Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hoi, For me there is little incentive here. You are doing it for your reasons and that is fine. When primary objectives of chapters and others are omitted it loses its relevance for me. You ask he what to do and for me it is obvious that you are doing something really complicated that takes a whole lot of effort from many many people that produces a result that is really dangerous as it is incomplete in the ways it has been indicated. Dangerous when it is to have consequences. Consider, when admin is painful to the point where people refuse or ignore the results, what is the added value of all that labour? How does it make us more effective in sharing in the sum of all knowledge ? Thanks, GerardM On 11 June 2015 at 23:39, Oluwaseyi Olukoya ooluk...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thank you for your feedback. As a team we are happy to see the necessary conversations and questions being raised and we look forward to working with you to make this better. The report was set out as an experiment with the purpose of consolidating chapters published financial reports to observe what trends may exist. @ GerardM: As you have rightly said the relative value of the report is affected if any principal information is omitted and also how things are done within each chapter’s country needs to be taken into account. If the current outcome of combining 37 financial statements is not optimal - we acknowledge it can be improved - then how can we make it better? If necessary, what variables (e.g. staff/volunteers info) need to be taken in account? … @Ilario: We appreciate that insight. We agree that further steps need to be taken to make the data we gathered more comparable. A first step was allocating all the chapter’s currently used line items to a common revenue and costs category. Now we will need to focus more on refining the first step and, in line with your advice, looking further into: - how can the data we gathered be kept in its original context? - how can the data be used by the chapters in a meaningful and comparable way? During our open discussion presentation at Wikimania, such questions can be explored further. Since this is an experiment towards a consolidated trends report, we can collaboratively observe loopholes/blind spots that may exist and move towards a solution. Thank you. Regards On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 3:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Raising revenue is done in one way. We ask people, they give. We tell everybody that the WMF is a charity in the USA.. FINE but it is also a charity in many other countries for instance in the Netherlands. Increasing the amount of money in the Netherlands can be done in many ways. The chapter may help but there are other ways as well. To do this well. you have to be aware about how things are done in a country. Given that it is possible to have gifts to charities fully tax deductible, it is relevant to look after such details.. I know about them and I do not mind to help. Thanks, GerardM On 11 June 2015 at 11:49, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, the idea is interesting, I am a volunteer in same grant committees of WMF and I can only agree to have a more comparable financial sheets (mainly in the use of the currencies). But I have some concerns. a) I hope that this project will produce more comparable financial sheets but without leaving the context were chapters are working. An example is the cost per day of an employee because if there is a standardization of these financial data but out of the context the risk is that the financial statements can generate not realistic data. It means that the total costs of the staff in a country with high salaries cannot be comparable with another having lower salaries without a balanced data. b) I really hope that you will push also the addition of the relevance of the results of the fundraising in each country, because we always think that the cow produces milk, we never think that we have to harvest the cow to produce its milk The financial statements of a chapters out of the context of the WMF fundraising in each country limits a lot the real value of the costs. Regards On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hoi, Raising revenue is done in one way. We ask people, they give. We tell everybody that the WMF is a charity in the USA.. FINE but it is also a charity in many other countries for instance in the Netherlands. Increasing the amount of money in the Netherlands can be done in many ways. The chapter may help but there are other ways as well. To do this well. you have to be aware about how things are done in a country. Given that it is possible to have gifts to charities fully tax deductible, it is relevant to look after such details.. I know about them and I do not mind to help. Thanks, GerardM On 11 June 2015 at 11:49, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, the idea is interesting, I am a volunteer in same grant committees of WMF and I can only agree to have a more comparable financial sheets (mainly in the use of the currencies). But I have some concerns. a) I hope that this project will produce more comparable financial sheets but without leaving the context were chapters are working. An example is the cost per day of an employee because if there is a standardization of these financial data but out of the context the risk is that the financial statements can generate not realistic data. It means that the total costs of the staff in a country with high salaries cannot be comparable with another having lower salaries without a balanced data. b) I really hope that you will push also the addition of the relevance of the results of the fundraising in each country, because we always think that the cow produces milk, we never think that we have to harvest the cow to produce its milk The financial statements of a chapters out of the context of the WMF fundraising in each country limits a lot the real value of the costs. Regards On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi, the idea is interesting, I am a volunteer in same grant committees of WMF and I can only agree to have a more comparable financial sheets (mainly in the use of the currencies). But I have some concerns. a) I hope that this project will produce more comparable financial sheets but without leaving the context were chapters are working. An example is the cost per day of an employee because if there is a standardization of these financial data but out of the context the risk is that the financial statements can generate not realistic data. It means that the total costs of the staff in a country with high salaries cannot be comparable with another having lower salaries without a balanced data. b) I really hope that you will push also the addition of the relevance of the results of the fundraising in each country, because we always think that the cow produces milk, we never think that we have to harvest the cow to produce its milk The financial statements of a chapters out of the context of the WMF fundraising in each country limits a lot the real value of the costs. Regards On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's financial data more consistent, we rely on the data provided by the organizations. We believe that there is enough data available to make a new attempt on capturing the movement's finances as a whole. A meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired. And of course: This is all an experiment! If it does not work, we will try to apply a modified 'agile' process by iterating, repeating, and trying again based on the feedback we are getting. If this does not seem right, or if it appears we are
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Thank you for your feedback. As a team we are happy to see the necessary conversations and questions being raised and we look forward to working with you to make this better. The report was set out as an experiment with the purpose of consolidating chapters published financial reports to observe what trends may exist. @ GerardM: As you have rightly said the relative value of the report is affected if any principal information is omitted and also how things are done within each chapter’s country needs to be taken into account. If the current outcome of combining 37 financial statements is not optimal - we acknowledge it can be improved - then how can we make it better? If necessary, what variables (e.g. staff/volunteers info) need to be taken in account? … @Ilario: We appreciate that insight. We agree that further steps need to be taken to make the data we gathered more comparable. A first step was allocating all the chapter’s currently used line items to a common revenue and costs category. Now we will need to focus more on refining the first step and, in line with your advice, looking further into: - how can the data we gathered be kept in its original context? - how can the data be used by the chapters in a meaningful and comparable way? During our open discussion presentation at Wikimania, such questions can be explored further. Since this is an experiment towards a consolidated trends report, we can collaboratively observe loopholes/blind spots that may exist and move towards a solution. Thank you. Regards On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 3:23 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Raising revenue is done in one way. We ask people, they give. We tell everybody that the WMF is a charity in the USA.. FINE but it is