[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Nathan]

On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Risker
>
> I would like to ask your opinion on WMF's stewardship of the money. The
> Foundation has fulfilled its legal obligation as a non-profit but as a
> community member from english wikipedia, do you feel it has been accountable
> to you or spent it on worthwhile activities for the community? the reality
> is WMF raised several times more money than all chapters combined, this
> year's target is 30% or so more than previous year's. Do you think
> concentration of all that money with one organization and one entity is a
> smart idea with a global movement like ours?
>

In what way is devolving money to many organizations in many countries
an *improvement* for accountability, particularly when the standards
for transparency and fiscal responsibility are minimal or
non-existent? I don't know about Risker, but I don't personally
believe the Foundation's money is being misspent. It helps that I know
the Foundation is a professional operation, and that it's spending and
priorities are disclosed.

More to the point, according to [1] nearly 80% of the total
fundraising take was from North America. Participation by chapters in
the fundraiser is not, in anyway, an alternative to concentrating
money in the WMF.

[1]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av5TeXEyGuvpdGRyNDJHS19RZmRqbWlqeHp5ak5uWnc&authkey=CKb59_wD&hl=en_US#gid=0

>
> Its going to be the end of activities and projects like those, if chapter
> independence to raise funds is taken away. I completely agreed with Birgitte
> SB's take on the matter earlier.
>
> Do you want WMF to be the sole and only authority for what the entire
> movement does? Every project, every little activity in their slice of the
> world or their online community has to be individually approved and
> sanctioned by WMF. It's taking away independence of these small groups in
> deciding what's best for their own part of the world or community, somewhere
> along the line this is getting conflated into issues of accountability that
> no one really disagrees with, not the chapters themselves. the only solution
> because of certain chapters mismanagement, is to make every chapter more or
> less a branch office of WMF.
>
> Theo
>

First of all, the chapters can continue to fundraise how they like.
There are other methods of fundraising, and many thousands of other
non-profit groups that manage to fund themselves without the WMF
drive. If your goal is chapter independence, then you should be
encouraging chapters to engage in their own fundraising efforts. If
they have no source of funding other than the Wikimedia Foundation
annual fundraiser, then they are fully yoked to its continuing
goodwill and approval.

Second, there is no reason to expect that every little expenditure
will have to be approved by the WMF in advance. I haven't seen
outlines for requesting grants from the Foundation... have you seen
documents that suggest the requirements for receiving a grant will be
particularly onerous? Perhaps a chapter will establish a budget,
submit the budget to the WMF, and have the whole budget funded. That's
more along the lines of what I remember Phoebe and others suggesting.

Nathan