[Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[MZMcBride]

Béria Lima wrote:
> WMF *can't *ask money back from Chapters. By the agreement, Chapters who
> participate in last year Fundraising need to give 50% of everything they
> raised to WMF, but they are not forced to do anything more. And WMF can't
> ask for more than that because there are 2 different organizations.

I'm sorry, I don't follow.

It's my understanding that some of these chapters received tens of thousands
of dollars. In some cases, as noted by the Board, this far exceeded the
chapter's needs. If that's the case, I'm not sure why it would be
out-of-the-question to ask for some of the money back. There might be
reasons that the chapters don't want to or aren't required to, but I don't
see any reason why the Wikimedia Foundation couldn't ask.

Can you clarify?

(And to all those chapter-related people and Wikimedia Foundation staff
currently discussing this on internal-l, could you please try to honor the
transparency and accountability that Wikimedia was founded upon and discuss
this on the public list?)

MZMcBride