500:. Much of the angst among chapters appears to stem from differences in tax laws." The German chapter's Jürgen Fenn, speaking on his own behalf, said "tax deductability is a standard that makes a charity organisation notable and honorable in the eyes of donors. In this country, it is an absolute must for anyone who is willing to donate money. We will not contribute to other organisations. Period. There is a world outside the U.S. where people act according to different standards and think and decide differently." In reply, Stu West said, "my gut instinct is that no one makes a €20 donation because of tax deductibility. But we can and should do this analysis, understand the tradeoffs, and make an informed decision."
541:: "Because decentralization is such a core value of this movement, I believe we need a decentralized approach to the organizational part of this movement, including fund sharing. I signed on to the fundraising letter because I believe that the proposed Funds Dissemination Committee is a step in the right direction – it decentralizes one layer of financial decision-making. Despite your observation that distributed payment processing does not work, I believe the jury is still out on that one – there may be regions where it does make sense, regions where it does not work. Until there is clear evidence of one or the other, I do not believe we have the information we need to make a solid decision on this."
447:) was scathing in response: "I’m getting very tired of vague claims like this from the Foundation. We have had enormous and ever-increasing success with fundraising over the last few years. What has gone so terribly wrong? is just complete nonsense. Giving chapters the option means letting them decide. If you decide for them, that is taking away options. ... It is very unclear if the economies of scale from centralisation are enough to counter the advantages to local fundraising (tax, desire of donors to suppose local organisations, local payment methods, etc.)."
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delegate. The new body will make recommendations for funds dissemination to the
Wikimedia Foundation. We anticipate a process in which the Wikimedia Foundation will review and approve all but a small minority of recommendations from the FDC. In the event that the Wikimedia Foundation does not approve a recommendation from the FDC, and the FDC and the Wikimedia Foundation aren't subsequently able to reach agreement, then the FDC can ask the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to request the recommendation be reconsidered.
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733:– Thanks for quoting my statement on Stu West's blog post. For the record, I just would like to say that I am indeed an ordinary member of the German local chapter Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), and I take part in WMDE's education programme as a course instructor and advisor, but I do not belong to WMDE's permanent staff nor am I a member of the WMDE's board. So I did not make this statement on behalf of the German chapter. – Regards, Jürgen Fenn.--
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largely on the basis of the geographical distribution of donors rather than organisational need. It also found fault with the lack of consistency in the chapters' transparency, regulatory environment and use of funds; the letter announced the expansion of the
Foundation's grants program and called for a new needs-based model of fundraising and fund dissemination.
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522:, "I think the board took a good decision, but expressed it very poorly, which raises many doubts and unfortunately weakens the bold position they took. reiterated their desire for a somewhat decentralized organization, using a peer-reviewed system for funds allocations movement-wide. this difficult path, which remains to be clearly defined."
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from the chapters' perspective, however, there is reason for concern. What's more, in a decentralized fundraising model, the individual
Wikimedia activist has several doors to knock at for his plans, behind which decisions are being taken independently. In a centralized one, it would be just one door, at the end of the day.
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The one part of distributed payment processing that I absolutely feel doesn’t work was the automatic assignment of a fixed percentage of the funds raised to the local entity. As i said in my “impact” section, i think this is a horrible and possibly negligent way for us to allocate donor funds. Impact
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But first we would like to thank everyone who took part in the discussion so far and spent their valuable time providing us with their viewpoints which we have of course taken into account in our decision making process. We hope that you will continue to participate by giving feedback on this letter.
