Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Think globally, act locally

Dedalus or Ad Huikeshoven is a Dutch Wikimedian and accountant. He has been a member of the audit committee for quite some time. It is therefore of interest what he has to say of the annual fundraiser.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The Wikimedia Foundation is a global organisation with a global mission and a global vision. Every year a lot of money is collected to financially support its organizational and technical infrastructure. The foundation and the chapters maintain a track record of raising funds on time and on budget, and every year for bigger dollar amounts. Changes in the design and banner and donation landing pages follow evidence based research findings for best effect.

A dozen local chapters of the Wikimedia Foundation participate in the online fundraiser. Chapter participation is part of the success of the last fund-raisers. Growth in dollar amount collected was partly a result of an increase in chapter participation.

All Wikimedians should be thankful to the many volunteers around the globe who have devoted time and energy to get a chapter organized. Institutionalizing a legal entity requires a lot of tough work. I am very glad fellow Wikimedians are willing to go through these motions. Eventually it pays of.

At Wikimania this year quite a lot of people were heavily upset by a letter and resolution from the board of the Wikimedia Foundation about the fundraiser. I happen to serve as a community member on a board committee, that is, the Audit Committee. The scope of its audits is the Wikimedia Foundation itself, not the chapters per se. My position is that I would love to see all local chapters participating in the annual online fundraiser or working towards participating in the future.

The Wikimedia movement as a whole has a responsibility to ensure accountability to donors about money received through the online fundraiser and the way that money is spent. Providing a link to the latest financial statement on [[m:Reports]] is a transparent way for a chapter to show they have fulfilled their accountability responsibilities toward donors. A September 1 deadline has been set for chapters to show financial reporting compliance for this year.

You can find links to recent financial statements for ten chapters that participated in the last fundraiser on [[m:Reports]]. The score so far is eleven out of twelve. Eleven down, one to go. Ok, have I mentioned Wikimania yet? Let me tell you this: I really enjoyed Wikimania this year (my first Wikimania ever). And I really would like to thank the local team from WMIL for organizing such a great event for the global movement as a whole. So, they have been very busy. In my humble opinion they should be forgiven that this year their financial report is late.
---Ad

PS just after I submitted this blog post there was this. Keeping my fingers crossed for the last financial report...

3 comments:

Mike Peel said...

I just want to pick up on two parts of this which either show up some misunderstandings, or are translation glitches (hopefully the latter).

The first is "The foundation and its chapters" - which implies that the chapters belong to the foundation. That clearly isn't the case - chapters are independent organisations supporting the foundation, rather than being sub-elements of it. That's a pretty fundamental misunderstanding; I hope that "its" was meant to be "the"...

The second is "a lot of people were heavily upset by a letter and resolution", which implies that there was a solely emotional response to the letter (people crying in the corridors, etc.). Given the level of the discussion on the mailing lists, I would be rather surprised and concerned if that was the case... Perhaps you meant "debated at length", or "raised points in opposition", etc.?

Hope you can get those points cleared up. :-)

Ad Huikeshoven said...

Mike,

Thanks for your two valid points. There is a relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and a Wikimedia chapter. I didn't mean to imply chapters are today sub-elements of the foundation. However any independent organisation is a Wikimedia chapter if and only if approved by the board of the Foundation (after recommendation by the chapter committee). If you feel better when reading "the chapters" in stead of "its", that is fine with me, and has been corrected that way.

About the letter. I didn't mean to imply that there was solely an emotional response. People weren't crying. Some people were angry or furious. Some people showed that there feelings were hurt. Stuart West has repeatedly apologized for the fact that the letter wasn't a nice example of effective communication.

I just meant people were upset enough to produce over a hundred postings on internal-l and foundation-l. Only a few of them showed any sign of intention to strengthen financial controls, increase transparancy and improve accountability over funds received from donors. You submitted a link to the financial report of WMUK on [[:m:Reports]] on August 9. Thanks for that.

In my humble opinion the intent of the board letter was a call to action, not an invitation for a lengthy debate. That didn't work out that way, that is my point. Nonetheless, I'm happy nearly all chapters have met the current reporting deadline and removed in doing that an obstacle to continued participation in the online fundraiser.

From the lengthy debate I learned again that the fundraiser is a very sensitive issue and that quite a few chapters are very eager to participate in it.

Finally, English isn't my native language, so any misunderstanding can be attributed to my poor English.

--Ad

Unknown said...

i totally agree with your opinion. your blog is very nice