Talk:Wikimedia budget
2012-13
Tilman writes:
- The Wikimedia Foundation's 2012-13 Annual Plan has just been published, accompanied by a Q&A (2012-2013 Annual Plan Questions and Answers)
Comments and suggestions are welcome; some were begun in a wikimedia-l mailing list thread this week. –SJ talk 06:13, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Issues raised on Wikimedia-L mailing list:
- Total budget of $42.1 million US or (depending on page reviewed) $46 million US, seems high (Users Geni and Beria Lima)
- When adding together total income from previous year ($39.2 million), this is about an 18.2% increase in budget, small in comparison with previous years (User Tango/Tom Dalton)
- Increased budget tracks closely with strategic plan (User Philippe WMF)
- Where will the 9.9 million in revenue come from in Q4? (User Risker)
- Wikimania travel is $255,000 for board, staff, volunteers; previous year (2011-12) was $96,000. Interested in further breakdown, including scholarships. (User Aude)
- Engineering core positions appear to include those positions supporting non-core activity. (User Risker)
- Many elements of strategic plan are non-core, puts the strategic plan at risk. (User Risker)
- Concerns that no community discussion page had been set up in conjunction with the announcement. (Multiple users)
Cannot update data
- It should be noted that, until this section was added within the last 12 hours, neither this talk page nor the main page had been edited since 2009. There are no updates to any financial activities in the interim, and the main page is protected so that no updated information can be added by anyone other than a Meta administrator. I still believe that a separate page would have been more appropriate to discuss this year's annual plan. Risker (talk) 09:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
- It appears the protection was added quite a while ago, before page protections were logged. Nemo removed the protection earlier this morning, so all feel free to be bold and update the page. The Helpful One 15:53, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
FDC costs
Which budget does the FDC's costs come out of? There will be staff, travel and accommodation at face-to-face meetings, training and maybe a few other items. --Tango (talk) 15:18, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
COI with GAC budget
I see the GAC budget is going to be part of the WMF's FDC application. However, the GAC is managed by Anasuya, who is part of the FDC staff. Isn't that a massive conflict of interest? How can Anasuya impartially support the FDC in making decisions about whether people that report to her should get funding or not? --Tango (talk) 15:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Financial risks - one off donations
For a charitable movement Wikimedia is heavily dependent on one off donations, but that doesn't seem to be acknowledged as a risk, nor do I see a plan to reduce that. I realise that it takes time to build up more predictable longterm revenue streams, but I would suggest that the Foundation acknowledge this as a risk and set some targets for reducing that risk by raising enough by other means to fund the core services for the foreseeable future. WereSpielChequers (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Financial risks of globalisation
The plan seems to assume that much of the financial risk is with the four remaining payment processing chapters. But globalisation itself incurs risks, including that in some countries it isn't a local registered charity that is collecting the money. WereSpielChequers (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Exchange rates
Wikimedia moves quite a bit of money between different exchange rates, but I don't see exchange rate fluctuation on the risk list. there are ways to mitigate this, most obviously by keeping some donations in the donor country currency. But it should be acknowledged as a risk. I gather that some of the risk has been offloaded to chapters and other grant recipients outside the US. But a strategy of evaluating and paying all such grants in dollars has two downsides, if the dollar is strong the recipient gets more money than they actually asked for, if the dollar is weak then they get less money than was intended or may be necessary. Financially it makes the accountancy easier if everything is measured in dollars, but when currencies fluctuate it is a wasteful strategy. WereSpielChequers (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
- It doesn't seem to be spelt out in the FDC framework, but I think the conclusion from the discussions about currencies was that applicants should apply in their local currency and the WMF would take on the currency risk (since it is exposed to a large number of foreign currencies, there is some diversification of that risk - if a chapter takes on the risk, it has no diversification at all). The application form asks for the amount in both USD and local currency. --Tango (talk) 16:34, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
- Well if so I'm glad we got that concession, when I gave up on the FDC stuff things weren't looking very hopeful. But it does expose the WMF to exchange rate risks and it would be sensible to recognise this and make allowances for it in the plan. WereSpielChequers (talk) 17:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
- The currency risk only exists for the short time between the FDC making its recommendations and the grants getting paid (about 2 months). There is a risk, but it isn't particularly large. There will be money held in GBP, EUR and CHF by the fundraising chapters, which will hedge the risk quite a bit. It is certainly a risk that needs to be monitored, but I'm not sure it's one of the top risks the WMF is facing (there are a lot more risks that you could ever include in a summary plan like this one). --Tango (talk) 17:27, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
- Well if so I'm glad we got that concession, when I gave up on the FDC stuff things weren't looking very hopeful. But it does expose the WMF to exchange rate risks and it would be sensible to recognise this and make allowances for it in the plan. WereSpielChequers (talk) 17:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)