Wikimedia Foundation governance overview

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We’ve started a new public mailing list called treasurers@lists.wikimedia.org for discussing and sharing best practices in financial reporting and financial transparency across the Wikimedia movement. The primary intended membership is treasurers, audit committees, and finance staff of movement organizations, but the list is public and anyone interested in financial reporting and transparency is welcome. We’ve got about 15 chapters represented so far, and hope to have more.

One of the things we’re doing to kick things off is outline how each of our organizations is trying to address these issues. See below for a list email I did today with my perspectives on the Wikimedia Foundation’s governance from my position as its Treasurer.

If this kind of detailed and occasionally technical discussion is your kind of thing, please join us. You can subscribe at http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/treasurers.

To begin sharing ideas and best practices, let’s start threads on the governance/accountability/transparency practices at each of our organizations. I’ll go first with my views on the Wikimedia Foundation. A few others Continue reading →

Board letter on fundraising

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Last week in preparation for our Board meeting at Wikimania I did a post on fundraising, financial controls, and chapters which triggered a lot of really thoughtful discussion. We’ve now wrapped up our Board meeting and have spent much time discussing the topic both among the Board and also with many community members here in Haifa. Given how incredibly important this topic is, we decided as a Board to capture our thoughts in a letter to the community. It’s up on meta, our Board Secretary Phoebe just emailed to a few lists, and below is the text. I’m happy to talk about the issues raised either in person at Wikimania through Sunday or on meta or here in blog comments.
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Board report for May-June 2011

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Our new Board Secretary, Phoebe Ayers, is jumping right into her new role and both emailed and posted the first of a new series of regular board updates.  Text is pasted below:

Wikimedia Board of Trustees — activity report May-June 2011

Resolutions and votes

Controversial content

  • Controversial content resolution — this resolution was passed in May after a year-long process of discussion and research. It reaffirms the Board’s position on censorship, calls for continued community involvement in image review and asks for the creation of a personal image filter feature which would allow readers to not choose whether to view certain classes of images. Continue reading →

Fundraising, chapters, and movement priorities

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I’ve been getting ready for the board meeting and Wikimania and have been struggling with a particularly thorny issue and thought I would use a blog post to start a conversation I hope to continue in Haifa.

Many groups have discussed this issue over the past few years, including the Audit Committee (which I chair), our independent auditors KPMG, the Movement Roles group, the Chapters who have been working closely on the fundraising agreement with the Foundation and Barry Newstead’s development team, and the Board (e.g. see our resolution on the importance of transparency in use of donor funds). But progress has been difficult because this is a hard issue. Continue reading →

Call for volunteers: 2011-2012 Audit Committee

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As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation has an Audit Committee which represents the Board in oversight of financial and accounting issues, including planning, reporting, audits, and internal controls (see foundation wiki Audit Committee page for details).  The Committee serves for one year, from July through the late Spring when the Foundation files its annual tax return in the U.S.  This past year the committee included members from the broad community, from chapters, and from the Foundation’s Board (including me as Committee Chair). Continue reading →