also a charity in many other countries for instance in the Netherlands. Increasing the amount of money in the Netherlands can be done in many ways. The chapter may help but there are other ways as well. To do this well. you have to be aware about how things are done in a country. Given that it is possible to have gifts to charities fully tax deductible, it is relevant to look after such details.. I know about them and I do not mind to help. Thanks, GerardM On 11 June 2015 at 11:49, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, the idea is interesting, I am a volunteer in same grant committees of WMF and I can only agree to have a more comparable financial sheets (mainly in the use of the currencies). But I have some concerns. a) I hope that this project will produce more comparable financial sheets but without leaving the context were chapters are working. An example is the cost per day of an employee because if there is a standardization of these financial data but out of the context the risk is that the financial statements can generate not realistic data. It means that the total costs of the staff in a country with high salaries cannot be comparable with another having lower salaries without a balanced data. b) I really hope that you will push also the addition of the relevance of the results of the fundraising in each country, because we always think that the cow produces milk, we never think that we have to harvest the cow to produce its milk The financial statements of a chapters out of the context of the WMF fundraising in each country limits a lot the real value of the costs. Regards On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hoi, it strikes me that when one of the principal activities of chapters is omitted, the relative value of this research is reduced. When you consider that it is EXACTLY the time I had to spend re reporting that I will think hard to apply again that considering it out of scope is also really bad business. For me you have a report that I find hard to understand what it is I take away from it. What is left as a lesson learned that I care about? Thanks, GerardM On 10 June 2015 at 00:10, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thank you for all your supportive feedback, we really appreciate it. @ Tomasz - This is definitely something we will discuss further. We replied to your question on meta and welcome further comments related to this on meta. @ Pine, Claudia - For 2013, the volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants was not within the scope of our financial report. The focus was mainly on aligning the financial data that were in the financial statements of the chapters. We will consider if including the estimate of volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants would fall within the scope of the report if this is to be repeated. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Great job and very interesting. I had this tought during sending you data for Wikimedia Polska, so I want to share it here as well. In the report there is no projects entry for costs but only events and organizational development. Chapters are doing not only events but also projects leading to improvement of free content and data - such as colaboration with GLAMs, software developement, developement of wikidata, microgrant systems etc, which are hard to be called events and they are also not organizational developement. I would suggest to add to future reports positions content and software improvement projects or something similar. I think especially for thematic organizations it is the core of their activity. 2015-06-08 19:00 GMT+02:00 Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hello folks, After 8 months, over 400 line items and an infinite amount of emails, I am very pleased to let everyone know that we the finance fellows have completed our movement-wide financial report. It is now available for everyone to read on meta and download. Here is the link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movement-wide_Financial_Report I have to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone involved with the release of this report. Thank you to all the participating chapters who helped make this report possible. We cannot express our appreciation enough for your helpful responses and guidance to develop this final product. Hopefully, this report proves insightful for you and help us begin to think about more consistent financial reporting. Thank you Community Engagement, especially Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez, Winifred Olliff and Katy Love for your guidance throughout this process. But last and not least, thank you to all volunteers who participate in the Wikimedia projects. Despite the fiscal emphasis of this report, it is your work that is most important and completely invaluable to the movement. Hopefully, you too will find this report useful. Best, On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Walter Alejandro Gomez Segura wagseg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Yes, we would like to discuss it. The main goal of this project is to prompt questions, so further along we will carry out a discussion about this report and try to get as much feedback as we can from the community. Best, Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report. I am very glad that this report is being done. Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss it during an office hour in April? Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Gerard, I found this finance report interesting, especially in light of discussions at WMCON. I'll have more to say later but I'm pretty swamped in projects at the moment. I may try to add some thoughts about this finance report into my piece about WMCON that I'm writing for the Signpost. Pine On Jun 11, 2015 12:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, it strikes me that when one of the principal activities of chapters is omitted, the relative value of this research is reduced. When you consider that it is EXACTLY the time I had to spend re reporting that I will think hard to apply again that considering it out of scope is also really bad business. For me you have a report that I find hard to understand what it is I take away from it. What is left as a lesson learned that I care about? Thanks, GerardM On 10 June 2015 at 00:10, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Thank you for all your supportive feedback, we really appreciate it. @ Tomasz - This is definitely something we will discuss further. We replied to your question on meta and welcome further comments related to this on meta. @ Pine, Claudia - For 2013, the volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants was not within the scope of our financial report. The focus was mainly on aligning the financial data that were in the financial statements of the chapters. We will consider if including the estimate of volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants would fall within the scope of the report if this is to be repeated. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Great job and very interesting. I had this tought during sending you data for Wikimedia Polska, so I want to share it here as well. In the report there is no projects entry for costs but only events and organizational development. Chapters are doing not only events but also projects leading to improvement of free content and data - such as colaboration with GLAMs, software developement, developement of wikidata, microgrant systems etc, which are hard to be called events and they are also not organizational developement. I would suggest to add to future reports positions content and software improvement projects or something similar. I think especially for thematic organizations it is the core of their activity. 2015-06-08 19:00 GMT+02:00 Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hello folks, After 8 months, over 400 line items and an infinite amount of emails, I am very pleased to let everyone know that we the finance fellows have completed our movement-wide financial report. It is now available for everyone to read on meta and download. Here is the link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movement-wide_Financial_Report I have to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone involved with the release of this report. Thank you to all the participating chapters who helped make this report possible. We cannot express our appreciation enough for your helpful responses and guidance to develop this final product. Hopefully, this report proves insightful for you and help us begin to think about more consistent financial reporting. Thank you Community Engagement, especially Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez, Winifred Olliff and Katy Love for your guidance throughout this process. But last and not least, thank you to all volunteers who participate in the Wikimedia projects. Despite the fiscal emphasis of this report, it is your work that is most important and completely invaluable to the movement. Hopefully, you too will find this report useful. Best, On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Walter Alejandro Gomez Segura wagseg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Yes, we would like to discuss it. The main goal of this project is to prompt questions, so further along we will carry out a discussion about this report and try to get as much feedback as we can from the community. Best, Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report.
