular
areas. [3]
Part time Administrator
We are considering employing a part time administrator to assist in the running of the
chapter. Wikimedia Deutschland have said that they found employing an administrator was a
significant boost to their chapter's efficiency and we hope that we can achieve the
same.
The proposal is to employ someone at £10/hour for 8 hours per week, rising to 12 hours per
week during next year's fundraiser. They would work from home and most of their work
would be online. Assuming they start work in June that would cost a total of £3,122.
Please let us know whether you think in principle we should do this, and if so, whether
these numbers look sensible.
Admin costs [4]
We have budgeted £6,700 to cover other administrative costs. This includes £3,000 for
legal fees - including help with our charity status application and the Fundraising
Agreement - and £1,000 for accounting and audit fees. We have also budgeted £500 to pay
for travel to a face to face board meeting, which we hope will help boost the productivity
of the next board.
Full details are:
Annual Accounts: 1,000
Legal advice: 3,000
AGM: 500
In person board meeting: 500
Telephone, postage etc : 200
Insurance: 500(?)
Administrator: 3,122
Other: 1,000
Total: 9,822
Are there any other things we should add, or are there things on this list you disagree
with?
Reserves
Now that we have a more secure financial footing, we think it's appropriate to start
thinking about putting some money aside in reserves, to cover us for years when we have
lower that expected income. We think £8,000 is a reasonable figure, which covers a full
year's admin expenses. We would like to build this up over two years, putting £4,000
aside from this year's fundraiser and £4,000 from next year.
Projects
This leaves £28,500 to spend on projects this year. Ideas that have been proposed
included:
Toolserver support
The Wikimedia Toolserver is a platform that hosts various tools that are used on the
Wikimedia projects, including vital counter-vandalism bots. The toolserver is operated by
Wikimedia Deutschland eV with assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation. [5]
WMDE has recently asked other chapters if they could assist in financing and operating the
toolserver. The annual budget is around €100,000 and they would like other chapters to
cover around half of the budget - €50,000. In addition, there has been some discussion
around setting up some kind of Toolserver Association, to operate the toolserver, with the
contributing chapters as shareholders. The timetable for this is likely to be around
August 2010 before it is established.
Figures that have been discussed by the board range from £5,000 to £10,000. Exact details
of how we would contribute - a donation to WMDE earmarked for the toolserver, a donation
earmarked to a particular expense or waiting and then contributing to the Toolserver
Association has not been decided.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile contribution to make and, if so, how much do you
think would be appropriate?
Wikimedia Usability Initiative
Individual board members have discussed various ideas with the Usability Initiative, the
team that is working on improving the Wikimedia interfaces. [6] As part of their work they
have generated a list of discrete projects that would all have a significant positive
impact on Wikimedia and do not currently have sufficient funding. If we give them a budget
they would be able to provide a selection of potential projects, and we could then choose
to fund one of these, potentially one that linked in with a particular interest of the
chapter. This proposal was discussed by the board back in October, when it was positively
received, with further action deferred until after the Fundraiser. [7]
It's been proposed that we budget £10,000 to fund a project drawn up by the Usability
Initiative.
Do you think this would be a worthwhile project and, if so, how much do you think would be
appropriate?
GLAM-WIKI
We have discussed organising a GLAM-WIKI (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums &
Wikimedia) conference in the UK, along the lines of the conference in Australia in August
2009. [8] We have had tentative discussions with museums who would be interested and may
be able to arrange it for August 2010. The purpose of the conference is to bring key
decision makers in the "GLAM" sector into contact with Wikimedia people to
persuade them to partner with us on content donation, partnerships like Britain Loves
Wikipedia and other ways we can help each other achieve our aims.
Costs are expected to be in the region of £5,000, of which some or all may be funded by
the GLAM partners or through sponsorship.
Do you think this is a worthwhile use of our resources?
Other projects
Other projects that have been proposed, but not yet discussed by the board, in connection
with the 2010 Budget include:
£1,000 for a microgrant project, along the lines of Wikimedia Poland's scheme [9]
£1,000 to sponsor Wikimedians to attend Wikimania Gdansk 2010 [10]
£500 to fund travel to museums etc for discussions on content access
£500 to assist in the development of Wikimeets
£300 to pay for members to attend free content conference [11]
£340 to fund preliminary work on Wikimania Manchester 2013 [12]
Do you think these are worthwhile things to spend our money on? Is there anything else you
think should be added to the list?
If you've managed to read this far then I'm impressed and thank you! All comments
are gratefully received whether on our general approach or on specifics.
We look forward to hearing your ideas!
Regards,
Andrew Turvey
Secretary
Wikimedia UK
Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited.
Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827.
The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.
[1]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Budget
[2]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2010-01-19/Agenda/Fundraiser_Report
[3]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[4]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Administrative_costs
[5]
https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Main_Page
[6]
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[7]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009-10-20#AOB
[8]
http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM-WIKI
[9]
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpl.wikimedia.org%2Fwik…
[10]
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[11] See list at
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Budget#Restricted_funds_brought_forward
[12]
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Wikimania_Bid/Bid_budget