Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[Ad Huikeshoven]

Hi Scot,

You wrote:

Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50%
> grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility
> with either of these funding sources.

[...]

> This was Sue's explanation.  I don't know if this is still the explicit
> thinking of the current board/ED, but IMO it's still an entirely reasonable
> rationale for pursuing grant funding, even if the grants come with more
> "strings attached" than a banner campaign.
>

You raise a valid question: how many sources of funding does the Wikimedia
Foundation need?
The Bridgespan Group is a consultancy firm specialized in non-profits. They
have been hired
in the past by the Wikimedia Foundtion, for example in the period of
strategy formation that
led to the 2012-2015 Wikimedia strategy.

The Bridgespan Group has done extensive research in funding models. One of
their
researches in this area has lead to a publication in Spring 2007 "How
Nonprofits Get Really Big." [1]
You might spell that publication word by word. At the bottom you find a
link.

One of the parts in that report is titled "The Myth of Diversification."
That title speaks for itself.
The finding of the Bridgespan Group is that ''most of the organizations
that have gotten really big [...]
did so by concentrating on one type of funding source."

The banner fundraising campaigns by the Wikimedia Foundation are a
perfectly mission
aligned funding model for a non-profit. Somebody else might view the
Wikimedia Foundation
funding model as pay-as-you-want. [2] Some readers do and most readers do
not donate a
couple of bucks. However, that "Some readers" amounts to several million
people who just love Wikipedia.

Please note that the Wikimedia Foundation was a "small" foundation back in
2007
when the Bridgespan Group conducted their research. The Wikimedia
Foundation was
not included in the list of 144 nonprofits, all founded after 1969, who
were earning at least $50 million
per year by 2003. Would the research be repeated today, the Wikimedia
Foundation would
end up in the top half of that list, and be a prime example of getting big
as a non profit
by concentrating on a single mission aligned funding source.

Regards,

Ad

[1] http://ssir.org/images/articles/2007SP_feature_fosterfine.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_what_you_want
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[Sam Klein]

Thanks Scott, this is important context.  I think Wikimedia gets rather too
little of its funding from other foundations, through cooperations with
like-minded organizations, and from national/international initiatives to
educate and to preserve culture & knowledge.


Scott writes:

> MZMcBride wrote:
>
> > Why ask for and take the money? The Wikimedia Foundation can raise
> > $250,000 in a few days (maybe hours) by placing ads on a few large
> > Wikipedias soliciting donations. Why take on a restricted grant, with its
> > necessary reporting overhead and other administrative costs?
>
>
> Responding just to this small portion of MZMcBride's email:
>
> Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50%
> grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility
> with either of these funding sources.  There is/was the continuing concern
> that folks accessing wikimedia content through non-traditional sources
> (google snippets, mobile apps, etc) will not see or respond to a banner
> campaign, so that sooner or later one of our banner campaigns will come up
> very short.  Further, a reliance on banners for funding creates perverse
> incentives that discourage us from fully embracing potential users of our
> content who may bypass the "official" clients and their banner ads.
>

It also makes for a very inward-focused and narrow sort of strategy: "How
can we make our few banner projects work better / attract more people"
rather than "how can we make knowledge more accessible to everyone in the
world, including by supporting and enhancing other excellent projects".

If you start with funders and organizations whose missions are similar to
Wikimedia's, working with them on a grant is a way of making them part of
the community: a successful engagement results in them learning more about
the impact and value of our mission, and supporting or encouraging more
work along those lines with their other grantees.  It also builds a
relationship and trust within the circle of similarly-minded organizations
(in this example, grantors; but this applies equally well to other sorts of
partners), which can be drawn on in the future if there were a real crisis
or urgent need.

Mission-aligned donors & grantors & infrastructure-providers & archivists
are all part of our community, in addition to having collections or money
or services to contribute.  Which is an extra reason to let them contribute
that is easiest for them, as long as the overhead required to accept that
contribution is not too large.

