2014-02-03 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
I'm sure that the WMIL Board put a lot of thought into this decision, but I think it's a mistake. The Wikimedia movement is by nature global, cooperative and collective. I don't see how it will benefit either WMIL or the movement as a whole if Israeli participants withdraw from international cooperation and activity, even if they are able and willing to redirect the same energy to local fundraising efforts.
Maybe the FDC did something wrong in that some applicants did not take the 20% increase guardrail seriously. I hope that FDC messaging and communication can be improved in the future so that recipients of large grant increases feel grateful instead of insulted, because it is an obviously poor outcome if an institution receives two hundred thousand dollars of donor money and is so upset that it announces it is all but exiting the international community.
It think the most serious long term problem is with the current model of subidaring chapters and thematic groups. There is no any stress put on chapters to be self-sustainable and we have now more and more mid-size chapters which want to grow but still be financially depended on money from WMF. Instead there is a tendency to keep control over the money in one place, although it is collected globaly. So, chapters have no good reason, no chance to be really self-sustainable, and they rather treat themselves as grantees of WMF. It is quite obvious that such a system is not going to work for ever and it is obvious that growing chapters sooner or later must reach the ceiling which will block their progress...