[Wikimedia-l] Question: How much does administration in Chapters cost the Wikimedia movement?

[Christophe Henner]

Quick email, for WMFr internal budget. FTE are split between each
projects. So when calculating our administrative costs we only count
the money equivalent of the time spent on administrative stuff.

Including all salaries is not a correct way to calculate
administrative cost as, for programs, most of the spendings are human
time (ie salaries).

Best,
--
Christophe


On 19 April 2013 12:14, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:
> After seeing a few recent facts and figures about Wikimedia Chapters
> (at the Milan conference), I think that "administration" versus
> "project" activities is highly varied and may be something like 15% to
> 40% out of the overall budget. Unfortunately this figure can be a bit
> hard to work out and (I think) almost impossible to ensure we would be
> comparing like for like based on current reports.
>
> It would make a great top level key performance indicator for our
> organizations if this could be reported using an agreed standard
> definition as to what administration means, with such a definition we
> could even make this an expectation for the public annual financial
> reports. Hopefully reporting such a ratio could then be a target for
> improvement and any strategic plans for growth could be accountable
> against this and other top level performance measures.
>
> My rule of thumb would be that "administration" is composed of:
> * Staff salaries, contractor payments and professional advice fees
> * Offices and fixed or hired assets used for non-project activity
> (such as financial reporting, accounts, board meetings)
> * Expenses for non-project activity
>
> I have yet to have a confirmed figure for WMUK, but I would be
> interested any any current figures for other chapters for
> comparison/benchmarking and any explanation of the 'norms' we might
> expect to calculate these.
>
> Cheers,
> Fae
> --
> faewik at gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
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