I'm sure small donors will continue to be the dominant source of funding
for a long time, perhaps for as long as it exists.  But a bit more
diversity in funding sources can improve consistency, predictability, and
security of support.

SJ
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[Wikimedia-l] Future IdeaLab Campaigns results

[Chris Schilling]

Hey folks,

(Cross-posted to a number of mailing lists)

Last December, I sent out an invitation to
[[m:Grants:IdeaLab/Future_IdeaLab_Campaigns|help determine future ideaLab
campaigns]] by submitting and voting on different possible topics.  I'm
happy to announce the results of your participation (<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Future_IdeaLab_Campaigns/Results>)
and encourage you to review them and our next steps for implementing those
campaigns this year.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time to
participate, submit, and comment on campaign topics.

With great thanks,

Jethro

-- 
Chris "Jethro" Schilling
I JethroBT (WMF) 
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[Benjamin Lees]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 3:19 PM, C. Scott Ananian  wrote:
> Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50%
> grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility
> with either of these funding sources.

If that was the goal, it does not seem to have been reached.  Even in
the 2008-2009 financial year, when the budget was $6 million and the
foundation received a million-dollar grant from the Stanton
Foundation, restricted grants did not reach 20% of the budget.  Since
then, fundraising has grown enormously, so that the Knight Foundation
grant comes to less than 1% of what fundraising produces.  Are we sure
that it won't consume more than 1% of our organizational attention?

In any event, isn't this the whole point of having an endowment?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[Chris Keating]

>
>
> You raise a valid question: how many sources of funding does the Wikimedia
> Foundation need?
> The Bridgespan Group is a consultancy firm specialized in non-profits. They
> have been hired
> in the past by the Wikimedia Foundtion, for example in the period of
> strategy formation that
> led to the 2012-2015 Wikimedia strategy.



I do recall the Bridgespan Group analysis being shared on this list before
when we've discussed fundraising and funding models (as evidence for  why
heavy reliance on the annual fundraiser was a good thing)

I am really really unsure about the conclusions of that report, for several
reasons.  Some of those reasons are quite dull and methodological (e.g. it
is an ex post sample of post-1970 foundations that are now very successful,
rather than an ex ante sample of charities employing different means and
then examining what growth they end up with; or the arbitrary exclusion of
universities and hospitals; or the fact the analysis only encompasses the
USA; or the fact that the many "unknown"s and "none"s in the sample seem to
get ignored in the analysis entirely.).

However my most important concern is that 73% of the "high growth"
charities in the sample have a dominant income source of "government" or
"service fees" (typically, from the government). That is to say, 73% of
these high-growth charities achieved their high growth by delivering
services the government wanted them to.

If you are a charity that finds its mission is completely aligned with
delivering government programmes - great! Go for it. Get better and better
at it and your organisation will grow, possibly really quickly.

If you are not in that position, then I really fail to see how this
research applies to you. The Wikimedia movement definitely doesn't benefit
from it.

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Future IdeaLab Campaigns results

[Anthony Cole]

Congratulations, Jethro. Nice work.

Anthony Cole


On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 5:05 AM, Chris Schilling 
wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> (Cross-posted to a number of mailing lists)
>
> Last December, I sent out an invitation to
> [[m:Grants:IdeaLab/Future_IdeaLab_Campaigns|help determine future ideaLab
> campaigns]] by submitting and voting on different possible topics.  I'm
> happy to announce the results of your participation (<
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Future_IdeaLab_Campaigns/Results
> >)
> and encourage you to review them and our next steps for implementing those
> campaigns this year.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time to
> participate, submit, and comment on campaign topics.
>
> With great thanks,
>
> Jethro
>
> --
> Chris "Jethro" Schilling
> I JethroBT (WMF) 
> Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[Lodewijk]

Hi Ad,

That is of course one side of the medal. And yes, lets be grateful for the
donations we receive day in, day out from our donors.

