[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Oh, WMF landing page contains so many links to all the things you
mention (especially comparing to WMDE's or WMFR's landing page).

> 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.

And you assume most people even know what WMF is and what is the
difference between WMF and chapters? Come on, go to
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate and count how many times
Wikimedia is mentioned (answer: 3, 2 times in the footer). Then count
how many times Wikipedia is mentioned (11 times in the main text).
People are donating to Wikipedia, not WMF, and WMF knows that and
hence designs the fundraising messages in that way (remember the
"Wikipedia CEO" incident?). Chapters are much more honest in this
respect.

-vvv