[Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

Sat Aug 6 11:41:41 UTC 2011

The more I read the Board's letter the more difficult I find it to
interpret. There's one reading on which it says only a few (albeit
important) things that aren't already in the 2011 Fundraising Agreements.
There is another reading in which it says that actually no chapters will be
participating in this Autumn's fundraiser, as actually none of them have hit
every single deadline from the 2010 agreement. (For the sake of balance -
the WMF also missed one of its own deadlines ;-) ) So thank you Phoebe for
your insight on the Board's thinking, but more insight would be good.

However there are four particular points I would mention:

1) *Transparency and accountability by chapters*. I wholeheartedly agree
that Chapters' performance in terms of reporting and accountability has not
been great on the whole. There also seem to be a number of chapters who
participated in the 2010 Fundraiser for whom it is very difficult to find
any indication of how much has been raised during 2011 or what the money has
been spent on. Simply in my role as a member of the community, this is
concerning, and I agree that the Foundation board needs to take this issue
seriously.

2) *New chapters and funds*.  I also agree that a small, new chapter has
better things to do than spend its time working out how to handle online
payments and hold donor data. There is in any case a threshold in the
Fundraising Agreement on how much a chapter can seek to raise if it is
taking part in the fundraiser for the first time -  $50,000 if I remember
rightly. To be honest the prospect of a $50,000 grant from the Foundation
for much less work than participating in the fundraiser would be attractive.
(Though of course this alternative grant system isn't actually set up, which
makes it difficult to examine it)

3) *Tax-deductibility.* There is a significant change in the Foundation
board's language between the Fundraising Agreement - which says chapters
must be tax-deductible non-profits "where applicable and obtainable" - and
the language in this letter. Some chapters operate in countries which have
no concept of tax-deductibility. Some operate in countries where it's
impossible to reconcile tax-deductibility with being a Chapter. I think it
would be a very serious mistake for the Foundation to unilaterally decide
that no chapter in one of these countries will ever participate in the
Fundraiser. If that is what the Foundation have decided then I think that is
going far beyond the action the Foundation needs to take to exercise its
duty of care towards donors. I also think that it would fundamentally alter
the relationship between the Foundation and the chapters, and not in a good
way.

4) *The value of donors.* The Foundation talks a lot about donor
stewardship, but stewardship goes far beyond accountability and
transparency. What we as a movement ought to be doing is building an ongoing
relationship with the people who are generous enough to give us money, and
sharing the Wikimedia vision with them. This means having the kind of donor
communication programme that almost any nonprofit can tell you about.
Currently I don't believe the Foundation tries to do this - it ought to -
but I think it is actually something which is much better done by chapters
where those chapters have the resources to do so.

The benefits of this kind of "active stewardship" are several...
- more people who "get" Wikimedia rather than just responding to a banner
they see on Wikipedia
- more recurring income for the movement not linked to the annual fundraiser
(all nonprofits love recurring income because it's consistent and reliable -
though the mechanics of actually giving recurring gifts are quite specific
to individual nations)
- outreach - when WMUK sent an email to our 2010 donors a month or two ago,
we got dozens of responses from people interested in getting involved (even
though we hadn't really asked!) - including one from a curator at a key
museum we were trying to get links to for our GLAM outreach programme.

So basically our donors are a massive and under-used resource for the
movement in both financial and non-financial terms. I get the impression
that some people think the only benefit of Chapters handling donor data is
that donors get tax receipts. That is definitely not the case and it if
that's the only thing we care about then that is a massive missed
opportunity for the movement.

Regards,

Chris Keating
User:The Land
Wikimedia UK Board member & fundraising lead