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Woohoo, data (: I'd love to see the staff and volunteer time info. Thanks, Claudia. This WMF affiliates finance fellows report is pretty interesting and I really do appreciate that this research was done. Hopefully I'll have time to review it in more detail in the next couple of weeks. Thanks, Pine On Jun 8, 2015 2:08 PM, Claudia Garád claudia.ga...@wikimedia.at wrote: After each FDC round the WMF conducted a survey among the participating organizations in which we were asked to give estimates on these questions (as far as I can recall). I'm not sure whether and where the results have been published but there might be some (rough) data available on this. Claudia Am 08.06.2015 um 21:26 schrieb Pine W: I agree. I don't think WMF has an appreciation of the scope of this problem and how it detracts from the prigrammatic activities that they aim to support in addition to its effects on volunteer morale and motivation (which is a WMF global metric). I am hoping that some hard numbers might get them to think about the status quo and how to improve it by a significant, measurable percentage. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Great job and very interesting. I had this tought during sending you data for Wikimedia Polska, so I want to share it here as well. In the report there is no projects entry for costs but only events and organizational development. Chapters are doing not only events but also projects leading to improvement of free content and data - such as colaboration with GLAMs, software developement, developement of wikidata, microgrant systems etc, which are hard to be called events and they are also not organizational developement. I would suggest to add to future reports positions content and software improvement projects or something similar. I think especially for thematic organizations it is the core of their activity. 2015-06-08 19:00 GMT+02:00 Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hello folks, After 8 months, over 400 line items and an infinite amount of emails, I am very pleased to let everyone know that we the finance fellows have completed our movement-wide financial report. It is now available for everyone to read on meta and download. Here is the link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movement-wide_Financial_Report I have to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone involved with the release of this report. Thank you to all the participating chapters who helped make this report possible. We cannot express our appreciation enough for your helpful responses and guidance to develop this final product. Hopefully, this report proves insightful for you and help us begin to think about more consistent financial reporting. Thank you Community Engagement, especially Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez, Winifred Olliff and Katy Love for your guidance throughout this process. But last and not least, thank you to all volunteers who participate in the Wikimedia projects. Despite the fiscal emphasis of this report, it is your work that is most important and completely invaluable to the movement. Hopefully, you too will find this report useful. Best, On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Walter Alejandro Gomez Segura wagseg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Yes, we would like to discuss it. The main goal of this project is to prompt questions, so further along we will carry out a discussion about this report and try to get as much feedback as we can from the community. Best, Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report. I am very glad that this report is being done. Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss it during an office hour in April? Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro* On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Thank you for your inquiry and for following up the status of this project. We’ve updated the information on our meta page[1], so that it is more clear to everyone. We would like to clarify that the Draft Report is a finalization of the raw dataset and is not intended to be published. We are currently focusing on representing the data, so that everyone can easily understand the outcomes of our project. This will be revised internally and the outcome of that will be the Final Report, which will be published in April. All the best, Lene [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Thank you for all your supportive feedback, we really appreciate it. @ Tomasz - This is definitely something we will discuss further. We replied to your question on meta and welcome further comments related to this on meta. @ Pine, Claudia - For 2013, the volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants was not within the scope of our financial report. The focus was mainly on aligning the financial data that were in the financial statements of the chapters. We will consider if including the estimate of volunteer and staff time spent on applying for and reporting about WMF grants would fall within the scope of the report if this is to be repeated. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Great job and very interesting. I had this tought during sending you data for Wikimedia Polska, so I want to share it here as well. In the report there is no projects entry for costs but only events and organizational development. Chapters are doing not only events but also projects leading to improvement of free content and data - such as colaboration with GLAMs, software developement, developement of wikidata, microgrant systems etc, which are hard to be called events and they are also not organizational developement. I would suggest to add to future reports positions content and software improvement projects or something similar. I think especially for thematic organizations it is the core of their activity. 2015-06-08 19:00 GMT+02:00 Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hello folks, After 8 months, over 400 line items and an infinite amount of emails, I am very pleased to let everyone know that we the finance fellows have completed our movement-wide financial report. It is now available for everyone to read on meta and download. Here is the link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movement-wide_Financial_Report I have to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone involved with the release of this report. Thank you to all the participating chapters who helped make this report possible. We cannot express our appreciation enough for your helpful responses and guidance to develop this final product. Hopefully, this report proves insightful for you and help us begin to think about more consistent financial reporting. Thank you Community Engagement, especially Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez, Winifred Olliff and Katy Love for your guidance throughout this process. But last and not least, thank you to all volunteers who participate in the Wikimedia projects. Despite the fiscal emphasis of this report, it is your work that is most important and completely invaluable to the movement. Hopefully, you too will find this report useful. Best, On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Walter Alejandro Gomez Segura wagseg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Yes, we would like to discuss it. The main goal of this project is to prompt questions, so further along we will carry out a discussion about this report and try to get as much feedback as we can from the community. Best, Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report. I am very glad that this report is being done. Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss it during an office hour in April? Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro* On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Thank you for your inquiry and for following up the status of this project. We’ve updated the information on our meta page[1], so that it is more clear to everyone. We would like to clarify that the Draft Report is a finalization of the raw dataset and is not intended to be published. We are currently focusing on representing
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Michael, Thanks for this report. I was hoping to see information in the report about the financial costs of applying for and reporting about WMF grants; even better would be an estimate of time spent including volunteer hours, including FDC and GAC volunteer and staff hours. These costs are among my biggest pain points at the moment in Cascadia Wikimedians and I have heard similar comments from much larger affiliates and FDC volunteers as well. Is this information available anywhere in the report, and if not, is there a place where we might be able to get it? Thanks, Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
On Jun 8, 2015 8:53 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Michael, Thanks for this report. I was hoping to see information in the report about the financial costs of applying for and reporting about WMF grants; even better would be an estimate of time spent including volunteer hours, including FDC and GAC volunteer and staff hours. These costs are among my biggest pain points at the moment in Cascadia Wikimedians and I have heard similar comments from much larger affiliates and FDC volunteers as well. Is this information available anywhere in the report, and if not, is there a place where we might be able to get it? _that_ would be something to achieve... Rupert ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
I agree. I don't think WMF has an appreciation of the scope of this problem and how it detracts from the prigrammatic activities that they aim to support in addition to its effects on volunteer morale and motivation (which is a WMF global metric). I am hoping that some hard numbers might get them to think about the status quo and how to improve it by a significant, measurable percentage. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
