Daniel Mayer wrote:
But that leaves the issue of different currencies which makes graphing grand totals a bit more complicated... Argh! :)
In the report you could show three columns for each currency: 1) total in that currency, 2) current exchange rate, and 3) US$ equivalent
I was also wondering if Wikimedia's accounting ledegers are open to the public.
Not really right now. We still have to figure out what is legal to show given our set-up. But account totals should be fine (charities very often publicize totals during donation drives). And of course any expenditures need to be logged and deducted from the totals (as well as transfers - I plan to track all of that and make it public on the foundation's website). All that requires time to set-up though. Hopefully I'll have something substantial to show in late January.
This should be easy. :-) Set up a table with a column for "Date", "Description" and each account.
On that you could show: 1) Daily total donations with relevant amounts in the appropriate columns in that currency, 2) Expenditures as negative amounts from the account used for payment, and 3) Transfers as negatives in the source account, and currency equivalent positives in the target account.
Column totals can be done after each entry, or (to look less cluttered) periodically as required. This will give a quickly set up overview that can be easily understood by readers. Other accounting features can be developed later to cope with reporting and other legal demands.
I plan to start figuring out the dos and don't of grant writing later in January. This may be an area where it would make sense to hire a professional grant writer but I still want to do some research on the subject anyway. At the very least it will inform us better about what we should tell the grant writer.
I think that it is much too early to think of a professional grant writer, or even if we will take that route at all. If it gets to the point where seeking grants is the way to go we should begin by looking to see if we already have those skills available. We should also examine possible grant application forms to see if they are so complicated that we can't do them ourselves, and if making such applications will need any kind of structural madifications to the orgsanization. Financial statements are often required, but we should be developing those anyway.
Ec