[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Risker]

2011/8/28 Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com>

> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > See now, this is the kind of thinking that raises a lot of questions
> about
> > chapters receiving the very large amounts of money that many got the last
> > time around.  In the "real" world, charities determine what their
> objectives
> > are for the year, cost them out, and then fundraise with that specific
> > dollar objective in mind.
>
> In the real world, charities also make sure that their target is not
> completely out of proportion with the fundraising potential they have
> in a given geography. What's the point of thinking up fantastic
> programmes for a budget of a million dollars if you know that the
> maximum your country will ever give to your cause is 20 000 dollars.
> So I find the exercise to be interesting.
>
>
I think we are saying the same thing, in different ways. Charities/chapters
should not be fundraising for targets they cannot realistically meet, either
by developing program plans that will cost considerably more than they are
likely to be able to support financially, or by raising more money than they
can justify by their ability to provide programs.  It is two faces of the
same coin.



> >  What, pray tell, will the Swiss chapter do with
> > the equivalent of half a million US dollars?  And was that "target"
> > established by any particular research, or was it some figures worked out
> on
> > the back of an envelope?  It's certainly not the way that any other
> charity
> > I know of develops its targets.  Now, last year was the first time this
> > process was tried, so nobody was really quite sure how to manage things;
> > however, with the 2010 fundraiser under our belts, not much has happened
> at
> > the chapter end to examine the models being used. Indeed, many chapters
> > still haven't worked out what to do with last year's windfall, let alone
> > done any advance planning for next year.
> >
> > It's my contention that a very significant percentage of last year's
> donors
> > in particular believed that they were donating to the Wikimedia
> Foundation's
> > local office, not to local independent groups, many of which are quite
> > adamant that they are *not* the WMF.  Did anyone run a fundraising
> campaign
> > last year where donors had the choice of whether to donate to a local
> > organization versus the global one?  ("Donate here to support Wikimedia
> > Chapter activities in XXX country - tax receipt issued" vs "Donate here
> to
> > support Wikimedia activities around the world - no tax receipt
> available")
> > Did local messages clearly delineate how the funds would be distributed,
> or
> > what the chapter's objectives and activities were?  In other words, were
> > donors fully informed about what their donation would be used for?
>
> I suppose your statement is backed up by some research? As in, you
> have data to support the fact that "a significant percentage" of last
> year's donor believed they were donating to the Wikimedia Foundation's
> local office? As a matter of fact, I suppose you can also back up the
> fact that donors even understand what the Foundation (or the chapters
> for that matter) are and what they do? I'd be happy to see this data,
> it's cruelly missing.
>

It's been 10 months since last I saw the landing pages for various chapters
(and would have no idea where to find them now), and I saw them before the
fundraiser went "live" so some changes may have been made after I saw them.
Bearing that in mind, one of the concerns that came to my mind even then was
that many of them did not make it explicitly clear that XX percent of the
donation was going to and independent local chapter. There was also a
significant lack of fiduciary information about the chapter entities to
which their donation was going - such as links to audited financial
statements, operational or strategic plans, current programs, expansion
plans, budgets, identities of the chapter board members, and so on.  All of
this information was available in some form or other  from the "non-chapter"
landing pages.  Indeed, I never could figure out from any of the chapter
landing pages what percentage of the donation stayed local and what
percentage would be submitted to the WMF.

In other words, I *knew* that these were chapter landing pages, I knew the
money was going to chapters, and even still it wasn't immediately obvious to
me that the money was going to a separate entity (the chapter) and not just
a local branch directly controlled by the WMF - or to the global WMF
fundraising pool.



> >
> > I see last year's fundraiser as an experiment. In some ways, it was
> > amazingly successful - more funds were raised, in total, than ever
> before.
> > But in other ways it was not - most of the chapters raised far more money
> > than they were in a position to deal with, and the lack of advance
> planning
> > in this area has raised a lot of questions within the Wikimedia
> community,
> > and could easily lead to concerns from outside agencies and individuals
> as
> > well.  The hypothetical that we were "losing" donors because in many
> > countries tax receipts could not be issued has turned out to be false -
> > because many chapters that received a percentage of local donations were
> > still not able to issue tax receipts last year. Realistically, given the
> > basic chapter agreement, there are many that will never be able to obtain
> > the local equivalent of "charitable organization" status.
>
> Did it ever come to you that the reason why chapters raised "far more
> money" than they were in a position to deal with, might be:
> 1) the fact that more and more people want to support the projects
> altogether (this is gonna stop at some point, the world is finite)
> 2) the fact that having a local chapter may have had something to do
> with the "far more"?
> I don't have data to back up my statement, so it's just a hypothesis,
> please take it as such.
>


Oh I agree with you that, as the WMF projects have increasingly penetrated
the global mindset, there are more and more people willing to support the
movement with financial donations.  I'm just not persuaded that local
chapters have anything to do with that, particularly as it wasn't all that
clear in a lot of the landing pages that funds were going to a separate
local chapter and not just a local branch of the WMF (or for that matter
that a percentage of funds would remain for local programming). I do think
that at least in some countries the prospect of getting a tax deduction/tax
receipt was a motivating factor, either to make a donation, or to make a
larger donation.

(Aside to Ilario Valdelli - the point is that there is a mechanism by which
a donor may receive some form of tax relief for donating. The process will
differ from country to country, but in just about every country a person
must be able to "demonstrate" in some form that they have in fact made the
donation, should the tax auditor show up at their door.)



Risker/Anne