After each FDC round the WMF conducted a survey among the participating organizations in which we were asked to give estimates on these questions (as far as I can recall). I'm not sure whether and where the results have been published but there might be some (rough) data available on this. Claudia Am 08.06.2015 um 21:26 schrieb Pine W: I agree. I don't think WMF has an appreciation of the scope of this problem and how it detracts from the prigrammatic activities that they aim to support in addition to its effects on volunteer morale and motivation (which is a WMF global metric). I am hoping that some hard numbers might get them to think about the status quo and how to improve it by a significant, measurable percentage. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hello folks, After 8 months, over 400 line items and an infinite amount of emails, I am very pleased to let everyone know that we the finance fellows have completed our movement-wide financial report. It is now available for everyone to read on meta and download. Here is the link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movement-wide_Financial_Report I have to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone involved with the release of this report. Thank you to all the participating chapters who helped make this report possible. We cannot express our appreciation enough for your helpful responses and guidance to develop this final product. Hopefully, this report proves insightful for you and help us begin to think about more consistent financial reporting. Thank you Community Engagement, especially Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez, Winifred Olliff and Katy Love for your guidance throughout this process. But last and not least, thank you to all volunteers who participate in the Wikimedia projects. Despite the fiscal emphasis of this report, it is your work that is most important and completely invaluable to the movement. Hopefully, you too will find this report useful. Best, On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Walter Alejandro Gomez Segura wagseg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Yes, we would like to discuss it. The main goal of this project is to prompt questions, so further along we will carry out a discussion about this report and try to get as much feedback as we can from the community. Best, Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report. I am very glad that this report is being done. Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss it during an office hour in April? Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro* On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Thank you for your inquiry and for following up the status of this project. We’ve updated the information on our meta page[1], so that it is more clear to everyone. We would like to clarify that the Draft Report is a finalization of the raw dataset and is not intended to be published. We are currently focusing on representing the data, so that everyone can easily understand the outcomes of our project. This will be revised internally and the outcome of that will be the Final Report, which will be published in April. All the best, Lene [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Michael Guss Research Analyst Wikimediafoundation.org mg...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Lene, OK, thanks for the update. As you can tell, I am very interested in your work. I am sensitized to anything having to do with Meta-type documentation and deadlines at the moment, seeing as I am juggling so many of them with intricate dependencies (including weekend projects), but I suppose that I will just need to wait until April for this particular report. I am very glad that this report is being done. Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss it during an office hour in April? Thanks, Pine *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.* *—Catherine Munro* On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Lene Gillis lgil...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Pine, Thank you for your inquiry and for following up the status of this project. We’ve updated the information on our meta page[1], so that it is more clear to everyone. We would like to clarify that the Draft Report is a finalization of the raw dataset and is not intended to be published. We are currently focusing on representing the data, so that everyone can easily understand the outcomes of our project. This will be revised internally and the outcome of that will be the Final Report, which will be published in April. All the best, Lene [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Keegan, May I point out that the term on the timeline is deadline, as in commitment, not as in estimate. I view commitments as serious business. I believe that in IEGCom we met our deadlines every single time when I was on that committee, the Signpost is published weekly with rare exceptions, and there were a number of nights as a WMF intern when I got less than 6 hours of sleep in my semi-successful efforts to keep my commitments to WMF and to my other employer. ( I do thank WMF for that internship, it was a good experience overall). Of course there may be variances from schedules on occasion (people do get sick, have their cars break down, etc), but I believe that Lila made a point in the All Hands that projects are to be completed on time, and I think it's reasonable that commitments should be kept whenever possible. I try to do this myself and I hope that WMF takes its commitments seriously too. The report of the Finance Fellows will inform some of my thinking about Cascadia's budget and it would be helpful to have the draft published early this week. Thank you, Pine On Mar 1, 2015 5:38 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Finance Fellows, The timeline for your work says that your draft report should be finished. May we look at it? I am very curious about your findings. Thanks (: Pine I'd like to point out that the timeline estimates completion by February 28. This is (hemispherically) March 1. And a Sunday. I suggest some patience :) -- ~Keegan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Finance Fellows, The timeline for your work says that your draft report should be finished. May we look at it? I am very curious about your findings. Thanks (: Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Finance Fellows, The timeline for your work says that your draft report should be finished. May we look at it? I am very curious about your findings. Thanks (: Pine I'd like to point out that the timeline estimates completion by February 28. This is (hemispherically) March 1. And a Sunday. I suggest some patience :) -- ~Keegan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
So I read the page that is linked. It says that their *DRAFT* report will be completed February 28. It does not say that it will be publishing its draft report. Presumably the draft will be reviewed by selected partners (particularly the WMF) before the final report is completed. That is due March 19. You have no reason to believe that the draft report hasn't been completed. Perhaps you could hold your concerns about deadlines being missed until the final report is due. Risker/Anne On 1 March 2015 at 21:06, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Keegan, May I point out that the term on the timeline is deadline, as in commitment, not as in estimate. I view commitments as serious business. I believe that in IEGCom we met our deadlines every single time when I was on that committee, the Signpost is published weekly with rare exceptions, and there were a number of nights as a WMF intern when I got less than 6 hours of sleep in my semi-successful efforts to keep my commitments to WMF and to my other employer. ( I do thank WMF for that internship, it was a good experience overall). Of course there may be variances from schedules on occasion (people do get sick, have their cars break down, etc), but I believe that Lila made a point in the All Hands that projects are to be completed on time, and I think it's reasonable that commitments should be kept whenever possible. I try to do this myself and I hope that WMF takes its commitments seriously too. The report of the Finance Fellows will inform some of my thinking about Cascadia's budget and it would be helpful to have the draft published early this week. Thank you, Pine On Mar 1, 2015 5:38 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Finance Fellows, The timeline for your work says that your draft report should be finished. May we look at it? I am very curious about your findings. Thanks (: Pine I'd like to point out that the timeline estimates completion by February 28. This is (hemispherically) March 1. And a Sunday. I suggest some patience :) -- ~Keegan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 8:06 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: Keegan, May I point out that the term on the timeline is deadline, as in commitment, not as in estimate. I view commitments as serious business. I believe that in IEGCom we met our deadlines every single time when I was on that committee, the Signpost is published weekly with rare exceptions, and there were a number of nights as a WMF intern when I got less than 6 hours of sleep in my semi-successful efforts to keep my commitments to WMF and to my other employer. ( I do thank WMF for that internship, it was a good experience overall). Of course there may be variances from schedules on occasion (people do get sick, have their cars break down, etc), but I believe that Lila made a point in the All Hands that projects are to be completed on time, and I think it's reasonable that commitments should be kept whenever possible. I try to do this myself and I hope that WMF takes its commitments seriously too. The report of the Finance Fellows will inform some of my thinking about Cascadia's budget and it would be helpful to have the draft published early this week. Thank you, Pine Pine, I do not believe I was questioning the commitments of anyone, nor was I seeking to argue those points with you. I am simply saying, and I still believe this is true, that it's not an unreasonable observation that this is the weekend nor is it unexpected for people to take weekends off. Weekends are terrible times to release news, for the very reason that people are taking them off. Having some patience for Monday to arrive is not too much to ask at all. Thanks! -- ~Keegan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hmm...I would love to *outsource *financial reporting to WMF together with a couple of other tasks as well (program evaluation for example). Imo the best would be to contact our (that is WM Hungary) accountant directly so they can get the data organized as wanted, on time, with explanations requested, etc. In long terms I would love to see a global contract with KPMG (as WMF is using them, or another of the big four) where KPMG (or an alternative firm if not present there) would take this task over from local chapters. That would ensure that the data is collected the exact same way (with same definitions and methodology used) in every single country, without delays or errors in reporting and on the best dates for WMF. Not to mention that it would decrease the workload of the chapters what I think barely if ever happened yet. Balazs ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Balazs, This, while at first glance a credible idea, wouldn't work for a number of reasons: - it misunderstands how major accounting firms work. Even if one accounting group carried out the work, the people doing the work would be the local accounting firms (eg KPMG Hungary, KPMG UK). These firms would have different methodologies and practices. - Some chapters, including WMUK, have a legal responsibility to be independent. Having someone else report our finances would jeopardise that independence. - Bigger chapters - and some smaller ones - already have established reporting procedures and practices, which in some cases are better than the WMF's systems. It would be extremely difficult to update our systems from our own, to WMF-led ones. - There would still be delays and errors in reporting - and the dates would still change because each country has different tax years (etc). - Every organisation measures things differently - we all have different cost centres, nominal codes, departments etc - having the WMF come in and change them would be very difficult and would run the risk of some organisations losing accuracy in their reporting (or would run the risk of having a massively complex system to account for everything). At its simplest level, definitions of things like governance or office costs vary from country to country. For example, in WMUK, we count general postage of letters as office costs, but items that fall under the Royal Mail definition of parcels instead come out of the budget for a project. If you're to have the same reporting for every country, you need to all be using the same definition of parcel! - Finally, every organisation's goals are different - and indeed our funding streams are different. WMUK is mostly funded from outside the movement, and as a result we are able to use our resources to fund non-Wikimedia projects - for example, OpenStreetMap, or OpenCorporates, if we wanted to. We can even fund political lobbying to a fair degree, which is something the WMF can't do as easily. This means that the WMF has no interest in counting that expenditure, because lobbying for open knowledge is not a WMF goal in the same way that it's a WMUK goal. It would be funded without using WMF funds, and would be spent on non-WMF goals. Very complicated, and I'm sorry to write such a long email, but standardising financial systems across continents is a very difficult thing to do! All the best, Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 21 November 2014 11:38, Balázs Viczián balazs.vicz...@wikimedia.hu wrote: Hmm...I would love to *outsource *financial reporting to WMF together with a couple of other tasks as well (program evaluation for example). Imo the best would be to contact our (that is WM Hungary) accountant directly so they can get the data organized as wanted, on time, with explanations requested, etc. In long terms I would love to see a global contract with KPMG (as WMF is using them, or another of the big four) where KPMG (or an alternative firm if not present there) would take this task over from local chapters. That would ensure that the data is collected the exact same way (with same definitions and methodology used) in every single country, without delays or errors in reporting and on the best dates for WMF. Not to mention that it would decrease the workload of the chapters what I think barely if ever happened yet. Balazs ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Richard, I think I was a bit misunderstandable here. I'm not talking about the local reports but about the translations of them for WMF. I would be more than happy if WMF would do it themselves. This is what these fellows are doing as of my understanding in the next 6 months. The bright future for me would be the automated version of this: WMF pays for an accounting firm preferably a big four company (Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst Young or PriceWaterhouseCoopers) to do the accounting for all the chapters. Why? Because they are present in almost every country in the world. For small/new chapters and other current and future formations in need to present an audited statement for the WMF it would be definitely a benefit to have someone do the job. If they would do the local regular accounting imo it would be even better. So I have two levels here. One normal: the local and one translated for WMF. These big firms are capable of doing both. Maybe if we look into that deeply it can turn out that on a global level we might end up saving on the accounting costs with such a contract. But that is just my idea, no data to support it. The fellows will be definitely able to answer such a question though in six months time. Balazs 2014-11-21 12:46 GMT+00:00 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk : Hi Balazs, This, while at first glance a credible idea, wouldn't work for a number of reasons: - it misunderstands how major accounting firms work. Even if one accounting group carried out the work, the people doing the work would be the local accounting firms (eg KPMG Hungary, KPMG UK). These firms would have different methodologies and practices. - Some chapters, including WMUK, have a legal responsibility to be independent. Having someone else report our finances would jeopardise that independence. - Bigger chapters - and some smaller ones - already have established reporting procedures and practices, which in some cases are better than the WMF's systems. It would be extremely difficult to update our systems from our own, to WMF-led ones. - There would still be delays and errors in reporting - and the dates would still change because each country has different tax years (etc). - Every organisation measures things differently - we all have different cost centres, nominal codes, departments etc - having the WMF come in and change them would be very difficult and would run the risk of some organisations losing accuracy in their reporting (or would run the risk of having a massively complex system to account for everything). At its simplest level, definitions of things like governance or office costs vary from country to country. For example, in WMUK, we count general postage of letters as office costs, but items that fall under the Royal Mail definition of parcels instead come out of the budget for a project. If you're to have the same reporting for every country, you need to all be using the same definition of parcel! - Finally, every organisation's goals are different - and indeed our funding streams are different. WMUK is mostly funded from outside the movement, and as a result we are able to use our resources to fund non-Wikimedia projects - for example, OpenStreetMap, or OpenCorporates, if we wanted to. We can even fund political lobbying to a fair degree, which is something the WMF can't do as easily. This means that the WMF has no interest in counting that expenditure, because lobbying for open knowledge is not a WMF goal in the same way that it's a WMUK goal. It would be funded without using WMF funds, and would be spent on non-WMF goals. Very complicated, and I'm sorry to write such a long email, but standardising financial systems across continents is a very difficult thing to do! All the best, Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 21 November 2014 11:38, Balázs Viczián balazs.vicz...@wikimedia.hu wrote: Hmm...I would love to *outsource *financial reporting to WMF together with a couple of other tasks as well (program evaluation for example). Imo the best would be to contact our (that is WM Hungary) accountant directly so they can get the data organized as wanted, on time, with explanations requested, etc. In long terms I would love to see a global contract with KPMG (as WMF is
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
While this might sound attracting at a first glance the effect might be exactly the opposite what is desired. First, The wikimedia movement is not multinational like coca Cola which just buys what it needs. Wikimedia depends on volunteers. I would never donate money if it is not spent on the people sweating for Wikipedia. So behaving like a cold money hungry multinational driven by quarterly reports poses a reputational risk. Second, The goal is to target as much money as possible to the mission. Invent some non-core effort and then shifting it to a paid resource is killing such a goal. The effort should ideally disappear, not being outsourced. And, at the end of the day established (reporting ) standards should be easy to follow for everybody, without the need of a translator . Just like we know well from laws and other standards. Rupert Hmm...I would love to *outsource *financial reporting to WMF together with a couple of other tasks as well (program evaluation for example). Imo the best would be to contact our (that is WM Hungary) accountant directly so they can get the data organized as wanted, on time, with explanations requested, etc. In long terms I would love to see a global contract with KPMG (as WMF is using them, or another of the big four) where KPMG (or an alternative firm if not present there) would take this task over from local chapters. That would ensure that the data is collected the exact same way (with same definitions and methodology used) in every single country, without delays or errors in reporting and on the best dates for WMF. Not to mention that it would decrease the workload of the chapters what I think barely if ever happened yet. Balazs ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Rupert, I doubt volunteer accounting is fun; most people actually hate it. Further mor, most people actually can not do it as it should at all. No wonder this is a separate profession. People can discuss your statement that wikipedia is not multinational on 200+ language version wikipedias :) It is global and it is multinational. About half of the WMF staff was born and raised (and lived most of their lives) outside the USA, including the past and the present EDs. Or check the finance fellows for example :) Accounting is the core of all activities; try not doing your personal tax report and you'll see. Wherever a single penny is changing hands, it has to be reported and properly accounted. It is not only required by the law everywhere but required for the sake of transparency and _accountability_ Balázs 2014.11.21. 