[Foundation-l] Statement to the Associated Press

Tue Mar 11 13:48:48 UTC 2008

Andrew Whitworth wrote:

> I personally would be fundamentally upset to learn that my 
> donation money, and the money from other donors, was being spent 
> on random dinners out.

Absolutely, and it would also become a very good media headline. 
Everybody loves a scandal about "random dinners" in a charity, 
<blink>while the children of Africa are starving!!!</blink> Can we 
get a burping Jimbo on the same picture with a starving child?

But this is a case when more information is hurting.  I don't mean 
that we shouldn't investigate possible corruption.  But we should 
keep things in a larger perspective: the amount of attention 
should be proportional to the size of the loss or problem.  This 
is where mass media so often fails, in favor of good headlines.

Just wait til we find out what the foundation office spends on 
paper clips.  (Swedish readers might remember "Gemutredningen".) 
If they got a different supplier, they might be able to save two 
donated dollars each month!  My two dollars!!!

Suppose that we spend $2000 to buy a server from IBM.  That might 
be good value for money.  But if IBM's management didn't spend so 
much on *their* "random dinners", perhaps we could have had that 
server for $1950. Now we have apparently wasted $50 of donated 
money for no good reason.

Luckily, however, since the price tag for servers doesn't come 
with a specificiation of how much went to "random dinners", we're 
never going to find out.  Less information for us saves us from 
being upset.  We might avoid IBM if they were using slave labour, 
but generally one doesn't buy servers based on management dinners.  
Instead the prudent organization bids for tenders from several 
manufacturers and picks the best offer, regardless of the methods 
and costs each manufacturer might have.

Similarly, the prudent donor should ask which free content charity 
produces the best result for donated money.  Could the Wikimedia 
Foundation have done better?  Are there any stars that shine 
brighter in the cyber sky?

-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se