But 'getting big' is maybe not the most important thing in the world.
Working on our mission, is. And part of that, is security. The WMF is not
in this world to play the odds, but rather to ensure that knowledge is
freed, and stays free - most specifically by securing Wikipedia's continued
availability (at least, that is what our deck of cards looks like now).

Fully focussing on one sigle stream of money may indeed allow you to get
more out of it. But the question here is rather, how to you tackle the
situation when that stream dries up? And for that question, diversification
is actually key.

There is something called the 'law of the diminishing returns' - which I
also believe to hold true for Wikimedia. It's not like every increase in
our budgets equally increases our mission value. When I'd have to guess,
I'd say that we're beyond our 'optimal size' (budget wise) already.

Especially the 'small donor' stream is rather sensitive towards tides. As
long as Wikipedia is very popular and visible, we'll be doing well. But
when we have a few more screwups at the WMF (sorry, but I can't really find
a better phrase for the past few months, communication wise at least),
being a credible organisation towards donors might proove harder than was
the case so far.

Thát is why we should diversify. Not to grow bigger, but to be somewhat
safe.

Best,
Lodewijk

On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 9:05 PM, Ad Huikeshoven  wrote:

> Hi Scot,
>
> You wrote:
>
> Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50%
> > grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility
> > with either of these funding sources.
>
> [...]
>
> > This was Sue's explanation.  I don't know if this is still the explicit
> > thinking of the current board/ED, but IMO it's still an entirely
> reasonable
> > rationale for pursuing grant funding, even if the grants come with more
> > "strings attached" than a banner campaign.
> >
>
> You raise a valid question: how many sources of funding does the Wikimedia
> Foundation need?
> The Bridgespan Group is a consultancy firm specialized in non-profits. They
> have been hired
> in the past by the Wikimedia Foundtion, for example in the period of
> strategy formation that
> led to the 2012-2015 Wikimedia strategy.
>
> The Bridgespan Group has done extensive research in funding models. One of
> their
> researches in this area has lead to a publication in Spring 2007 "How
> Nonprofits Get Really Big." [1]
> You might spell that publication word by word. At the bottom you find a
> link.
>
> One of the parts in that report is titled "The Myth of Diversification."
> That title speaks for itself.
> The finding of the Bridgespan Group is that ''most of the organizations
> that have gotten really big [...]
> did so by concentrating on one type of funding source."
>
> The banner fundraising campaigns by the Wikimedia Foundation are a
> perfectly mission
> aligned funding model for a non-profit. Somebody else might view the
> Wikimedia Foundation
> funding model as pay-as-you-want. [2] Some readers do and most readers do
> not donate a
> couple of bucks. However, that "Some readers" amounts to several million
> people who just love Wikipedia.
>
> Please note that the Wikimedia Foundation was a "small" foundation back in
> 2007
> when the Bridgespan Group conducted their research. The Wikimedia
> Foundation was
> not included in the list of 144 nonprofits, all founded after 1969, who
> were earning at least $50 million
> per year by 2003. Would the research be repeated today, the Wikimedia
> Foundation would
> end up in the top half of that list, and be a prime example of getting big
> as a non profit
> by concentrating on a single mission aligned funding source.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ad
>
> [1] http://ssir.org/images/articles/2007SP_feature_fosterfine.pdf
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_what_you_want
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why take grants? (was: Can we see the Knight grant application and grant offer?)

