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?)

[jayvdb]

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.

Not really; all it would mean is that the chapters would be funded by grants from the WMF, using the new chapters grant agreements, or something similar.

The WMF would rather that UK money flows to WMF, and then part of it goes back to the UK.

The chapters would rather that the money goes to an organisation in the same country as the donor, as that gives the donor the greatest ability to ensure their donor information and donation is used appropriately, according to local laws.

The chapters would rather that we have strong member based organisations in each country, so there isn't a single point of decision making and/or failure, and it also means that problems can be addressed by voting out the board members, or by complaints to the local authorities.

For those of you complaining about the chapters, please consider the amount of transparency in the chapter minutes compared with the WMF minutes.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:C...282011-10-16%29 - ~2 hrs

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-28 - ~2 hrs

And the chapters usually report all expenditure publicly, with suitable granularity to allow the public scrutiny.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:2...inancial_Report
http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:C...#Finance_Report
etc

[dogbiscuit]

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.

Not really; all it would mean is that the chapters would be funded by grants from the WMF, using the new chapters grant agreements, or something similar.

The WMF would rather that UK money flows to WMF, and then part of it goes back to the UK.

The chapters would rather that the money goes to an organisation in the same country as the donor, as that gives the donor the greatest ability to ensure their donor information and donation is used appropriately, according to local laws.

My point really was that in the context of multi-million pound donations washing through the chapter accounts, the significant staffing looks appropriate. If the WMF simply directed grant money to the chapter to cover the local activities, the staffing overhead would be massively disproportionate. If the WMF chose only to fund the activities not the staff, because the chapter is presumably supposed to have independent local sources of income then I doubt the chapter staffing in the UK could be sustained.

The chapters would rather that we have strong member based organisations in each country, so there isn't a single point of decision making and/or failure, and it also means that problems can be addressed by voting out the board members, or by complaints to the local authorities.

For those of you complaining about the chapters, please consider the amount of transparency in the chapter minutes compared with the WMF minutes.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:C...282011-10-16%29 - ~2 hrs

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-28 - ~2 hrs

And the chapters usually report all expenditure publicly, with suitable granularity to allow the public scrutiny.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:2...inancial_Report
http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:C...#Finance_Report
etc

I think that is a sound point. The trouble is that I think that there are likely to be two types involved in the chapters, the committed Wikipedian who believes in the mission, and the leeches. The leeches will put the time and effort into corrupting the chapters to their own ends, much as we see WMF as primarily being leeches given that it is hard to see how they are effectively supporting the mission - they are off doing whatever the WMF does while the Wikipedians are left in their cellars producing the justification for the bureaucracy. Wikipedians already don't trust the WMF, and while chapters start with Wikipedians, they will migrate to being mini-WMFs - that chapters are transparent is just a sign of the relative immaturity of the local bureaucracy.

At the moment the minutes are transparent where they reflect the committed Wikipedian, but we can already see that as the leeches look to gain control, those sections of the minutes are hidden from view. While policies on harassment can be dressed up as caring and supportive of their members in a potentially hostile environment, in the end it is transporting the Wikipedia Harassment meme into the real world, where any sustained scrutiny is simply dismissed with a cry of Harassment and then forever more, even if the accusations are well-founded, they are dismissed as the work of trolls, and the leeches can carry on their work of subverting the organisation to their own ends in peace and quiet.

[jayvdb]

I think that is a sound point. The trouble is that I think that there are likely to be two types involved in the chapters, the committed Wikipedian who believes in the mission, and the leeches. ...

I dont disagree that this is possible, and a natural progression. However the current situation is that most of the chapters (if they participated in the annual fundraiser) would receive very little at all, so this isnt a significant problem for the majority of chapters.

See for e.g. the 2010 fundraiser results for countries (sort by amount, and look at the list in $ asc order to better see my point below).

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising...directly_to_WMF
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising....27_fundraising

Of the countries which donated to the WMF directly, Poland is #10 with $60,651.

Of the countries which donated to the chapter directly, Israel is #10 with $80,021. Because of the fundraising agreement at the time, WMIL (Israel) only keeps half ($40,000) and half went to the WMF.

That annual income does not allow for a very large organisations; they couldn't employ staff full time on that amount of money. It is going to be hard to leech from an organisation that size without the corruption being very blatant.

Your point is very important with regards to the chapters which receive very large amounts of money via the fundraiser. However the chapters which have been permitted to continue to be part of the annual fundraiser in 2011 are the same ones you are worried about: the very large ones (DE, FR, GB,...). It is all the small chapters and small countries which have been excluded from the fundraiser.