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%2Fwiki%2FWikikonkurs&sl=pl&tl=en [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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org