My understanding is that nobody has suggested that if WM-UK were to give an unrestricted donation to this committee that it would supersede our current practices for offering non-UK grants, such as the grant for GLAMcamp in December.
As well as having little or no control over outcomes or (probably) how they are reported, this represents a move away from allowing our volunteers to assess the suitability of grants (with minimal staff support) to paying chapter and WMF staff to spend their time every week sitting on a funding committee. Though I have asked for an estimate of end to end costs and associated increase or saving on transaction costs the only answer received so far was "negligible" which leads me to suspect there is no plan for WMF or WM-DE staff to book or report on the time they spend every week dealing with the analysis of proposals against the WMF mission (presumably not against the WM-DE mission) or the associated reporting requirements needed for tax and governance purposes. Though I understand that 3 grants have been given, in addition to any reports by grantees, it is unclear at this point how these grants are openly reported by the PGC though presumably these reports will clarify how the assessment of proposals against the mission was achieved. My understanding is that as a newly conceived committee, the PGC has yet to publish a stable policy that we could access against, say, Charities Commission guidelines or judge as an effective or efficient use of our charitable funds. I remain unclear as to why the money WM-UK provides to the WMF requires an additional supplement beyond the amount that the WMF has earmarked for the PGC ($25,000) as it would seem more effective to increase our grant to the WMF with the exception that they would in turn increase their grant budget if we feel the money is better placed there rather than the complexity of going through this unproven process. Until the processes are stable and there is a track record of successful outcomes, donating money to a new committee of this type seems to introduce risk rather than providing any efficiency savings even though there are obvious benefits to chapter staff working in this way with WMF staff. I have raised some questions at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Participation> and I encourage anyone interested to read through the most recent questions and answers there and consider taking part in improving the proposed process. Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
