[Foundation-l] Relocation announcement

[Ben McIlwain]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> That's not quite how it works.  The donations that are coming in aren't
>> going to be changing, so WMF will still be getting most donations in
>> USD.  Except, because of the poor exchange rate, it is much more
>> expensive to do just about everything in the UK, including renting
>> flats, renting office space, buying food, buying bandwidth, etc.  The
>> donations wouldn't go nearly as far.
> 
> If hosting is staying in the US, that's quite a lot of the expenses
> that will still be being paid in USD. And it's not that the pound is
> strong, it's the dollar that's weak, so any non-USD donations can be
> spent in the UK without problems.

The point is, the non-USD donations are already being spent in the US at
very favorable exchange rates.  Go to the UK and that utterly
evaporates, and you suddenly need a much larger income stream to achieve
the same level of spending power.

And I forgot to mention the single largest expenditure WMF has (or maybe
second behind server costs): salaries.  The Foundation would have to pay
significantly more money in the UK

> I haven't looked at the budgets and
> donation distributions to see how well it would work, but it shouldn't
> be too big a problem. Remember, WMF is non-profit - one of the biggest
> problems for profit making businesses is that they have to report
> profits in one currency, so even if the actual money isn't being
> converted, they still have to convert it on paper - the WMF doesn't
> have to worry about that.

Non sequitur?  Assuming it's even true?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFG9UNrvCEYTv+mBWcRAkC9AKCkv/MJ6+HAUcpGk64Tid4XZ7UvpgCeMF8q
uOHKCHtMCDyRJHSv22OoP0Q=
=hcnh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----