[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009

[Waldir Pimenta]

Hi Thomas, and all who showed concern about Wikimedia Portugal's planned
expenses.

I am one of the persons who calculated that budget, and thus I feel I should
provide you with some information.

First of all, I'd point out that none of us has any experience in
nation-wide nonprofit organizations. We thus had no way to know what we
would need to make it work, and chose to play safe. Obviously, we were aware
that the value for meetings was fairly high, and we pointed that out in our
proposal, as you can read in the page you linked:

"We are (...) willing to reduce the frequency of the meetings if the total
value is considered too high"

And we indeed were advised to do so, when the grant was conceded:

"The award was reduced from the requested USD $7,909 to encourage a smaller
budget for travel."

Let me assure you, we are as much as yourself concerned in not wasting the
grant's money with "lunches for the members". We have plenty of planned
activities (as you can see in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Portugal/Actividades) for which we
didn't include a budget in our request, since it was for the start-up only.
But we are very much willing to find ways to meet less and apply the money
in these projects instead.

We would love to receive advice on how we can make the chapter work (well)
with people so spread across the country (almost all the involved people
live in different cities), and since much of the money WMF has was
volunteer-contributed, we will take into account the wishes of the
community. If you feel we should meet less (how many times do you think are
enough? let us know your thoughts on our mailing list:
wikimediapt at lists.wikimedia.org), then we certainly will consider your
advice.

Thanks,
Waldir

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/9/10 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> > 2009/9/10 Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com>:
> >> There are 21 accepted proposals listed on this page:
> >>
> >>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/Reporting_Guidance
> >
> > Ah, well found! I didn't think to check that page - the title doesn't
> > suggest it would contain such info.
>
> I must say, I am amazed that this was approved:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_PT/Start-up
>
> WMUK managed to get set up without paying for any meals and all
> meetings have taken place in pubs or rooms we've got hold of for free.
> Paying nearly $3,500 for that out of charitable donations is patently
> ridiculous.
>
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