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

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:

>On 5/20/07, Pierre Beaudouin <pierre.beaudouin at wikimedia.fr> wrote:
>  
>
>>To be constructive, do you have some ideas to collect more money ? What
>>should be change during the next fundraising ?
>>    
>>
>First step is to publicly distribute monthly financial statements and
>a detailed budget which minimizes unnecessary costs.  
>
Sure, better financial reporting would help; quarterly would be 
adequate.  Good budgetting practice would also bring transparency to the 
situation.  Opaque finances only too easily makes people suspicious even 
where there is no real cause to be suspicious.

>The rest of the
>details really come from how much if any shortfall results from that.
>I suspect there won't be any, so long as the budget really does
>minimize unnecessary costs.  
>
That all depends on how you define unnecessary costs.  A grest deal of 
setting budgets depends on informed guesswork.  It involves allowing for 
some margin of error in our guesses.  The more optimistic assumptions 
should indeed project a shortfall, but that would also include wishlist 
expenditures that can easily be dropped if revenue expectations are not met.

>Leasing servers instead of purchasing
>them is one factor which should help a great deal.
>
I've already expressed my disagreement with you on that.  Leasing is 
only the better option when your blinders  limit  your perspective to 
short term cash flow.  Things are quite different when you think in 
terms of a three plus year plan.

Ec