[Wikipedia-l] wikimedia funds should be public

[Jimmy Wales]

Hunter Peress wrote:
> wikimedia funds should be public.  
>
> eg an account balance with details like the actual balance, and what
>has been purchased...

I have been following a practice of maintaining all non-USD donations
separately, continuing to hold them in the original currency, with the
idea that _perhaps_ we will try to spend those dollars in such a way
as to primarily benefit donors in that part of the world.

SunTrust Bank Account Balance: $1,862.23
PayPal Balances:
 USD 94.98
 CAD 257.80
 EUR 648.54
 GBP 168.84

(Converted to USD this would be: $1,290.85)

The only money that has been spent so far:
$50 - wikipedia.de domain name renewal (but, we don't have this yet)
$9,126.42 - the big new db server

And there have been some small bank fees, as well.

If there is a move for me to do so, I can post these numbers on a more
regular basis, rather than whenever someone happens to ask me.  It is
possible with PayPal to write programs to interact with their system
to get balances, but I have not done so yet because I don't think we
are going to stick with Paypal as our only money service providers,
and it seems that when we have several, automation would be a lot of
work for little benefit.

--Jimbo