On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 6:42 AM, Michael Snow <wikipe...@frontier.com> wrote:
> On 8/5/2011 7:17 PM, Nathan wrote: > > John's e-mail reads like a suggestion that the Foundation negotiated > > in bad faith. I hope this isn't the case, although the references made > > to consulting with outside auditors and meetings of the Audit > > Committee suggest this decision may have been conceived prior to the > > Fundraising Summit. > The audit committee met and discussed this in July, so after the > fundraising summit. I don't know the exact timeline of everything that > went into this, but at that point it was my sense that it was only just > coming together as an actual decision, if you will. That's not to say > that chapter accountability and reporting, particularly around finances, > has never come up as a concern before. > Yes. I am going to send this note to both f-l and internal-l; forgive me, everyone who gets duplications. As to the question of "why internal" -- internal-l has a policy that at least a couple representatives from each and every chapter are added to it automatically, along with all wmf staff and board members, so it is the appropriate venue to make an announcement regarding chapters. The discussions there are not so much confidential (though they could be, as it's a closed list) as of focused to chapters (but perhaps not to others). It is of course also appropriate to discuss in public, which is why I posted the letter to meta and f-l. All that said, a note on timing -- yes, this came together quite recently, and was spurred by a report from our audit committee. The board treasurer Stu West, who chairs that committee, then brought the issue to the whole board at our most recent in-person meeting -- three days ago here in Haifa. We had input and reports from Barry and Moushira about funds raised to date, current accounts, and reporting practices of the chapters, as well as the state of the current fundraising agreements; we are of course aware that people are thinking about the fundraiser now (as is the wmf, of course!) Our issue in timing our discussion and decision was to find a balance between appropriate notification and negotiation time with all of the chapters, and meeting as soon as possible what the Board of Trustees sees as its legal and financial obligations to safeguard money that comes in through WMF-trademarked websites. That is the crux of the matter for us -- not to comment on chapter effectiveness or governance or how great everyone's work on the fundraiser is (which goes well beyond processing money for both the WMF and the chapters). Following the board discussion at the meeting, we drafted the letter you have read, in a lengthy and often difficult process -- all of the issues that have been raised here were thought about, and more. At that point we had a choice. Wait, talk to the chapters, and get even closer to the fundraiser before sending it out? Or send it out now while we are at Wikimania and at least have a chance to talk to some chapters in person? We chose the latter, and I am glad about that, because we are indeed short on time. That's what happened. As to the implications, I would encourage all of the fundraising chapters to read this part: "In particular, we expect all parties to live up to current fundraising agreements including full compliance with all reporting deadlines." We are quite concerned that some chapters who have signed fundraising agreements (now and in the past) have actually been unable to live up their requirements of reporting on time and meeting other needs; however, we expect all parties -- the WMF and the chapters -- to follow the agreements that have been signed. (If parts of the agreement are not followed on either side, we also expect that the agreement will be invalidated). We also expect all parties to take into account the principles we lay out here, the very most important one of which is: "The Foundation can confidently assure donors to the chapter that their donations will be safeguarded, that our movement's transparency principles will be met, and that spending will be in line with our mission and with the messages used to attract donors." And we appreciate that many chapters (the majority of which don't fundraise at all, in fact) either cannot or are unable to meet various parts of these principles or the current agreement. We don't want to leave anyone stranded; to that end, we are committed to increasing and expanding grants for chapter operations. -- phoebe _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l