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

Fri Apr 19 12:08:32 UTC 2013

This is a really interesting discussion, and one which has been mulled over
in the WMUK offices for a while now. I have to agree with Christophe and
Delphine that grouping all salaries or all office costs together isn't the
best way of doing things, as grouping the salaries for the fundraisers and
the salaries for the event staff into the same category doesn't tell you
anything really useful internally.

Delphine makes another good point in that local specifics would have to be
taken into account: for example, costs for everything in London will be
very much higher than costs in, say, Estonia. Comparing WMDE and WMEE would
be interesting, but not very helpful for improving our practices - they
operate in very different circumstances (although obviously both do great
work!)

To an extent, WMUK already do a breakdown as part of our Financial
reporting at
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org.uk/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkP38YPQ7Tg3dGRkSnAwSlZKZWFFZGlRTndweTZWdGc#gid=0,
but we don't break down staff costs into various fields until our
end-of-year report. The 'basic breakdown' in the UK charity sector is, as I
understand it, 'Charitable costs/Governance costs/Fundraising costs'.

*All of that being said, this is a good idea* - but I'm wondering if our
FDC reports might help with coming up with categories for this? A very
useful discussion!

Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).

*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*

On 19 April 2013 12:13, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Christophe Henner
> <christophe.henner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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).
>
> I have to agree with Christophe here. You cannot count salaries as a
> lump sum towards administration costs, this makes no sense. Of course,
> some salaries/external fees will be purely "administrative" (i'm
> thinking accounting, human resources fees/management, legal and such),
> but some salaries will be counted, in part or in full, in the program
> section, since they actually allow those programs to happen in the
> first place.
>
> Over the years I have always found extremely interesting how Wikimedia
> in general is extremely reticent to "paying" people to "do" things. It
> makes sense in a volunteer culture, even more sense in *our* volunteer
> culture since the Wikimedia organisations would not exist were it not
> for the Wikimedia projects and those in turn would not exist were it
> not for the countless volunteer hours that are put in by the
> communites. But is there really anything tangible we can invest in
> (apart from the technical costs to run the servers and improve the
> software)? We don't buy stuff that we can sell, we don't need raw
> materials, we don't produce anything that you put in a box and deliver
> at someone's door. Therefore the only field in which we can invest in
> a productive way are people. People who will support projects run by
> the communities, people who will help develop new ideas, etc.
>
> Apart from this I fully support the idea of having Wikimedia
> organisations measure their administrative costs against a common
> scale, although of course we'll have to take into consideration local
> specificities where applicable.
>
> > On 19 April 2013 12:14, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> >> 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.
>
> I find this to be an extremely interesting path of strategic
> development. With the caveat expressed above (local specificities
> mainly).
>
> >>
> >> My rule of thumb would be that "administration" is composed of:
> >> * Staff salaries, contractor payments and professional advice fees
>
> See above.
>
> >> * Offices and fixed or hired assets used for non-project activity
> >> (such as financial reporting, accounts, board meetings)
> Yes.
> >> * Expenses for non-project activity
> Yes.
> >>
> >> 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 lexplanation of the 'norms' we might
> >> expect to calculate these.
>
> Wikimedia Deutschland has established this year an "evaluation"
> department, which will mainly work at making this a reality. I know
> Ikimedia france for example, by law, is required to issue a report
> that presents the financial statements in a different way than the
> pure financial statement, which for example takes into account
> volunteer hours, and splits costs into programmatic activities and
> administrative costs etc. I am sure there are more ideas and things
> happening out there that we can build upong to find a suitable scale.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Delphine
> --
> @notafish
>
> NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get
> lost.
> Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive -
> http://blog.notanendive.org
> Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>