[Foundation-l] Re: Power of the Board and wikimedians (was Re: Bounties and expenses)

[Michael Snow]

Delirium wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> This is not a precedent that the Foundation will start paying travel 
>> expenses for all meetings, because it is also not a precedent as to 
>> how future meetings will be held. I'm sure that Angela, Anthere, and 
>> Jimbo will have several more meetings during the year, but they will 
>> probably conduct these by telephone or IRC or some other means.
>
>This is not how I understood it.  If it were a single meeting, done 
>because of convenient circumstances, that would not be an enormous 
>issue.  However, the email introducing this issue (the first one with 
>the subject "Funding for the newly elected Board Members") said:
>
>"...I would like to propose that we cover certain key expenses for our 
>elected board members relating to their participation in Wikimedia work. 
>For instance, telephone calls overseas should be covered by the 
>Foundation, and not the elected representatives. A broadband connection 
>should be covered by the Foundation as well."
>
Yes, that was Danny's original proposal, but later in the discussion 
Andrew (Fuzheado) made a modified proposal to only pay for Angela's trip 
to Paris, and you still objected to that. I don't know how you 
understood that proposal at the time, but I'm glad that now it sounds 
like you don't object to it. The discussion has moved away from these 
original ideas (for example, the trustees have declined to have their 
internet connections paid for, and indicated that most meetings will 
probably take place by IRC). We could reach consensus easier if we let 
go of ideas that are no longer being actively promoted.

>This sounded more like a routine budget than an extraordinary one-time 
>expense.  Several other people also do seem to explicitly favor regular 
>in-person meetings, with the one in Paris being merely the first of 
>many, and even an overhead/expenses budget allowed to run as high as 10% 
>of our total income.  Those are different sorts of matters than a single 
>one-of-a-kind trip.
>
There was also general budget discussion involved, and perhaps it's a 
little difficult to sort out when generalities are mixed with specifics 
in the conversation. Certainly the Paris meeting should be the first of 
many in-person meetings, but primarily because we plan for the 
Foundation (and therefore the board) to exist for many years - in fact, 
in perpetuity. But this may well be the only in-person meeting of the 
board this year.

As for the idea of budgeting 10% to overhead expenses, overhead is 
frankly such a loosely defined term as to have little meaning in this 
discussion. To many organizations, computer hardware would fall into the 
category of overhead, and that's currently what, 90% or more of our 
expenses? The real problem is identifying our anticipated expenses and 
justifying them. Then it won't look like we're paying for trustee 
expenses, or anything else, out of some "slush fund". Obviously the 
expense of Angela's trip has been well-justified to the community, 
because people have stepped up and donated to support it. To identify 
and justify other expenses, we should have a discussion on the 
[[Wikimedia budget]] page on Meta.

--Michael Snow
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