[Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

[Michael Snow]

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