[rupert THURNER]

sam, i am not so convinced that what you write is true in too many
countries, namely that you think wikimedia gets too little of its funding
from other foundations. but i think it is fair enough that WMF tries to get
foundations funding on its home turf which it knows best. there are many US
based foundations like the knight foundation with principles like "Knight
primarily funds U.S.-based organizations." what i personally do not
appreciate is that WMF tries to get others into such a model as well, which
turns out to be a spiral of death. WMF e.g. tries to make chapters look for
other financial sources. i am aware of three effects:

first, it generates pressure within WMCH for getting other income. this
pressure leads to generating income on the shoulders of volunteers. on one
hand they are charged. when i edit i should join WMCH and pay membership
fee. i should visit conferences and pay for it. on the other hand persons
should then acquire money from foundations,  or the government.  often in
europe getting money from sources close to the government is attached with
"you get 50% of the money, 50% you pay yourself" disturbing the budget of a
small organisation completely. a very "un-wikipedia" task, at the end of
the day not very funny for a typical wikipedia person. wikipedia typically
deals with crowd-sourcing people and money. the result is: less volunteers.

second, wikipedia is perceived as competition. in switzerland, and in
europe in general, NGOs, clubs, foundations depend much more on individual
donors money and government. wikipedia has the most prominent website
amongst all of them. if somebody from wikipedia asks the government or asks
foundations for money it for sure triggers a "competion feeling".
like-minded organisations want to have money as well. and like-minded
organisations usually have people behind. and them feeling competition is
causing a no-partnership, a rivalry. the result is: less volunteers.

third, there is no connection between money spent in switzerland and money
given in switzerland. there is no direct "i gave it to you and you are
thankful" feeling. in many countries it i do not even known how much money
was given for the wikimedia cause. the result is: less people talking about
it, means less persons being close to the cause, and less money given. i
calculate it simple: an average person knows 400 persons. if we have 1000
volunteers, a maximum of 400'000 persons would, in an ideal world, know
about the money flow.

to sum it up - i do think that maintaining the volunteer base is the most
difficult task. it is much more difficult then getting money. this
discussion shows to me only that many persons in our movement still believe
otherwise, that scratching out additional cents from every resource we can
find is task number one. unfortunately without considering collateral
damage, and motivation of volunteers: as a volunteer i want to have fun,
and i do not want to pay (too much) for my hobby.

best,
rupert

On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 9:18 PM, Sam Klein  wrote:

> Thanks Scott, this is important context.  I think Wikimedia gets rather too
> little of its funding from other foundations, through cooperations with
> like-minded organizations, and from national/international initiatives to
> educate and to preserve culture & knowledge.
>
>
> Scott writes:
>
> > MZMcBride wrote:
> >
> > > Why ask for and take the money? The Wikimedia Foundation can raise
> > > $250,000 in a few days (maybe hours) by placing ads on a few large
> > > Wikipedias soliciting donations. Why take on a restricted grant, with
> its
> > > necessary reporting overhead and other administrative costs?
> >
> >
> > Responding just to this small portion of MZMcBride's email:
> >
> > Sue explained to me that the goal was to have WMF's budget be roughly 50%
> > grants and 50% user contributions to guard against unexpected fragility
> > with either of these funding sources.  There is/was the continuing
> concern
> > that folks accessing wikimedia content through non-traditional sources
> > (google snippets, mobile apps, etc) will not see or respond to a banner
> > campaign, so that sooner or later one of our banner campaigns will come
> up
> > very short.  Further, a reliance on banners for funding creates perverse
> > incentives that discourage us from fully embracing potential users of our
> > content who may bypass the "official" clients and their banner ads.
> >
>
> It also makes for a very inward-focused and narrow sort of strategy: "How
> can we make our few banner projects work better / attract more people"
> rather than "how can we make knowledge more accessible to everyone in the
> world, including by supporting and enhancing other excellent projects".
>
> If you start with funders and organizations whose missions are similar to
> Wikimedia's, working with them on a grant is a way of making them part of
> the community: a successful engagement results in them learning more about
> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Italia recognized as OpenStreetMap chapter

[Laurentius]

Il giorno ven, 29/01/2016 alle 00.21 +0100, Lodewijk ha scritto:
> Congratulations Lorenzo, congratulations Wikimedia Italia. It was
> indeed a long process, and I recall that this question came up - was
> it more than five years ago?