19:45, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com ezt írta: While this might sound attracting at a first glance the effect might be exactly the opposite what is desired. First, The wikimedia movement is not multinational like coca Cola which just buys what it needs. Wikimedia depends on volunteers. I would never donate money if it is not spent on the people sweating for Wikipedia. So behaving like a cold money hungry multinational driven by quarterly reports poses a reputational risk. Second, The goal is to target as much money as possible to the mission. Invent some non-core effort and then shifting it to a paid resource is killing such a goal. The effort should ideally disappear, not being outsourced. And, at the end of the day established (reporting ) standards should be easy to follow for everybody, without the need of a translator . Just like we know well from laws and other standards. Rupert Hmm...I would love to *outsource *financial reporting to WMF together with a couple of other tasks as well (program evaluation for example). Imo the best would be to contact our (that is WM Hungary) accountant directly so they can get the data organized as wanted, on time, with explanations requested, etc. In long terms I would love to see a global contract with KPMG (as WMF is using them, or another of the big four) where KPMG (or an alternative firm if not present there) would take this task over from local chapters. That would ensure that the data is collected the exact same way (with same definitions and methodology used) in every single country, without delays or errors in reporting and on the best dates for WMF. Not to mention that it would decrease the workload of the chapters what I think barely if ever happened yet. Balazs ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Thanks for the replies. They've calmed my fears a fair bit, but I'm still a little concerned - even simple questions like* of your administrative costs, **how much were your travel costs* don't really make a lot of sense to us, because some of our travel costs aren't administrative - and we don't track administrative expenditure because that term isn't a definition we use, and it's not clearly defined. This is why we've been having trouble with understanding some Grantmaking/FDC reports in the past - our method of reporting our financial information differs from the way that teams at the WMF would like it to be presented, because our key definitions differ (not to criticise the grantmaking team, who are very helpful in this regard!) I think that this project is trying to fix these problems, and it's a commendable effort - but: 1. Your team can't create entirely new definitions for organisations to report to (because we simply can't afford to increase our finance team to report to another definition - we already report to three different definitions). There is very little appetite in the movement for bigger or more professional finance teams and any big changes to reporting requirements simply won't be possible without more resources going that way. 2. Your team may not be able to get all the information they need from participants because participants are simply too busy - in which case, the results of the report will go ahead and be used by the movement even though it may not be accurate or indeed fit for purpose. If the FDC process then goes ahead and uses the report outcomes to ask for financial information, then it means that the inaccurate report will have a direct effect on the metrics we're marked against, and thus a direct effect on movement funding. 3. As WMUK, I fear that the less effort we put into involving ourselves in the process, the greater the chance that the final outcome will be a poor one for us. This in turn means that this actually has to be something that WMUK put a fair amount of effort into influencing, to ensure that our views are listened to and that the final report is something we can actually report against! I worry about how smaller chapters, like Ghana, Ukraine or Hungary - or the fledgling user groups - will manage, if the final definitions don't reflect their views at all. 4. You say that if an organisation can't give your team the information they want, a phrase will appear in the final report along the lines of there are concerns about the quality of the data provided by Wikimedia UK... which won't be true, and will be read into by the community as WMUK has been audited and found wanting! 5. The report is intended to make data* consistent, meaningful and comparable among the chapters, thematic organizations, and the Foundation *- a laudable goal and one I fully support - but it appears that the Foundation aren't being consulted by the Finance Fellows at all. Where will their views and date be taken into account - will they be using the same process as everyone else, or a different process? I am not a cynic and I don't think that the WMF will use this process to dictate what reporting requirements should be, but I do worry that unless the WMF go through the same process, the end result will be relatively easy for the WMF teams to accomplish and rather harder for the rest of us! This increases our back-office costs and makes thorgs appear less efficient when that won't necessarily be the case. I trust the team - they are a group of keen, young, idealistic people - and I know that this is going to be done in good faith, but I don't see how it can be done fairly without a lot of work from the organisations involved - if they don't get involved, their views won't be reflected. In order for this to be successful, his has to be a* team effort*, from all the financial and project teams (and individuals!) across the world, and at present it isn't - and given that this is the first the rest of the movement has heard of the report, it will be very difficult for the rest of us to help at such short notice. I really, really appreciate what you're doing - but I want to be part of this endeavour, and I hope you see my worries! Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 31 October 2014 20:46, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
You're right Sydney - not all of them are going to happen. They're worries - hypothetical worries in some cases - but they impact directly on the work I do and it would be wrong of me to not raise them. In answer to your other points: - You are right that the alternative of not doing anything or putting it off seems worse. It *is* worse to not do anything. Indeed, this is something I've wanted to do for years (I simply haven't had the time) and I am 100% behind it happening. It is sensible and I will do everything I can to support it. - However, when you say a group of people taking a run at sorting this out seems like a good first approach - it is a good first approach, but I worry that the first approach will become the only approach, and that the results will be used even if they're too rough to use. This is a huge task and it needs to be right or it runs the risk of damaging the movement. - I don't think this should be done by a formal group of representatives - in my experience committees aren't an amazing way of doing things like this. The team who have been put together seem to be bright young things and I have no doubt that they will do the best job they can - but I think that the first version can be improved with a lot more buy-in from the rest of the movement :-) Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 4 November 2014 19:03, Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com wrote: Richard, I appreciate your view and understand your concerns. But even if all of your worries are true, which I'm not sure is the case, the alternative of not doing anything or putting it off seems worse. A group of people taking a run at sorting this out seems like a good first approach. And an alternative approach of having all of this work be done by a formal group of representatives of chapters/thematic organizations with the assistance a WMF staff like the Fiance Fellows doesn't really seem to answer the concerns that you raise. And in fact puts more of a burden on the groups. Sydney Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Thanks for the replies. They've calmed my fears a fair bit, but I'm still a little concerned - even simple questions like* of your administrative costs, **how much were your travel costs* don't really make a lot of sense to us, because some of our travel costs aren't administrative - and we don't track administrative expenditure because that term isn't a definition we use, and it's not clearly defined. This is why we've been having trouble with understanding some Grantmaking/FDC reports in the past - our method of reporting our financial information differs from the way that teams at the WMF would like it to be presented, because our key definitions differ (not to criticise the grantmaking team, who are very helpful in this regard!) I think that this project is trying to fix these problems, and it's a commendable effort - but: 1. Your team can't create entirely new definitions for organisations to report to (because we simply can't afford to increase our finance team to report to another definition - we already report to three different definitions). There is very little appetite in the movement for bigger or more professional finance teams and any big changes to reporting requirements simply won't be possible without more resources going that way. 2. Your team may not be able to get all the information they need from participants because participants are simply too busy - in which case, the results of the report will go ahead and be used by the movement even though it may not be accurate or indeed fit for purpose. If the FDC process then goes ahead and uses the report outcomes to ask for financial information, then it means that the inaccurate report will have a direct effect on the metrics we're marked against, and thus a direct effect on movement funding. 3. As WMUK, I fear that the less effort we put into involving ourselves in the process, the greater the chance that the final outcome will be a poor one for us. This in turn means that this actually has to be something that WMUK put a fair amount of effort into influencing, to
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
