[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[George Herbert]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/10/8 Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com>:
>> Despite an overall three-star rating (out of four), WMF was only rated two
>> stars for Organization Efficency.  This is described by Charity Navigator as
>> "Meets or nearly meets industry standards but underperforms most charities
>> in its Cause".  The Charity Navigator site further states:
>
> The WMF is unique in being so massively volunteer driven. The WMF
> exists to run the servers and handle the admin, almost everything else
> is done by volunteers and doesn't appear on the income statement. It's
> inevitable that the WMF will spend a lot of its money on admin. If you
> include volunteer time on the income statement, even at a nominal rate
> of $1/hr or something, then we would be spending almost all our
> resources on programmes.

The WMF is not entirely unique in that regard; many other charities
are largely volunteer (cf Red Cross).

However, the "Foundation as professionally organized core around which
a much larger volunteer activity rotates" is fairly rare.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com