[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[Thomas Dalton]

> This is horrible.  The foundation is having enough trouble trying to
> run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that?
>  The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the
> revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which
> admittedly didn't provide enough details?
>
> This is getting pathetic.

The WMF is a business, it's just a business that works to make free
information for the world, rather than dividends for its shareholders.
The operations side of things is exactly the same.

It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't
have access to regular accounts. I know it's normal to only publish
accounts on a quarterly basis, but the board should be given them as
often as they have board meetings (which is apparently weekly).  The
point of the board meeting is to decide what the foundation should do
in the future - it is impossible to do that well if you don't know
where the foundation is now.