[Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

[Anthere]

Michael Snow wrote:
> geni wrote:
> 
> 
>>On 10/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United 
>>>States,
>>>we are required to have a mission statement, because we are 
>>>accepting  money.
>>>People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that 
>>>is  laid
>>>out in the mission statement.
>>
>>You can legally have informal ones (that is what Michael Snow's
>>comments suggest exists at the moment)?
> 
> 
> Legally, a nonprofit organization must have a purpose, and the purpose 
> has to be lawful and not for pecuniary profit. The law may require that 
> this purpose be set forth in the incorporating documents, and I assume 
> that's the sort of thing Danny is referring to. There's a statement of 
> purpose in the current Wikimedia Foundation bylaws. It has, however, 
> never really been meaningfully adopted by the community, which is why 
> I'm suggesting a referendum on the vision and mission statements.
> 
> Vision and mission statements aren't formal legal documents themselves, 
> although they can be incorporated into such documents. I think there's 
> general agreement that the bylaws are badly in need of updating, and 
> that issue was noted at the retreat as a high priority. In conjunction 
> with that, community-adopted vision and mission statements could help 
> provide guidance to the board (especially the elected representatives, 
> but also the others). Right now, I don't see much that would convey to 
> Florence or Erik what the community wants from them. They can pay 
> attention to various individual voices according to their own 
> preferences, of course, but otherwise they're divining the tea leaves of 
> consensus like the rest of us.
> 
> --Michael Snow

Earl Grey being my favorite.

Long before the retreat, I raised my concern about the "vision" and the 
"mission statement". During the retreat, both Erik and I agreed on the 
fact there was information missing about it, so we collectively drafted 
a new text.
A referendum on this text was indeed suggested (it may have been by 
Michael, I must say I forgot :-)), and I think the idea is good. I do 
not think it has been formally approved though (might become quite 
difficult to do a referendum given our community size now, on the other 
hand, Erik is quite good at setting up referendums ;-)).

ant