[Foundation-l] An article to read

Mon Apr 14 00:36:44 UTC 2008

>> The way the WMF works, pretty much all the money goes on
>> administrative stuff - everything else is done by volunteers. You'd
>> have to decide what administrative stuff directly furthers the goals
>> of the foundation and what stuff just keeps the foundation going (the
>> hosting would probably fall into the former category, and is a very
>> large proportion of spending).
>>
>>     

Servers and bandwidth are clearly project expenses, while HQ salaries 
are typically not.

> You're right.  The Wikimedia Foundation is an unusual charity in that 
> almost all of its mission-related (project-related, program-related) 
> work is done by the volunteers. The staff essentially does whatever's 
> left over - core technical functions, legal support, keeping the books, 
> coordinating media and public relations activities, etc.
>
> Generally, what Dirk says is true - the smaller the percentage of a 
> charity's budget going to overhead, the leaner and more efficient the 
> charity is.  But in this regard, we're not comparable to other 
> charities, because our spending on overhead is completely dwarfed by the 
> massive amount of mission-driven work going on, that's not visible in 
> the financial records.
>   

Well, I dug out the WMF 2007 financial reports from the remote parts of 
my brain/hard drive (by the way they had been really hard to find, and I 
eventually had got them through TechCrunch). So its true, if the WMF 
were an old established charity, the numbers wouldn't be too great. Not 
sure this is a consequence of the head-over-heels growth mode or will 
remain like this.

It is not immediately apparent to me that the WMF is so much better in 
terms of volunteers than other leading non-profit organizations. This is 
not a complaint, just a sign that the WMF is headed towards being a 
great charity. Wouldn't MSF point to their significant volunteer 
contributions as well? As far as I can tell, no laurels to rest on, but 
rather inspiration to keep it up.

I would probably try to quantify those volunteer contributions 
nevertheless, even if they aren't part of the core financial statements. 
Not just for big donors, small fry donors (like myself) look at stuff 
like this as well. I donate to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), and I only 
switched from once-a-year-at-christmas to monthly giving when I saw them 
keeping up their numbers year after year.

Dirk

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