An uncharitable + personalized take, Andreas... But an important topic. That grantmaking line you found doesn't seem to include APGs; Indonesia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2020-2021_round_2/Wikimedia_Indonesia/Progress_report_form#Revenues> and CIS <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2020-2021_round_2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Progress_report_form#Revenues> would be another $500k.
My view: + Grants, exclusive of APGs, are mostly going outside of NA + Europe. – Few new organizations lately have reached the size / capacity of having regular APGs. This greatly limits what we can accomplish regionally. = The other limit on $ diffusion right now is a shortage of good ideas for how to use funding locally to advance the projects, and people to implement them. We can't fund communities that don't have funding bottlenecks, or that don't exist. Recent proposals <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Alliances_Fund/Proposals> are a mixed bag. + The new grants program is giving community members experience in evaluating + soliciting ideas, and increasing the supply of funds. Which starts the bootstrapping process. +10 – We're starting in a valley: total funds disseminated outside the foundation has been low for years, due in part to the WMF encouraging other orgs to limit growth. [Q for former-APG affiliates: how is this changing for you? how are you setting budget targets?] Outside grantmaking, more Foundation efforts seem to be focusing on underrepresented regions, and community members have been hired by WMF from those regions as liaisons and facilitators. We'll have to see if that is effective. (There are also negative side-effects from any framework where most funds go to salaries, and from engaging active multilingual community members in a way that obliges them to a central org. We need to watch out for these.) I'd like to see us develop a better movement-wide understanding of a few interrelated goals, before getting worked up about the specifics of current resource allocation: Five questions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sj/Design_chats/Funds_dissemination>: * . **Bootstrapping**: *How should we support + invest in regions w/ no current community? : *Subsidiarity*: How much of this work should be run by local UGs, hubs, WMF, other [UNRWA]? *⋮ **Diffusion**: *Where we have full capacity, what are healthy distributions of $, labor, focus? *᠅* *Tactics*: In equilibrium, do all orgs grow/shrink together? How do we prioritize across orgs? ⸭ *Peter paradox*: Under what conditions does paying people strengthen local community? We may have answers to most of these questions implicitly embedded in current processes. But I have not seen explicit answers or discussions in many years. SJ (apologies to anyone who feels individually called out above. except AK, who invited it :) On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 9:13 AM Andreas Kolbe <jayen...@gmail.com> wrote: > ---- > > “*More than 75% of the money we raise globally* goes to two things. One > is to *give money back to the volunteer community* so they can launch a > new language. Two is about *half of it goes to the infrastructure.* You > need to have databases and put it on the cloud and make sure it’s > reliable,” he said. Although a lot of the money is raised in the more > developed Western markets, *most of it is actually flowing into the > global south,* where the growth will come in languages and users. > > ---- > > This diverged sharply from my understanding of WMF finances. So I looked > at the records to try to fact-check these statements. > > I found the Foundation raised $163 million in the 2020/2021 financial > year.[1] But it actually only spent $112 million of it (69%).[1] If the WMF > kept 31% of its revenue to itself, it obviously can't have spent "more than > 75%" (i.e. over $120M) of the money it raised on anything. > > This is a trivial point. But I was even more astonished by the other > statement in the article, that most of the money raised "is actually > flowing into the global south". > > Raju was talking to an Indian audience. This article was timed to coincide > with the start of the Indian fundraiser – Indians are currently faced with > fundraising banners on Wikipedia as well as emails soliciting repeat > donations.[2] So I appreciate it is a good soundbite that might motivate > Indian citizens to reach for their purses and wallets. After all, few > people in India feel it is their job to send financial aid to the US, > right? > > But is this soundbite really true? > > To fact-check that claim, I looked at the official figures in the latest > (2020) WMF Form 990 tax return detailing WMF spending outside the US. > According to the Form 990 section "General Information on Activities > Outside the United States", spending on activities outside the US amounted > to a total of $20,076,181 in 2020.[3] This means well over 80% of WMF > expenditure was in the US. > > The Form 990 also provides a breakdown by global regions, detailing the > precise amounts the WMF spent in each region. Again, I found this paints a > very different picture to what the Indian public has been told in the > Indian Express. > > First I added up all the amounts (Program Services, p. 29, and > Grantmaking, pp. 30–31) that were spent in Europe and North America > (excluding the US). I arrived at a total of $14.8M – which means that 73.5% > of the total spending on non-US activities was in these regions of the > affluent north. > > This left only $5.3M, or about 3% of total WMF revenue in 2020/2021, for > the entire rest of the world, which also includes countries like Saudi > Arabia, Russia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, which are not usually included in > the Global South. The actual money flowing into the Global South is thus > even less than 3% – hardly "most" of the money raised. > > Raju mentioned the volunteers. I thought, let's leave Program Services > expenses (which presumably would include servers and caching centres > abroad) out of the equation and look at Grantmaking alone (pages 30 and 31 > of the Form 990). > > The Grantmaking total for activities outside the US given in the Form 990 > is $3,475,062. > > Almost exactly $1.2M (35%) of that went to Europe and North America > (excluding the US). > > So total grantmaking in the entire rest of the world outside Europe and > North America was $2.3M, or 1.4% of the money the WMF raised in 2020/2021. > > Again 1.4% is not "most of the money raised", by any stretch of the > imagination. And the Global South only accounts for a part of that 1.4%. > > Lastly, as Raju was speaking to the Indian public, I wanted to find out > how much money the WMF actually spent on grantmaking in India. The Form 990 > only gives grantmaking totals for "South Asia" – which along with India > includes other major countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan. > > These totals are $75,198 (grants and other assistance to 22 individuals, > certainly not rank-and-file Wikipedians, given the average amount) and > $3,339 (grants to organisations). This yields a total of $78,537 for all of > South Asia. > > I make that 0.048% of the WMF's 2020/2021 revenue. Only a part of that may > have been spent in India. > > Please verify these figures for yourselves; I have provided the sources > below. If I have made a mistake somewhere, please tell me. > > It occurred to me that perhaps some grantmaking figures in 2020 were > particularly low because of the Covid pandemic, which began in the spring > of that year. But Covid was a global pandemic affecting countries around > the world. So all countries would have been affected equally. And Covid was > not as serious in India in 2020 as it was in 2021. > > I also know the WMF increased its grantmaking budget for the current year. > But even if grants to South Asia were to increase a hundredfold compared to > 2020, they would still represent only 5% of WMF revenue. Such is the gap > between what is said in the Indian Express and the reality on the ground. > > Allow me to make an appeal to your conscience. > > The Wikipedia idea is to provide neutral and accurate information to the > public. I would say that Wikimedians – especially Indian Wikimedians – who > believe in that idea have a job to do here, because based on the above, > what the Indian public has been told in the Indian Express simply does not > match the reality. > > Look at it like a Wikipedia article. If you found an article making claims > so wildly at variance with published facts, would you let them stand? Or > would you at least start a discussion on the talk page, to try and find out > why there is such an apparent discrepancy? > > Let's have that discussion now, here and on social media. > > Best, > Andreas > > [1] > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf#page=5 > – see also > https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/ > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Indian_email_texts > [3] > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikimedia_Foundation_2020_Form_990.pdf#page=29 > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/OVT3MRNP6VELKPSJAMWB3SOCESKLOPX7/ > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
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