I don't even remember when we first talked about his, but it might go as
back as in 2009, when the first OSMit (the Italian "State of the map" -
the national OpenStreetMap conference) was held (with the support of
Wikimedia Italia).

Lorenzo



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 2015 Harassment Survey - Results Report

[Chris McKenna]

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016, Trillium Corsage wrote:


30.01.2016, 14:03, "Maggie Dennis" :


The pictures may not be the individuals at all; they may be pornographic
pictures of others that are misattributed. And sometimes the attribution is
not to a real name, but to their usernames. In all cases, the intent seems
to be to humiliate and hurt the target. Sometimes the goal seems to be to
drive them away.


That was the story of Lightbreather, a English Wiipedia editor that self-identified as female. She ran afoul of some other editor that (IIRC, I'm confident this is basically correct) that labeled some images on a porn site as being her (they were labeled "Lightbreather"). The outcome (GET THIS!) was that she (Lightbreather!) was formally banned by Arbcom for complaining about it at Wikipedia. They said she was "outing" the culprit by calling attention to his off-wiki activities. 


Horrendous I know and tends to shows that Arbcom and the rest of Enwiki 
administrative structure genuinely have a problem with women, which they are 
often alleged to (i.e. in Gamergate and all that).

Trillium Corsage


Unfortunately you memory is not quite correct regarding Lightbreather.
She was not banned for complaining about being harassed, she was banned 
for repeated and persistent breaches of behavioural policies on Wikipedia, 
repeated breaches of topic bans related to gun control, ownership of 
articles, revert and edit warring, casting aspersions, causing disruption 
to make a point and, partictularly, outing attempting to out another 
editor (on and off Wikipedia) - despite being explicitly warned (more 
than once) that she must not do that.


The full decision can be read at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lightbreather#Final_decision


She was, very unfortunately and completely unacceptably, harassed 
off-wiki by two individuals during the case (so far as I am aware, 
independently). One of those individuals was banned as soon as we 
(arbcom) were made aware of the harassment as there was a clear and direct 
link to a Wikipedia user.


There was not a direct link between the other harasser and any Wikipedia 
user, and so ArbCom, the English Wikipedia functionaries team and the 
Foundation spent a lot of time and effort investigating who the harasser 
was. This investigation produced an indirect link (with iirc at least 
four intermediate steps) to a specific Wikipedia editor, but there was no 
consensus that the link was strong enough to take action - although there 
was universal agreement that the perpertrator should be banned if 
identified.


Basically there were three possibilities - 1. the Wikipedia editor and the 
harasser were the same person. 2. the Wikipedia editor was being framed. 
3. the harassment was linked to the Wikipedia editor entirely 
coincidentally. Only in the case of 1 would action against the Wikipedia 
editor be justified, but the evidence was not strong enough to be sure 
this was the case. However bad the harassment is, it is important to 
remember that alleged perpretrators are still innocent until proven 
otherwise.


After the case (1-2 months later I think) more evidence was found that 
bypassed the weakest link in the previous chain. After more investigation 
it was found that this link, while still indirect, was sufficient to 
connect the harassment to the Wikipedia editor and they were swiftly 
banned.


Far from punishing Lightbreather for complaining about being harassed, 
Arbcom, Functionaries and the Foundation all offered her as much support 
as they were able to deal with the effects of the harassment, to identify 
her harasser and to take what real-world action she could against that 
person. Unfortunately, as the law in most jurisdictions is years or even 
decades behind the times when it comes to harassment, there is all too 
often very little that can be done through legal channels. In 
Lightbreather's case, I believe that Lightbreather, her harasser, the WMF 
and the external website on which she was harassed are all based in 
different jurisdictions which only makes things even more complicated.


It thus really does not suprise me that the survey respondents report the 
effectiveness of legal action so poorly.


Chris



Chris McKenna

cmcke...@sucs.org
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna


The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery


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