[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game with rules.

Sun Aug 28 16:09:28 UTC 2005

> ==WMF in 5 years==

> *Board and management
The board has at least 7 members. One of them is Jimbo, 2 are 
appointed by the pre-existing board,  2 are elected by the projects
community, 2 are elected by the chapters. None of them are paid.

> *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
A full office with the following positions, all of them paid (those
are in no particular order, **means those people work under the one
above *)
*chief executive officer
**sales manager (selling services to for profit companies)
**secretaries to answer the phone and deal with daily stuff
*grants manager
*fundraising and sponsor officer
*chief financial officer
**accountant
*chief technical officer
**developpers and technical team 
*philantropic activities and lobbying officer
*press/PR officer
**outside press agency (just to write the press releases, translate
them, send them out etc. not to talk to the press)
*chapter coordinator
*legal officer
**outside legal company (lawyer firm, à la Ally Mc Beal)
*translation coordinator
**outside translation company

The point in having external companies is simple, if they're not good,
we change, and we've got a good chance that those will work with WMF
for little money, since WMF will be so big and known.

(for roles, see more below)

> *Budget
I don't know how much the budget is, but it's huge, and twice a year
WMF issues a budget update (past expenses, previsional budget for next
half year). The past expenses budget is very detailled (every single
cable is accounted for, or almost), the previsional leaves room for
unexpected things.
The budget consists of an overall wmf budget and chapter budgets,
those are coordinated towards the greater goal of sustaining the
projects. There's one *overall buget* and sub-budgets for specific
projects (not Wikimedia projects, more like "Hardware project" or
"Print project"...)

> *Fundraising scheme

2 fundraising drives a year aimed at individuals.  Each of these
fundraising drives is based on specific budget needs, possibly the
little projects described above.

The rest of the money (and the bigger part of it) comes from grants
and big sponsors, and from selling services.

Fundraising is closely coordinated with chapters.

> *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
The philantropic activities/lobbying officer acts with
governments/organisations both to make sure content is available (see
content below) and stays free, and to make sure it reaches the right
people. I see this as one of the main things to develop to reach WMF's
goal of "make it available to the greater numbers". In the long run,
we will not just be sustaining our projects, but many other projects
designed to bring our content to the greater numbers.

> *Projects
Projects live their own life, the foundation is here to make sure no
legal, technical etc. threats endanger them.

> *Content objectives
The WMF will then be strong enough, and have enough political power
and weight to ensure the collaboration of world wide organisations and
governements to give content to the projects. Talking to the national
libraries, international organisations (ESA, UNESCO, EU etc.) to make
their content available, maybe buy content to make it free, in short,
make sure that content that should be free is free, and content that
is already free stays free.

> *Software objectives
I have no clue, but basically, the developping team makes sure the
software scales and the projects can continue growing.

> *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
the WMF acts as an umbrella organisation for all chapters. Major deals
with international companies and institutions are made by the WMF and
are brought to the local level through the chapters. Chapters take
care of local deals with local institutions and local companies.
Information flows both ways.

> *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
Press and PR will be a large part of how the rest of the staff/team is
seen and what image the Foundation and the Wikimedia projects give to
the outside world. Partnerships are chosen so they can help the WMF
reach a larger audience, both in readers and sponsors. I imagine
advertising for fundraising drives in major newspapers, grand press
conferences etc.

> *Other (anything we did not think of)
Well, we did not think of it, so I don't know :-).

Delphine
-- 
~notafish