On 4 November 2014 20:49, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: I don't think this should be done by a formal group of representatives - in my experience committees aren't an amazing way of doing things like this. The team who have been put together seem to be bright young things and I have no doubt that they will do the best job they can - but I think that the first version can be improved with a lot more buy-in from the rest of the movement :-) This. The concept behind the 'finance fellows' is a great one: dedicated contact people for the Chapters to help coordinate, standardise, streamline, clarify the financial information among a variety of very diverse Wikimedia Organisations. Something like this is something that many people have wanted for a long time. Newer or smaller chapters can feel 'left out' and overwhelmed by what kind of information they need to report, when, how... especially for the majority of Chapters that have no dedicated financial administration professional. However, by keeping the team's formation a secret, and not involving the Chapters' financial staff in the conceptualisation stage (even as advanced warning), does not start the concept off with good will. In fact, what could/should have been a great day for the movement in helping to support and coordinate its various parts, makes the very people who are going to be working closest with the Finance Fellows (e.g. Richard, above) skeptical and wary of being 'audited'. This is a great shame. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi all, As you may have heard, I've started temporary contract work for WMF as an intern in Learning and Evaluation. [1] My work will focus on the Learning Patterns Library. [2] One of the goals for the internship is to enable easier and better reporting about grants, including financial reports. When grantees spend countless hours writing reports, that drains resources that could be invested in designing and producing more and better programs, and I've heard that grantees prefer designing and producing programs over tedious accounting and reporting tasks. You can expect to hear more from me about learning patterns in the next few months, and I am hoping to hear constructive ideas from community members and grantees that can be included in the Learning Patterns Library. Generally I will use my current Pine accounts for my community roles, and I will save my WMF accounts for official WMF work. I didn't know about these Finance Fellows either until I saw their profiles appear on the WMF staff page, and I emailed Garfield to ask about them. A community consultation in advance about this project would have been helpful. The goals of these Fellows make sense to me; I've previously had discussions with Grantmaking about trying to get comparable data across programs. I too am interested in hearing how WMF Finance will implement this program, and in particular how it will affect the Cascadia Wikimedians User Group which I am helping to coordinate. It does worry me a little that Wikimedia has a famously complicated social, financial, and legal environment, and there are lots of ways for things to go wrong, especially when people who have never before worked in this kind of environment are brought into a role like global finance for the movement. That said, I hope that Garfield will continue to address the concerns that are being discussed in this thread, and that the work of the Finance Fellows will be a net positive for everyone in the long run. To the Finance Fellows: I hope that you are not discouraged by this discussion. I've been in this global community for years in a variety of roles, and I'm still learning. I hope that you have a good experience with us. Regards, Pine [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bgibbs_(WMF) [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns *This is an Encyclopedia* https://www.wikipedia.org/ *One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.**—Catherine Munro* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
However, by keeping the team's formation a secret, and not involving the Chapters' financial staff in the conceptualisation stage (even as advanced warning), does not start the concept off with good will. While completely understanding the point you're making, I would mainly suggest not worrying about this. Many things going on in among Wikimedia movement organisations are imperfect steps in the right direction and it's more important to focus on the step in the right direction bit. In many ways it's all so new and diverse that we currently are one level of abstraction beyond sharing learning and information. We are still in the process of learning how to share learning and of gathering information about what information there is. I suspect the Finance Fellows may make a very valuable contribution even if their results are a bit less concrete than they anticipate. Hopefully the dialogue here will be helpful in shaping their approach. Chris (Wikimedia UK trustee, though speaking personally as usual) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Walter, Arda, Lene Seyi: welcome! Thank you for tackling this project, I hope you will share further thoughts about it. On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: They're worries - hypothetical worries in some cases - but they impact directly on the work I do and it would be wrong of me to not raise them. They are worth raising, thank you. it is a good first approach, but I worry that the first approach will become the only approach, and that the results will be used even if they're too rough to use. An important point. This happens regularly despite the best intentions of all involved. (And not only at the organizational level -- e.g., we all still rely on 'edit count' for so many things, despite persistent vocal attention to its weaknesses and subvertability as a metric since the start.) I think that the first version can be improved with a lot more buy-in from the rest of the movement :-) This is likely :) I've added your concerns to the wiki discussion about the report: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement-wide_Financial_Report (Also cc:ing the low-traffic treasurers mailing list. I believe some org treasurers who don't have time to follow all of Wikimedia-l nevertheless read that list.) SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hello Liam and Richard, Let me try to answer some of your questions. *Do you have an idea of how much work will be required by movement orgs for this?* *Very little actually: it is a matter of simply answering an email asking, for instance, out of your Administrative Costs listed in your most recent report, how much were your travel costs.* *There will not be further paperwork to be submitted. It is the fellows' job to make the final report, not the chapters or thematic organizations. Furthermore, we are working with the WMF Grantmaking department as they contribute their expertise and their already existing reports. Therefore, we won't be contacting the chapters until we've exhausted our current available resources. Again, I want to emphasize that we will not be asking for any additional paperwork to be submitted. * *I worry that your target of 20 January won't be met, as we don't have the resources to help revalidate your data at that point of our year. December is difficult, as the FDC figures are released then - which is when we need to construct our final budget for the next year. January/February is also difficult , as all our staff are already pre-booked working on our financial year end of January 31 - which is also an FDC quarter end - so there's a lot of work to be done!* *We completely understand how overwhelming work can be near the end of the year and the end of respective fiscal years. The date indicated is not a hard deadline, but rather a tentative date the fellows have set themselves as a group milestone; by no means is this date a drop-dead item. We fully appreciate the work our partner organizations conduct and we acknowledge the difference in abilities to respond to requests. Hopefully we are able to catch the chapters at the most convenient time possible over the next few months. Again, we will not reach out until we make certain that the data we intend to find is not already available. * *Has anyone contacted movement orgs already, perhaps a few months ago? * *No, movement organizations were not contacted about this project within the past few months.* *Will you need to talk to treasurers? If so, please let us know as far in advance as you can so we can book dates for meetings!* *At this time, there is no need to talk to the treasurers. If the there is a time, we will contact them as far ahead as possible. * *What happens if movement orgs do not have time to check your data? Will you go ahead with unvalidated data in your report, or will you be able to move your timeline to fit with ours?* *We are here to meet your schedule as best as we can. Given the six-month duration of the fellows time here at WMF, we hope to conclude this project before the end of March 2015 and to conclude the initial phase of consolidating the data earlier than that. However, we are flexible. Ideally, we would like to validate all the data we receive, but we understand that this may not be the case for every item. We will indicate line items that have not been validated in our final report, if need be. That said, we appreciate if you are able to help us make the most accurate final product possible. * *How much input will chapters have in the process? who will have the final say in the comparisons - presumably the WMF? * *Chapters are strongly encouraged to offer their input throughout the entire process. After all, this project concerns you! Chapters are encouraged to reach out directly via the project's meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report and the fellows' pages with their questions, comments, and suggestions. Once we have gathered as much information as possible, we will attempt to consolidate our findings into a single, movement-wide report. Garfield Byrd will monitor and determine the viability of the final product, but any product rendered will be the result of the participation of our partner organizations. If there are concerns about the quality of the data then it will be highlighted in the report. * *In response to MZMcBrIde, the user account 'WMF Finance Fellows' will not be used to make any edits on any of the Wikimedia projects. * *Thank you,* On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you Garfield for your quick reply - and with welcome news in it. I am heartened to see your clarification/confirmation that this project is specifically intending to re-use existing documentation and not to increase the red tape or compliance-requirements of chapters. Also, as mentioned in my first email, I would like to reiterate my support for the idea that (especially smaller/newer) chapters have a dedicated contact person. This will be very helpful for many. On the other note I raised, could you/anyone also address whether the chapters had prior-awareness of this new project's existence or planned creation before this email announcement? On Friday, 31 October 2014, Garfield Byrd gb...@wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Here's mine: Usuario:Wa17gs https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Wa17gs Walter Gomez Segura *Finance Fellow* *149 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA., 94105* www.wikimediafoundation.org wagseg...