[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia-blog] [Wikimedia Announcements] Joint statement from Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK

[Andrew Turvey]

Phoebe,

(please note I am no longer a board member of WMUK so speak with no
particular knowledge of the situation other than what is publicly known)

In practice I think the impact of this decision is more significant than
you make out. WMUK, as with all chapters, is established as a legally and
operationally independent organisation and as such has
significant fiduciary duties to its members and donors.  One of the key
risks that the chapter has had to manage for a number of years now relates
to the dependency on the Foundation as the sole source of funding. If you
look, for instance, at the draft five year plan that was written months
ago, it includes the following section:

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Five_Year_Plan#Fundraising

<quote>

Fundraising

Wikimedia UK is a young and rapidly growing charity. At the moment, we are
reliant almost entirely on the WMF annual fundraiser for our operating
funds. We do not consider this to be a sustainable situation, since it
involves a significant concentration of risk. We therefore need to
diversify our revenue....

Three year target

   - ... To have no more than 70% of our revenue coming from the WMF annual
   fundraiser, or any other single source

Five year target

   - For our core committed expenditures to be financially independent of
   the annual fundraiser...

<quote/>

It was bad enough when it was the annual fundraiser that was the course of
concentration risk, which could, at any time, be withdrawn
by the Foundation, albeit within a multilateral framework.  To turn this
into an FDC grant would be to exacerbate this risk.

I hope, when the chapter comes to quantify the amount of their FDC grant
application they seriously consider scaling back the amount requested and
redoubling efforts to source alternative funding routes.

Regards,

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 1:33 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wow. I honestly didn't think the conflict of interest issue was this
> > serious. What does giving up the next fundraiser due to the WM-UK
> > budget? Does this change reflect a lack of trust between the WMF and
> > the current WM-UK leadership?
> >
>
> Hi Nathan,
>
> Just on the fundraiser point -- the idea of the new FDC (funds
> dissemination committee) process is that chapter budget allocations
> would be totally independent of how much they do or don't raise via
> payment-processing -- on the principle that funds should be allocated
> according to need/impact, rather than tied to or based on in-country
> fundraising stats. So WMUK's budget planning process shouldn't be
> changed, aside from maybe how they plan for the fundraiser, since they
> would prepare a project budget for review either way.
>
> -- Phoebe (not speaking for anyone!)
>
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Andrew Turvey
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