[Foundation-l] Chapters

Wed Aug 10 23:42:46 UTC 2011

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 7:22 PM,  <Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I don't care what people spoke of, nor of what they desire, nor what their agenda is. I never supposed that people were conspiring to fail.  I care what effect the actions people are proposing will result in.  I am quite confident that the result of funding chapters though a WMF grant program pushes them towards being franchises.  I might be wrong about this, as I said. But please share the underlying concepts that lead you to conclude that "these changes should have no impact on that at all", so that I might be convinced as well. Your good intentions, which I did not question, are irrelevant.
>
> Perhaps I did not clarify a particular point very well in my first email. Donations pay for bandwidth, servers, etc. The WMF has no idea, and is doing nothing to develop a reliable accounting, on how effectively these donations are being used.  WMF can only report some numbers as to the quanity of use in different areas, but no one @ WMF could tell me what is going on the Albanian Wikipedia.  And if by some chance they could it would be an anomaly. An evaluation of the effectiveness of program work cannot be considered part of the near-term agenda. As for the rest I encourage you to exercise your moral duty by helping the chapters fulfill the reporting requirements, implement the financial controls, and operate transparently. You have been through this all before.  You were the chairman of the board when WMF was struggling with all of these items, so why not use your experience directing WMF through being out of compliance with such things to mentor those chapter which are struggling?
>
> BirgitteSB

Isn't that exactly what they are doing? It would have been better to
institute higher expectations for a year from now instead of several
months, but setting relatively clear expectations and offering
assistance (while not taking the drastic step of cutting off funding
completely) is exactly what the Foundation is doing. Your arguments
seem predicated on the perception that the Foundation is cutting off
chapters completely, or moving in that direction, but I see no
evidence for that.  Since you don't appear to be against the concepts
of accountability or appropriate financial controls, what would you
prefer the Foundation do beyond offering aid, bridge funding and a
template for organization to chapters who need such assistance?

Nathan