[Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?

[Matthew Roth]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Dec 28, 2012 12:52 AM, "Matthew Roth" <mroth at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I suspect the assumption of bad faith is because he doesn't believe
> anyone
> > > could genuinely propose such a ridiculously bad idea. When limits on
> such
> > > ratios are discussed the usual figure I hear is a limit of 10%. 50% is
> > > completely unrealistic. Either you would have to massively overpay your
> > > junior staff (wasting donor's money) or you wouldn't be any to attract
> any
> > > experienced senior staff.
> > >
> >
> > As a comparison, Doctors Without Borders/MSF USA had a policy of paying
> the
> > E.D. no more than 3 times the rate of the entry level positions. When I
> > left at the end of 2004, the entry level salary was $35,000 and the E.D.
> > was $105,000. Not sure what it is now.
>
> How are they structured? Was there another layer of management at the
> international level? $105k sounds very low for the top person in an
> organisation of any significant size.
>

That's what the E.D. probably thought :) and it was definitely scuttlebutt
among folks at the office.

MSF was structured in some ways like WMF and its chapters. MSF USA was a
"non-operational" chapter of the overall MSF, meaning that we raised funds
and did recruitment of volunteers, but we were not allowed to organize any
operations (i.e. missions in the field to administer aid). The five
"operational" organizations were all in Europe: France, UK, Spain,
Switzerland and Netherlands. Each of the 19 chapters had it's own
organizational hierarchy.

I'm not sure about the compensation of the other chapters at MSF, but I
imagine they were not compensated too much higher. This was one of the
points of pride in maintaining the golden rule there (15% of money raised
spent on admin, 85% spent on programs), so salaries were lower than peers
like the IRC and others (ironically, another point of pride and similarity
with us is that MSF also moved away from taking govt money).

MSF USA got its first operational mission in Guatemala in 2004 (soon
followed by Nigeria). I imagine that trend has increased as the chapter
"matured" so to speak.

Sorry to digress.

-Matthew

-- 

Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
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