[Wikimedia-l] Re: In memory of Holger Ellgaard

[John S.]

This is very sad.

John S.

Den ons 25 jan. 2023 kl 13:45 skrev Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net>:

> A real loss, but his work will remain.
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> *From:* Johan Jönsson [mailto:brevlis...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 25 January 2023 09:38
> *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List
> *Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] In memory of Holger Ellgaard
>
>
>
> Holger Ellgaard – User:Holger.Ellgaard – has died.
>
> Holger was one of the most prolific article writers on Swedish Wikipedia,
> having written thousands of articles, with a couple of hundred thousand
> edits on Swedish Wikipedia and another hundred thousand edits on Commons,
> where he had uploaded more than fifty thousand photographs since coming to
> the Wikimedia movement in the spring of 2007.
>
> As we know, an edit count says very little in itself – myself, I have a
> large number of minor fixes and few excellent articles. Holger, on the
> other hand, wrote a large number of featured and good articles, the kind of
> texts the community wanted to highlight as its best and put on the main
> page for everyone to see.
>
> Having spent his professional life as an architect and with a passion for
> photography, he wrote about buildings and city planning, architecture and
> infrastructure. His articles were long, well sourced and full of
> illustrations, usually his own photos. He liked to visit a place before
> writing about it, photographing it and making sure he had the pictures he
> wanted.
>
> Many of his best articles were more ambitious in scope. He wrote about
> Swedish kitchen standard and the redevelopment of central Stockholm from
> the 1950s to the 1970s. He wrote about any conceivable aspect of Stockholm
> as a city: public toilets in Stockholm, traffic signals in Stockholm,
> emergency housing in Stockholm, illuminated signs in Stockholm, railroad
> tunnels in Stockholm and about so many other things.
>
> When Wikimedia Sweden started giving out an annual award to someone who
> had contributed to free knowledge, Holger was the inaugural recipient. He
> felt like an obvious choice. Not only because of the amount of work he had
> put into writing his articles, but also his willingness to help anyone
> writing within his area of expertise.
>
> He was a great public educator. And now he isn’t, and we’re less for his
> absence.
>
>
>
> //Johan Jönsson
>
> --
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> Virus-free.www.avg.com
> 
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>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Endowment, again

[Andreas Kolbe]

Dear all,

I've been asked to explain what the issue with the Endowment is. Here is a
recap:

Over the past seven years, WMF staff have collected donations from the
public to build an Endowment that stood at $113.4 million a year ago (the
most recent update available).

The important thing that I and, I suspect, most of us didn't realise for
many years is this:[1]

1. The money held in the Endowment is not included in the net assets of the
Wikimedia Foundation, as those funds are held by the Tides Foundation.

2. Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation
as a pass-through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation.
Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials
as revenue or net assets.

3. When the Wikimedia Foundation makes special grants to the Endowment
Fund, those are reflected as "Awards and Grants" expenses on the Wikimedia
Foundation's Annual Independent Auditors' Report.

This means that under the past and present arrangement, all the auditors at
KPMG have ever included in their annual audit reports were the annual $5
million+ grants sent to Tides, recorded as an expense. Any money people
donated to the WMF specifically for the Endowment bypassed the audited
financial statements.

In addition, for the past two years, all the money people have willed to
the Wikimedia Foundation has been redirected to the Wikimedia Endowment
instead (except in cases where the terms of the will prevent that), adding
to these tens of millions of dollars of pass-through amounts that bypass
the Foundation's audited financial statements.[2]

As a result, there is a significant lack of of transparency and public
oversight in the past and present arrangement with Tides. Over $100 million
in donations and planned gifts collected from the public is too significant
an amount to say, "It's alright. We don't need to see any paperwork. We
know you are good people."

Andreas

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=prev&oldid=21366511
[2]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Remit_of_Planned_Gifts_to_the_Wikimedia_Endowment?tableofcontents=0

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 11:08 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Dear Caitlin,
>
> Thank you for the clarification. Is there any chance we might see audited
> financial statements covering the Endowment's past seven years, in a format
> comparable to the annually published, audited financial statements
> detailing the revenue and expenses of the Foundation,[1] and delivering the
> same level of transparency?
>
> If not, why not?
>
> Best,
> Andreas
>
> [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 9:19 PM Caitlin Virtue 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Christophe,
>>
>> This thread has circled around the main question of will any decisions
>> around the endowment be transparent. The answer is yes.
>>
>> The question of transparency has also become conflated with the mechanism
>> of how the money is held. The answer here is that we are working to
>> transition endowment funds out of Tides to the separate 501(c)(3) entity
>> that is already registered
>> 
>> and the transition process will soon be underway.
>>
>> Finally, to answer some questions that came up directly:
>>
>> Is the Endowment an independent 501(c)(3) entity? Yes.
>>
>> Is the money currently managed by Tides? Yes.
>>
>> Will the money transition out of Tides to the new 501(c)(3)? Yes.
>>
>> You can also find a similar reply that we gave earlier, on meta
>> 
>> .
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Caitlin Virtue
>>
>> Senior Director of Development
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>>
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