One idea we've had on the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee is to put in place a
visitor program. We think it could be a good way to drive additional transparency, and
also to help share some useful practices with other movement organizations. Below are
some initial thoughts on parameters for a program.
Our next meeting is scheduled for 14 February from 1:30-3:00 pacific time. The primary
agenda item is the review a draft of our annual public disclosure filing with U.S. tax
authorities. If that sort of thing interests you, and you are available at that time, and
you are comfortable with the parameters outlined below, please let me know via email at
stu<at>wikimedia.orgia.org.
Thanks.
-s
==============================
Stuart West
Wikimedia Foundation Board member
and Audit Committee Chair
stu<at>wikimedia.org
Selection of visitors
- The committee chair will drive process of soliciting visitors for each meeting, likely
thru treasurers list, internal-l, blog post.
- We will limit to one visitor per meeting (we often have complex and confidential
discussions so smaller group discussion are likely to be more valuable)
- To give many people the chance to participate, individuals can only "visit"
one meeting
- Preference will go to visitors with an audit committee or treasurer role in movement
organizations.
- We will also try to ensure rotation among geographies/languages/etc.
Conditions for participation
- Visitors must agree to keep any sensitive content confidential, and to keep confidential
any materials that are distributed prior to publication
- Visitors would be allowed to participate in most discussion, though the Chair reserves
right to ask visitors to take some questions/conversations offline
- Visitors would not participate in executive session (when just the committee members
meet, without management, the auditors, etc.)
- Visitors who have a financial/auditing background must be careful, because if they show
too much interest they will be sought as future audit committee members.
This is an experiment that we'll try for a couple meetings, and all of these are
subject to change/improvement.