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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Ehm, so you are happy when money is spend according to plan as it shows that
the plans were implemented and the budget was used according to plan... Now
I am really happy when there is a plan that will allow for the spending of
money according to a plan that will get us the results. I am even more happy
when the people spending the money are smart and find ways to improve on the
budget and spend less. In a company it is profit in a "Not for profit" is
allows for other / more activities, this is a different kind of benefit and
it is positive in my book.

Now when the WMF budgets for the acquisition of hardware and at the same
time tries to find donors to provide us with the same hardware, I think this
is an excellent way of operating because it allows for the donations not to
materialise.

When you are of the opinion that this is not the proper way to do this, then
i would say tough. I prefer a common sense approach that allows to spend our
money as effective as possible. Let me be clear on one thing; the money has
to achieve a goal. I want to see money spend, others want the WMF to have
reserves. Having sufficient reserves that prevent the WMF from having to
rely on donors is in my book excellent management.

Thanks,
      GerardM

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 9:43 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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