[Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[Christophe Henner]

Hi,

I've got an awkward feeling toward this whole thread. I'll try to explain why.

For years, every single discussion has been WMF versus the chapters.
few years ago it kinda made sense as we had so different issues and we
were trying to codify the relationship between our organizations
through agreements.

But now, we've come to a point we cannot afford anymore to have this
duality between WMF and Chapters. The movement raised around 30M$ last
year, more and more chapters are raising more than 100 K$. At this
point our needs are the same, we need that every single organizations
fundraising to be able to manage and steward correctly the donations.

4 years ago, a chapter screwed up, it concerned, at top, few thousand
donations. Now days, a chapter screws up it concerns ten of thousand
of donations. And we can't afford that. At all.

So, I guess we all agree that all organization raising money in our
movement must :
* be able to do useful "stuff"
* possess the framework to handle thousand of donations
* respect the accountability standards and criteria stated in the board letter

So as Liam said (BTW Craig I'm a living cliché... so I'm more into
wine but thanks :D), for me the letters is huge step forward. We now
have kind of a ladder regarding fundraising. We now what's on bottom
(non fundraising) and what's on top (chapters meeting all the needs
and fundraising 100% of the money in their country). That's awesome.

But, we now have an issue. As the movement grows, more and more
organizations join us. And those organizations don't have the luck we
(older wikimedia organizations) had... an organic learning curve. We
grew with the projects basically. And so we were able to learn step by
step to handle more and more donors and money. And in fact, we're
still learning.

But new chapters are cursed with the success of the project. If they
dive into the 100% fundraising within their country they don't have
this learning curve.

Remember of the ladder, we know what's at the bottom, what's on top...
now we have to figure the steps in the middle to artificially recreate
the learning curve we had.

I'm voluntarily not addressing some of the legitimate concerns
regarding the coming fundraiser as I think that most of the concerns
are due to either poor wording or lack of detailed information.

Anyway, whatever your concerns are, we have to stop thinking us Vs.
them. We're all in the same boat and have to start working all
together.

All the best,

Christophe