[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation 2008-2009 Annual Plan

[Robert Rohde]

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hoi,
> This is not specific to non profit organisations, it is true for all
> organisations. A dollar not spend is a dollar saved and a dollar profit.
> This is what keeps the bean counters happy :)
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
>


That only helps if your goal is "profit".  For a non-profit, you don't want
them to have lots of unplanned savings because that implies they have
not allocating resources effectively.

I don't think Nemo's comment about servers is fair (they are working well by
historical standards), but at the same time one can ask: "Does not spending
this money mean that the mission is 6 months behind where it could be?"  Any
real budget will include contingencies and have unplanned variances, but at
the same time we don't want the budgets to be consistently too high OR too
low as it generally implies resources are not being allocated as efficiently
as they could be towards accomplishing the Foundation's goals.  We want to
know that unplanned resources go towards making the world better.  Having
savings and a contingency fund can be part of that, but it should be part of
the plan and not just something one falls into for the lack of other things
to do.

-Robert Rohde