@wikimedia.org On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 6:19 PM, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote: Could you please also add the names of your normal (aka volunteer) accounts? :) Am 30.10.2014 00:16 schrieb Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's financial data more consistent, we rely on the data provided by the organizations. We believe that there is enough data available to make a new attempt on capturing the movement's finances as a whole. A meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired. And of course: This is all an experiment! If it does not work, we will try to apply a modified 'agile' process by iterating, repeating, and trying again based on the feedback we are getting. If this does not seem right, or if it appears we are missing something obvious, please let us know! Thank you, WMF Finance Fellows (User:WMF Finance Fellows) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WMF_Finance_Fellows ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hi Michael! This is a bit of a surprise, if I am honest! I applaud the idea but it has come out of the blue and I worry that this extra layer of reporting will increase overheads here - when our overheads are already under scrutiny. I have a few preliminary questions: - Do you have an idea of how much work will be required by movement orgs for this? I worry that your ideal target of 20 January won't be met, as we don't have the resources to help you revalidate your data at that point of our year. December is difficult, as the FDC figures are released then - which is when we need to construct our final budget for next year. January/February is also difficult, as all our staff are already pre-booked working on our financial year end at 31 January - which is also an FDC quarter end - so there's a lot of work to be done! - Has anyone contacted movement orgs already, perhaps a few months ago? If so, I think I've missed the communication - could you resend it to me? - Will you need to talk to treasurers? If so, please let us know as far in advance as you can so we can book dates for meetings! - What happens if movement orgs do not have time to check your data? Will you go ahead with unvalidated data in your report, or will you be able to move your timeline to fit in with ours? - How much input will chapters have in the process? Who will have the final say in the comparisons - presumably the WMF? All the best, Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* On 29 October 2014 23:15, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Hello WMF Finance Fellows and welcome to the wikimedia movement, I'm pleased to see this project and look forward to following your work. I left a comment/question of the talk page. Please move it to the main page if you think it is more appropriate. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement-wide_Financial_Report I'll look for the response on meta. Sydney Poore User:FloNight Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's financial data more consistent, we rely on the data provided by the organizations. We believe that there is enough data available to make a new attempt on capturing the movement's finances as a whole. A meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired. And of course: This is all an experiment! If it does not work, we will try to apply a modified 'agile' process by iterating, repeating, and trying again based on the feedback we are getting. If this does not seem right, or if it appears we are missing something obvious, please let us know! Thank you, WMF Finance Fellows (User:WMF Finance Fellows) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WMF_Finance_Fellows ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Liam: My apologies for the language you noted, it was not our intent to, even inadvertently, to degrade anyone. We fully appreciate the abilities of our community and I know from my meetings with members of our community how smart and engaged they are in a variety of issues impacting the Wikimedia movement. I want to clarify that these Fellows are not auditors. They will be working from data as presented by the movement entities. The project has been designed so that the fellows will be using existing data provided by movement entities and the Fellows will only be reaching out to movement entities with clarifying questions. So there should be no material increase in staff/volunteer time to provide information for this project. If this not the case, please let me know. Best regards, Garfield On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting development. Probably a very good idea for transparency and good use of the movement's money, and consistency of reporting to make things comparable is a great goal. I especially think that for smaller chapters there is lots of value in having a dedicated contact person! But I find the self-description of the Fellows as an elite group of global operatives[1] a bit degrading to the rest of us... I presume it's taken a fair while to recruit the team and scope the project too (I see one linkedin profile which says they've been working already for two months[3]). So, I wonder - did the Chapters who have been allocated to each of these new auditors[2] have any notice that this new process was being created before it was announced today - so they were able to make any other time-commitments without being surprised by a new layer of paperwork? Also, I presume that the increased amount of staff/volunteer time needed to comply with new paperwork will be offset by streamlining this with other WMF-compliance paperwork? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report#Who_We_Are [3] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/seyi-olukoya/59/b09/a7 wittylama.com Peace, love metadata -- wittylama.com Peace, love metadata ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Michael Guss wrote:s A meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired. This sounds like an interesting project. :-) WMF Finance Fellows (User:WMF Finance Fellows) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WMF_Finance_Fellows Meta-Wiki is reporting that user account 'WMF Finance Fellows' is not registered. It's fine to have a shared account exclusively for Special:EmailUser capability, but the account must not be used to edit the projects, of course. A group founded on the basis of increasing accountability project can't be above reproach, if you know what I mean. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Finance Fellows to develop first-ever movement-wide financial report and metrics
Could you please also add the names of your normal (aka volunteer) accounts? :) Am 30.10.2014 00:16 schrieb Michael Guss mg...@wikimedia.org: Hi folks, We are the Finance Fellows, a multicultural team consisting of 4 young professionals. We are happy to introduce a 6-month movement-wide project that focuses on the consistency of how we operate, which is explained further in this announcement. *But here's some information about us*: Arda [User:Melmas_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Melmas_(WMF) is from Turkey. He holds a BA in Economics. Lene [User:Lgillis_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lgillis_(WMF) is from Belgium. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics and a Master's degree in Business Communication. Seyi [User:Oolukoya_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Oolukoya_(WMF) is from Nigeria. She holds a Master's in International Business and a BSc in Economics. Walter [User:Wagsegura_(WMF)] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wagsegura_(WMF) is from Nicaragua. He holds a BA in Applied Economics. *About the project Movement-wide financial report* Driven by the Wikimedia Foundation's guiding principles of transparency and accountability, our goal is to gather data and develop systematic metrics in order to provide a better understanding of financial statements. The aim is to help make financial data and statements more consistent and comparable across all Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation, to the benefit of the whole movement. The idea of this project comes from the WMF Board of Trustee's Audit Committee and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. An initial quantitative analysis of Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Chapters_in_Numbers demonstrated at Wikimania 2013 by Michal Buczyński (User:Aegis Maelstrom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aegis_Maelstrom, highlighted the importance of meaningful, obtainable and unified data. The Finance Fellows have been formed by WMF to spearhead this project. The intention of this project is to enable Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations to benchmark activities and costs in a consistent way. We will begin by gathering comparable quantitative financial data about Wikimedia Chapters and Thematic Organizations. Our findings will later be released movement-wide, on Meta-Wiki. Please note that this is not an audit process. We are simply collecting the data and developing global metrics. The metric is an objective measurement that will enable data to be consistent, meaningful and comparable among the Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation. We will build on existing data sets and reach out to Chapters and Thematic Organizations if further information is required. After processing the gathered information, we will confirm the data with each organization. In the long run, we envision that this project could be replicated annually. In this attempt to enable Wikimedia Chapters, Thematic Organizations, and the Wikimedia Foundation to help make the movement's financial data more consistent, we rely on the data provided by the organizations. We believe that there is enough data available to make a new attempt on capturing the movement's finances as a whole. A meta page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement-wide_Financial_Report was created for the project, in order to make the information accessible to everyone and create a space for discussion and/or suggestions. We strongly encourage you to share with us what types of additional information is desired. And of course: This is all an experiment! If it does not work, we will try to apply a modified 'agile' process by iterating, repeating, and trying again based on the feedback we are getting. If this does not seem right, or if it appears we are missing something obvious, please let us know! Thank you, WMF Finance Fellows (User:WMF Finance Fellows) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WMF_Finance_Fellows ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
