[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, September 2012

[Tilman Bayer]

Hi Pine,

although these questions fall outside my area of expertise, I can
provide some quick partial replies.

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 1:46 AM, ENWP Pine <deyntestiss at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I appreciate the comprehensiveness of this report.
>
> I have a few questions about the finance section. Some are more basic than
> others.
>
> Does WMF use the calendar year for its fiscal year?
No, the Foundation's fiscal year runs from July to June.
>
> Is the financial plan for WMF to run a YTD deficit until the annual
> fundraiser?
As I understand it, yes. It seems a very obvious decision to me. This
is no reason for concern, cf.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers
: "The Board of Trustees has established a rule of thumb that it would
like the WMF reserve to never drop below six months of total spending.
The 2012-13 plan therefore calls for the reserve to stay at a minimum
of six months of total spending at the low point of the year."
>
> Why were recruiting expenses higher for the July-August timeframe? I thought
> that WMF eliminated a recruiting contractor recently, so I would have
> expected recruiting expenses to be lower rather than higher.
>
> Was August an unusually expensive month? If the total YTD expenses were
> $5.2MM and August alone cost $2.6MM, I would be interested in knowing why
> August was such an expensive month.
YTD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year-to-date ) here means the
timespan from July to August, see also the introductory remark "All
financial information presented is for the period July 1, 2012 -
August 31, 2012."

So the answer would appear to be "no". As the report says, the
expenses for August were actually slightly (3%) under plan.

>
> If in the July-August time period WMF "Completed our report to the Stanton
> Foundation and received our second grant installment of $1.8 million", why
> is there only $1.75 million of revenue shown in the table which includes
> $1.0MM from the Sloan Foundation? These numbers don't seem to add up
> correctly. I would have expected the revenue total to be at least $2.8MM
> when including both of the grants.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Your finance and metrics enthusiast,
>
> Pine
>
Don't forget that today you will have the opportunity to watch our
Garfield, our Chief Financial Officer, explain the new (September)
numbers live in the Foundation's monthly metrics and activities
meeting.

-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB