Considering some of the things you are expecting the staff to do I
would suggest that administration is not the best description in the
budget for whole of the 123k of staff costs. An office manager is an
admin cost, a press and publicity person is part of your marketing/PR
cost.
As for Tom's suggestions:
1 I would be surprised and concerned if the board were currently
getting anywhere close to 4% interest. I would much prefer that the
money was somewhere safer such as on deposit in a UK bank, even though
the interest rate will be lower.
2 Spending money can take time, I would much rather we had a strategy
of using our money prudently than a policy of minimising reserves and
spending everything. After such a huge increase in revenue there will
be temptations to ramp up activity on a similar timescale - I would
advise caution here and please don't commit yourself to expenditure
targets. Better to budget funds for things and underspend if the
projects don't get off the ground. Expenditure targets are a slippery
slope that can lead to organisations using up money to avoid going
under budget.
3 As for the question about company law and what the directors could
potentially do. I'm not sure, but I'd feel more comfortable once we
are registered with the charity commission. A few days ago I was at an
AGM of another charity I'm involved in which has just managed to get
registered after more rather more work than anyone anticipated, and
I'm a trustee of another longstanding charity. The sooner we are a
registered charity then the happier I'll be, partly because the
charity commission is a regulator for charities.
WereSpielChequers
On 27 February 2011 17:28, Tom Holden <tom.holden(a)economics.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
I am looking at the budget. £123k on admin, £455k on
programme expenditure,
of which £290k is going straight to the WMF anyway. Even assuming the WMF is
completely efficient, that’s over 20% of expenditure going to admin.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2011_Budget
Looking at income is irrelevant since we seem to be consistently missing our
expenditure targets and thus ending the year with money left over. (If the
£455k target is missed as seems likely then the admin expenditure chunk will
be higher still.)
A question for the treasurer while I’m paying some attention to this stuff:
what interest rate are we currently earning on our half million? If they’re
less than around 4% or something how do you justify this.
And a question for whoever understands company law: would the following be
possible in theory:
1) I find a group of 5 people who want to stand for the board on a
platform of giving back the entire earnings of WMUK to the membership
2) We stand, we’re voted in because everyone there wanted £500 (which
is about our assets to members ratio at the moment).
3) We change the constitution as necessary, getting it past an EGM
again because people want £500.
4) We do it.
With our current company status I’m worried this might be possible. And
obviously the more money we have sitting in our bank account the more
tempting this starts to look for our membership. This is yet another reason
why our current level of income is a bad thing not a good one. I was
sceptical about entering the first fundraiser before we were ready. Given we
failed to spend that money we clearly weren’t, so doing the second one
really wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
Tom
From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Roger Bamkin
Sent: 27 February 2011 17:12
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] job descriptions
Tom, you are not comparing next years budget are you with last years
activity? Staff paid for last year was one person part time I understood and
income was around 500,000 pounds. That seems pretty efficient to me or am I
missing something?
regards
Roger
On 27 February 2011 16:53, Tom Holden <tom.holden(a)economics.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
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(a)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
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http://uk.wikimedia.org
--
Roger Bamkin
(aka Victuallers)
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