[Foundation-l] An article to read

[effe iets anders]

We could make a comparison with the "old" foundations, if we calculate
an amount for all the donated time... Take the number of edits,
multiply it by an average edit time, multiply by a certain income, and
I bet that even if you take $2/hour or so, it would already cheer up
our percentage going into overhead :)

BR, Lodewijk

2008/4/14, Dirk Riehle <dirk op riehle.org>:
>
>  >> The way the WMF works, pretty much all the money goes on
>  >> administrative stuff - everything else is done by volunteers. You'd
>  >> have to decide what administrative stuff directly furthers the goals
>  >> of the foundation and what stuff just keeps the foundation going (the
>  >> hosting would probably fall into the former category, and is a very
>  >> large proportion of spending).
>  >>
>  >>
>
>
> Servers and bandwidth are clearly project expenses, while HQ salaries
>  are typically not.
>
>
>  > You're right.  The Wikimedia Foundation is an unusual charity in that
>  > almost all of its mission-related (project-related, program-related)
>  > work is done by the volunteers. The staff essentially does whatever's
>  > left over - core technical functions, legal support, keeping the books,
>  > coordinating media and public relations activities, etc.
>  >
>  > Generally, what Dirk says is true - the smaller the percentage of a
>  > charity's budget going to overhead, the leaner and more efficient the
>  > charity is.  But in this regard, we're not comparable to other
>  > charities, because our spending on overhead is completely dwarfed by the
>  > massive amount of mission-driven work going on, that's not visible in
>  > the financial records.
>  >
>
>
> Well, I dug out the WMF 2007 financial reports from the remote parts of
>  my brain/hard drive (by the way they had been really hard to find, and I
>  eventually had got them through TechCrunch). So its true, if the WMF
>  were an old established charity, the numbers wouldn't be too great. Not
>  sure this is a consequence of the head-over-heels growth mode or will
>  remain like this.
>
>  It is not immediately apparent to me that the WMF is so much better in
>  terms of volunteers than other leading non-profit organizations. This is
>  not a complaint, just a sign that the WMF is headed towards being a
>  great charity. Wouldn't MSF point to their significant volunteer
>  contributions as well? As far as I can tell, no laurels to rest on, but
>  rather inspiration to keep it up.
>
>  I would probably try to quantify those volunteer contributions
>  nevertheless, even if they aren't part of the core financial statements.
>  Not just for big donors, small fry donors (like myself) look at stuff
>  like this as well. I donate to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), and I only
>  switched from once-a-year-at-christmas to monthly giving when I saw them
>  keeping up their numbers year after year.
>
>
>  Dirk
>
>
>  --
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