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In are a few countries a non-profit can gift (no strings attached) at most 50% of its revenue to another entity, before losing its status as an independent non-profit. That is a context in which the figure still comes up. Yet even then, this limitation does not mean that 50% they control must stay
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The reasons I prefer a grants process, to reiterate again, are 1. it distributes funds around our movement based on an assessment of impact rather than based on arbitrary splits, 2. it can be more efficient for our movement as a whole by reducing duplicated effort on bureaucracy and distraction from
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The board wants to create a volunteer-driven body to make recommendations for funding for movement-wide initiatives (Working title: Funds
Dissemination Committee, FDC). The Wikimedia Foundation has decision-making authority, because it has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it legally cannot
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Why do we not simply give our donors the option of who they give to? They can donate to the WMF and outside of the USA not receive a tax receipt or they can donate to the local chapter and receive a tax receipt with the latter amount split based on what the laws allow. This would maximize the funds
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Discussion on the issues shows no sign of abating, as national chapters have become a locus of scrutiny and debate not only in the light of fundraising considerations, but amid fresh calls for restructuring
Foundation-affiliated organisations and continuing debate over the allocation to chapters of
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Gardner's model is impressive in its cogency, addressing older discussions and requests in an intelligent way, and appealing to many people, individually and collectively. The FDC is supposed to make the model acceptable, because it can perhaps restrict the so far unlimited power of the WMF. Purely
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for fundraising and dissemination that's widely regarded by the chapters as viable and self-consistent." He was particularly annoyed by Ting Chen's statement that the
Foundation "has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it legally cannot delegate". He said, "this is self-serving circularity:
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The statement has brought to a head a complex set of issues that have been causing friction between the WMF and local chapters for at least a year. The disagreements appear to revolve around the extent to which WMF fundraising should be decentralised to the chapters, which currently operate under
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As you are probably aware we have been discussing the the future of fundraising and fund dissemination for the
Wikimedia Movement for almost 6 months now. After discussing fundraising and funds dissemination at this past meeting, the board has drafted the following statement. It our intention to
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and donation laws. Each country has its own rules on how funds can be disseminated from the chapter to other organisations and countries, and in some cases it is messy to transfer locally raised funds to a foreign entity—in this case the WMF in San
Francisco. Some chapters believe their cultural
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commented that chapters' role in fundraising had become "a question of prestige" in some cases, even though control rested with the
Foundation in any respect – as chapters had to submit to it their budgets under the existing system. He assessed the likely impact of the proposed restructuring:
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in which it disclosed that US$ 4M of donor money (or 15% of the total) had been retained by 12 national chapters in the previous year's fundraiser. The letter went on to question the merit of the chapters, especially the recently established and less organised ones, receiving significant funds
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for a radical restructuring of fundraising, proposing that all proceeds of the annual fundraiser should be processed and retained by the
Foundation, with chapters and other affiliate entities left free to raise their own money or to apply for funding from a newly established central Funding
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If and when payment processing is done by chapters, it should be done primarily for reasons of tax, operational efficiency (including incentivizing donor cultivation and relations), should not be in conflict with funds dissemination principles and goals, and should avoid a perception of
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It is becoming clearer that the Board has in mind at least a partial shift towards the distribution of worldwide donor funding on the basis of grants, whether by application by the chapters and others in the Wikimedia movement, or by centralised fiat. WMF treasurer Stu West
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NB: Please note that rather than spend a LOT of time on wording at this time, the board preferred to amend the above text if necessary when moving towards a resolution. This letter indicates our intent, and we may "wordsmith as needed" in our final resolutions.
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Historically, certain established chapters such as those of Germany, France and the UK have played the role of processing donor payments during the annual fundraiser under a revenue-sharing agreement with the Foundation (see the
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independence owes a lot to their ability to conduct fundraising and manage the proceeds in their own jurisdictions. Other Wikimedians have expressed disquiet at the proposed new "grant" system for disseminating donor funds.
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Bishakha's point is well made. The jury is still out on questions of effectiveness. In the long run it is important for each national non-profit to be skilled in all aspects fundraising, and supported by many sources of
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The FDC will be a diverse body of people from across our movement (which may include paid staff) with appropriate expertise for this purpose, whose primary purpose is to disseminate funds to advance the Wikimedia
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you centralise the fundraising system, then you say you have a direct relationship to the donors and that it can't be legally delegated. These donors are the same that were just taken away from the chapters."
