[Wikimedia-l] Board vote on narrowing focus

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

Hi,

as the newly appointed Chair of the FDC, but expressing my personal
understanding, I support Anders' view. The narrowed focus means more
activities done through the chapters, and the community at large. Of course
the specifics will have to be established, but now WMF applies for their
non-core activities like everybody else.

Best,

Dariusz

2 lis 2012 12:28, "Anders Wennersten" <mail at anderswennersten.se> napisał(a):

> As a newly appointed secretary of FDC and just back from San Francisco
after a four days deliberation session, where these thing has been in focus
I can give you some facts from what I have understood.
>
> The Board has earlier decided to give WMF an budget for 2012-2013 for
30,3 MUSD for core activities, up from 26,2 the earlier year, mainly
engineering and thing like fundraising support.
>
> The Board has also set a budget of 11,4 MUSD for activities partly to be
disseminated to chapters and to a part to WMF, where Grants make up big
part. The total of 11,4 is an increase.
>
> The narrowed focus in practice means that The WMF part funded through FDC
is changed in composition, so less in direct activities by WMF personnel
and more money in Grants to be allocated to chapters and individuals.
>
> The narrowed focus is only a issue for WMFs internal budget. The planned
funds dissemination to chapters is not effected and the actual result of
the the implementation of the Narrowed focus is that more money will be
used by community/chapters via grant then was earlier planned
>
> Anders Wennersten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Lodewijk skrev 2012-11-02 12:05:
>>
>> Thanks Bishakha,
>>
>> while I can understand the move of the WMF to do what they are best at,
for
>> me it is always a bit confusing when the Board (or Sue) is talking about
>> the Foundation, and when about the movement. I hope I'm correct in my
>> assumption that this narrowed focus is mostly a Foundation thing.
>>
>> The question I am missing in this analysis (but perhaps it was discussed
>> orally) is 'which organization/group/individual is best placed to execute
>> this' and then I definitely agree that many events etc are probably
better
>> executed at a chapter level than by the WMF. I do hope that freeing up
>> these resources does mean that chapters and other groups will be
supported
>> more in taking over these tasks and where necessary, a transition process
>> is considered.
>>
>> I do have one more specific question. In discussions previously on meta,
>> there were some insinuations (maybe only my interpretation) that the
>> organizational support (so not just money) for chapters and other
>> affiliated groups would be reduced as a consequence of this narrowed
focus.
>> I sincerely hope the opposite will be true - and that more effort will be
>> put in enabling these organizations to take over tasks where possible and
>> take on new initiatives as much as possible. As long as the Chapters
>> Association is not active (it seems to me it will be another year before
it
>> will be fully functional) I think it would be a waste to reduce this
>> enabling capacity (for example the great networking function that is
being
>> provided by Asaf - but he could use some help!) while there is no other
>> organization yet to take over those functions. Could you elaborate a bit
on
>> this?
>>
>> Best,
>> Lodewijk
>>
>> 2012/11/2 Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> At its in-person meeting on 26 October, the board unanimously agreed to
>>> accept the recommendation to narrow focus as presented by the Executive
>>> Director.
>>>
>>> This vote has been published at:
>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus
>>>
>>> Best
>>> Bishakha
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