Whose Money Is It Anyway? Options

[dogbiscuit]

From the minutes:

Second tranche of WMF grant (AT)
AT would like the authority to pay a second tranche to the WMF. CK expressed the view that the sooner we give the WMF the grant, the better: however, MP expressed an opposing viewpoint, that we wait until certain key agreements are signed before finalising the payment.
JD wants to know if they have formally applied for a grant from us: AT said that we do have an official letter from the WMF asking for a grant. The third tranche will wait until the accounts are finalised.
DECISION: To pay the remaining £200k grant to the WMF and follow up with Barry Newstead re: the fundraising agreement. AT also has authority to transfer a third tranche once the accounts are finalised, as long as that amount is less than £45k.
ACTION: RB and AT to pay the second tranche and contact Barry Newstead.

So having been gifted a large chunk of money by virtue of a website diversion to their own fundraising page, Wikimedia UK contemplate playing hardball over lack of finalising agreements.

Intriguing that Wikimedia UK think in terms of it being their money to grant to the WMF. I wonder what WMF think about such debates.

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me. I wonder what HM Customs and Revenue think about these schemes. Just to be clear, WMF do fund-raising on their website. They divert UK clicks to a UK based company who nominally are in receipt of the moneys and are able to get tax back based on the UK based company being a charity but in practice have to hand the money back to the WMF. So the UK based company has not actually sought the donations, it has not provided any significant labour or effort to garner these donations. It has simply processed them, with a bit of paperwork to claim the tax back on behalf of a US company. Probably worth a chat with a friendly tax accountant or two that I know.

Thinks, it should also be fun to nitpick and worry through all the minutes so they get so paranoid that they hold everything in secret. Then they might learn why information does not like being free after all.

[HRIP7]

From the minutes:

Second tranche of WMF grant (AT)
AT would like the authority to pay a second tranche to the WMF. CK expressed the view that the sooner we give the WMF the grant, the better: however, MP expressed an opposing viewpoint, that we wait until certain key agreements are signed before finalising the payment.
JD wants to know if they have formally applied for a grant from us: AT said that we do have an official letter from the WMF asking for a grant. The third tranche will wait until the accounts are finalised.
DECISION: To pay the remaining £200k grant to the WMF and follow up with Barry Newstead re: the fundraising agreement. AT also has authority to transfer a third tranche once the accounts are finalised, as long as that amount is less than £45k.
ACTION: RB and AT to pay the second tranche and contact Barry Newstead.

So having been gifted a large chunk of money by virtue of a website diversion to their own fundraising page, Wikimedia UK contemplate playing hardball over lack of finalising agreements.

Intriguing that Wikimedia UK think in terms of it being their money to grant to the WMF. I wonder what WMF think about such debates.

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me. I wonder what HM Customs and Revenue think about these schemes. Just to be clear, WMF do fund-raising on their website. They divert UK clicks to a UK based company who nominally are in receipt of the moneys and are able to get tax back based on the UK based company being a charity but in practice have to hand the money back to the WMF. So the UK based company has not actually sought the donations, it has not provided any significant labour or effort to garner these donations. It has simply processed them, with a bit of paperwork to claim the tax back on behalf of a US company. Probably worth a chat with a friendly tax accountant or two that I know.

Thinks, it should also be fun to nitpick and worry through all the minutes so they get so paranoid that they hold everything in secret. Then they might learn why information does not like being free after all.

On a somewhat related topic, there was this from John Vandenberg earlier today:

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.

The memo referred to is the Fundraising and Funds Dissemination WMF staff memo. So what exactly is going on there?

[dogbiscuit]

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.

The memo referred to is the Fundraising and Funds Dissemination WMF staff memo. So what exactly is going on there?

My reading of that is that the WMF don't see that there is great benefit from fund-raising through Wikimedia UK. It is interesting because if you switch off the WMF page switcheroo, you switch off Wikimedia UK funds and they rapidly burn their funds on all their employees which they simply could not fund if they had to fund-raise for themselves without the Wikipedia site.

Who is the driver for chapters anyway? All that effort to set up Wikimedia UK and Erik is basically saying that they are a waste of time (financially at least). I guess the other side is that he is suggesting that they could centrally fund-raise and give grants out in the other direction, but I don't see that they'd be interested in funding the large back office that Wikimedia UK have built up on the pretence that they are a multi-million pound charity.

There is an interesting footnote that they think that they have compliance issues in the UK with Wikimedia UK funding WMF, and there is less of an issue the other way round. (Isn't this where I came in?)

[EricBarbour]

Who is the driver for chapters anyway?

That is a very profound, and nasty, question. And I have yet to see a proper discussion of it, anywhere.
(Especially not in public WMF documents. This is yet another aspect of the WMF that is utterly opaque
and mismanaged, I have to suspect they are abusing local chapters for their own dirty uses, such as
heeling Wikipedias that are written in languages Erik Moeller and Sue can't read.)

I defy any of you to read the "official fundraising chapter agreement" and try to parse it.
It looks more like a series of threats than an "agreement".

Anthere was always prickly about Wikipedia being US-centric.

That's another comical aspect of the WMF. It slowly grows more anti-American with every passing year,
yet is based in America, was invented by Americans, is still run by a staff that is mostly Americans,
is dominated by the English-language Wikipedia, and raises most of its donations from Americans.
(IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Amounts_by_country.png/370px-Amounts_by_country.png)

This post has been edited by EricBarbour:

[dogbiscuit]

I defy any of you to read the "official fundraising chapter agreement" and try to parse it.
It looks more like a series of threats than an "agreement".

It is probably unenforceable. One thing I note is the attempt to claim that the only juristriction that counts is California. A legal entity in the UK is incapable of dismissing UK law by signing a contract.

The whole thing comes across that you have a bunch of idealistic chapter members who believe in The Cause, and then they discover that the WMF are actually a bunch of cynical money-grabbers. Quelle surprise.

[HRIP7]

I defy any of you to read the "official fundraising chapter agreement" and try to parse it.
It looks more like a series of threats than an "agreement".

It is probably unenforceable. One thing I note is the attempt to claim that the only juristriction that counts is California. A legal entity in the UK is incapable of dismissing UK law by signing a contract.

The whole thing comes across that you have a bunch of idealistic chapter members who believe in The Cause, and then they discover that the WMF are actually a bunch of cynical money-grabbers. Quelle surprise.

Well, at any rate, it is a new development to see Wikipedians arguing about the money. It used to be that there wasn't any to speak of.

But as annual donations have increased tenfold over the past five years, now having hit $20m and rising, it seems like a few people can see a gravy train forming in front of their eyes – microgrants, grants, paid chapter jobs, paid Foundation jobs, £30,000 GLAM/Wikipedian-in-residence jobs – basically all ways to monetise Wikimedia involvement.

For a few people at least, all that unpaid volunteer work will finally pay off after all.