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The board is sharpening the criteria for payment processing. Payment processing is not a natural path to growth for a chapter; and payment processing will likely be an exception -- most chapters will not do
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should be the driver. And I’d rather an imperfect assessment of impact (e.g. from a Funds Dissemination Committee) than an outright bad model of automatic allocation to one or another entity.
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within the country. The chapter's annual plan can include major line items to cover global expenses such as servers and bandwidth costs. See for instance the first line of WM-France's last
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program work, 3. it gives chapters the option of not focusing on fundraising and 4. it helps avoid the whole host of legal/financial control problems we discussed back in our
485:. "In that context," he says, "this FDC looks like a 'scapegoat solution' where the problems of the existing system are placed upon a new and undefined committee to own."
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Funds dissemination will be managed by a new body (the Funds Dissemination Committee; FDC); the details of how this will be realized are not yet fixed and need discussion.
510:, former chair of the Board of Trustees now in charge of fundraising for Wikimedia France, complimented the board's decision but critiqued their manner of communication
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Erik, you should be ashamed of that memo, published with so many errors (data and logic) and the spin is so transparent that it makes the errors seem intentional.
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announcing the board's latest position on the issues at hand. The gist of the announcement was summarised in the subsequent discussion by Alice Wiegand (
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to the members of the Wikimedia movement, stating what the Board intends to do with fundraiser money. This opened a new front in a war of words that had
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The Wikimedia Foundation staff has published a detailed memo on the "local vs. global donation processing" issue (complementing Sue's recommendations)
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434:. I totally appreciate the challenges of a new system. Grant-giving has got to be efficient and truly-reflective of our movement principles, ...
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with everyone, we will receive Sue's final recommendations in early-mid March; and we will plan to take a final vote at (or perhaps just after)
568:– and particularly the relationship between the Foundation and the chapters – promises to dominate much of the agenda in the coming year.
326:. ... it would be bad to talk about this for two days in the Board meeting and not report back to the community about where we were at."
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Stu West that "a localised fundraising model is more effective and more efficient than a centralised model", referring to the
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Our thoughts on fundraising are less specific. We have come to the following two statements which are important
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The ability to fundraise should not be connected to any type of entitlement to the raised funds.
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The board intends to evaluate this process together with the FDC and see if it is working.
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issued earlier this year led to renewed focus on the issue within the Wikimedia movement
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automatic assignment of a fixed percentage of the funds raised to the local entity
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discuss these matters in the coming weeks to come to a final decision mid March.
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Jürgen, thanks. I've clarified this in the text. I hope it's acceptable now.
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Following an August 2011 meeting in Haifa, the Board of Trustees issued a
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I don't agree, but there's good discussion happening on the talk page.--
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for weeks, as posts in a personal capacity by WMF's treasurer, Stu West
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Fundraising proposals spark a furore among the chapters
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seats on the Board of Trustees itself. The future of
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681:If your comment has not appeared here, you can try
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160:The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees chair
443:Former Wikimedia UK treasurer Thomas Dalton (
223:"Letter regarding fundraising accountability"
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919:Knowledge (XXG) Signpost archives 2012-02
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334:Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement,
18:Knowledge (XXG):Knowledge (XXG) Signpost
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767:Thanks, Tony, that's fine with me.--
207:draft recommendations on fundraising
473:for a chapter-appointed seat, told
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245:covering the developments for the
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174:on the foundation's mailing list
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346:Funds dissemination
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641:Arbitration report
631:WikiProject report
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577:"Special report" →
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42:← Back to Contents
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621:In the news
471:a candidate
456:a candidate
370:Fundraising
231:Sue Gardner
203:Sue Gardner
178:on his blog
864:. You can
860:It's your
243:an article
193:Background
184:different
79:Share this
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894:Subscribe
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284:Ting Chen
233:issued a
162:Ting Chen
155:Skomorokh
913:Category
889:Newsroom
884:Archives
862:Signpost
843:contribs
769:Aschmidt
735:Aschmidt
694:revenue.
626:In focus
469:), also
409:Stu West
356:mission.
320:in Paris
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383:so.
241:In
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