Hi Michael!
This is a bit of a surprise, if I am honest! I applaud the idea but it has come out of the blue and I worry that this extra layer of reporting will increase overheads here - when our overheads are already under scrutiny. I have a few preliminary questions:
- Do you have an idea of how much work will be required by movement orgs for this? I worry that your ideal target of 20 January won't be met, as we don't have the resources to help you revalidate your data at that point of our year. December is difficult, as the FDC figures are released then - which is when we need to construct our final budget for next year. January/February is also difficult, as all our staff are already pre-booked working on our financial year end at 31 January - which is also an FDC quarter end - so there's a lot of work to be done! - Has anyone contacted movement orgs already, perhaps a few months ago? If so, I think I've missed the communication - could you resend it to me? - Will you need to talk to treasurers? If so, please let us know as far in advance as you can so we can book dates for meetings! - What happens if movement orgs do not have time to check your data? Will you go ahead with "unvalidated" data in your report, or will you be able to move your timeline to fit in with ours? - How much input will chapters have in the process? Who will have the "final say" in the comparisons - presumably the WMF?
All the best,
Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992
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On 29 October 2014 23:15, Michael Guss mguss@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement.
*But here's some information about us*:
Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF)%3E is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics.
Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication.
Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics.
Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics.
*About the project "Movement-wide financial report"*
Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement.
The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data.
The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki.
Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization.
In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's financial data more consistent, we rely on the data provided by the organizations. We believe that there is enough data available to make a new attempt on capturing the movement's finances as a whole.
A meta page < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report%3E was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired.
And of course: This is all an experiment! If it does not work, we will try to apply a modified 'agile' process by iterating, repeating, and trying again based on the feedback we are getting. If this does not seem right, or if it appears we are missing something obvious, please let us know!
Thank you,
WMF Finance Fellows (User:WMF Finance Fellows) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WMF_Finance_Fellows _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe