Finance meeting 2012/etherpad finmeet12

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
NOTE: this page captured the output from individual working groups, and
does not reflect a consensus on these definitions.

==Common terminology==

===Payment processing===
Any inflow of money coming through Wikimedia projects

* Handling donations coming from Wikimedia projects through the chapters
infrastructure.[technical thing] Which entity recieves the money when you
click on Jimmy's face. Not including processing the money from outside
sources (government grants etc).
* Money raised exclusively through Wikimedia projects
* A subset of fundraising.
* Payment  processing, in a context of fundraising within the Wikimedia
movement, is the act of receiving money as part of a transaction with a
donor that came in through any of the Wikimedia Foundation operated
websites for project editions.

===Payment processing chapter===
Chapter that collects and processes donations made exclusively through
Wikimedia websites

===Centralization===
Implicit meaning: Centralization by WMF of actions that would have
otherwise been done by chapters or other entities.

==Decentralization==
Implicit meaning: Things that can be done by the WMF but could be done by
other organizations

===Charity===
* Formal recognition of the organization's statutes

===Dissemination===

Sharing money with partners in accordance with our goals

Could be:
** The process of distributing the money raised on the projects to all the
entities in the movement (chapters, organizations) -- this might include
individual volunteers as well
** The term has the connotation that it is money coming from the WMF to
someone else.
** Alternative definition: process of distributing money to
programs/activities
** Sharing (movement) of the collected funds around the movement
* Sharing money within the movement... but what is the movement?


===Entitlement===
The automatic right to do something or have something because of what or
who you are or what you do.

It could be
1/ Payment processors are not entitled for the money they process
2/ No chapter is entitled to process payments

2 dimensions :
          1/ Wikimedia projects, because there's no fundraising in your
country doesn't means you're not entitled to money.  Conversely, you're
not automatically entitled to (any) money raised in your country.
          2/ Donors, we as a non-profit organisation,  are not clearly
communicating the fact some of the money donated in country X is going to
support work in country Y, nor that money donated on Wikipedia also goes
to support other Wikimedia projects (e.g.  Commons), or off-wiki activity
(e.g. outreach).

===Fiduciary responsibility===
* Ensure money is well spent in order to protect an organisation

===Fundraising===
* Every possible way of raising money, including external
grants/governements grants/online/offline fundraising/membership fees,
etc. ...
* A process to reach out to supporters and get supporters to give us money.

===Fundraising chapters===
* The meaning that we use within Wikimedia is: specifically chapters
collecting donations through the Wikimedia projects (payment processing)
* Chapters that collect money in any way possible excluding payment
processing.
* Chapters that collect funds/money in any way possible (legally of
course). A fundraising chapter may or may not do payment processing.

===Fundraising process===
* Raising funds both online and offline.
* The way to raise funds, both online (through the project websites) and
offline (otherwise). It is important that the donor can make an informed
donation, and is aware what these donations are used for. This challenge
is greater for online fundraising than for offline fundraising.

===Grants===
* A grant is an amount of money from one organisation to another or a
group  of people or individuals. Restricted grants are used for specific
programs, unrestricted could be used for anything as long as its use
follows the goals of the movement
* Money given from one organization to other organizations or entities,
with clear rules for how to apply for that money, what i
* Transferring money from one entity to another, with a clear process for
application and evaluation.  It should be clear who can apply. There is a
distinction here between restricted grants (which can be used for any
purpose as long as it falls within the goals of the movement) and
unrestricted grants that can only be used for purposes specified in the
application.

===Movement===
* Includes everyone within the projects and around the projects, including
the donors

===Movement and organizations===
* organizations: include WMF + chapters + partners organizationss.
Side question: who decides what organizations are in this group ?
* structure: organization + wikimedia committee (audit, comcom, langcom,
chapcom etc. )+ wikimedia projects projects
* mouvement: organizations + structure + wikimedians + donors + readers
* beyond; as in the open knowledge mouvement

(sets where each line include the following lines)
- Movement (open knowledge movement)
    - Wikimedia movement
      - Wikimedia structure
        - Wikimedia organizations

===Volunteers =    Disagreement on this one.
          If a volunteers wants to set the framework to payment process he
should be able to
          Payment processing must not be handled solely by volunteers

===Responsibilities (financial)===
* It's about handling money responsible wherever it comes from. There must
be processes to handle larger amounts of money

===Responsibilities (reputation)===
* Whenever the reputation of wikipedia is opening doors for us we're
responsible of its reputation

===Results & success===
* We don't know what is successful and what is not. But this is not a bad
thing right now, but we have to come with the right criteria to measure
it. It's better to measure it than not.

===Tax deductibility===
* The ability of tax-paying donors to deduct the donated amount from their
income for the purpose of income taxes (or corporate taxes for companies).
* Money that could be deducted by donors/taxpayers (deducted from what ?)

===Accountability===
* Organizations within our movement are accountable to many stakeholders,
but for the  present discussion, the most important ones are
accountability to donors and accountability to each other. It is about
following through what you say you're going to do, and about meeting
expectations of the  parties that you're accountable to.
* You can be accountable to many shareholders, but when speaking about
accountability in this meeting it's regarding donors and partners.
* Accountability is actually achieving things that donors/partners are
expecting you'd do.


===Transparency===
* Readable, accessible data and reports
* Being transparent to donors and partners. Giving information about what
you are doing.
* Translatable, analyzable, accessible (data report) - (a simple pdf
document is consequently not transparent) Should be accompanied by a
glossary of terms
** Suggestion: write a financial manual




= Saturday =

== Questions about accountabilty ==
How do we hold each other accountable?
How do we put enough structure around it?
Who will hold people accountable?
What levels are "we" accountable to?
How far does accountable go?
What’s the consequences of accountability?
What standarts do we put behind accountability?
What are the benefits and costs about accountability?
How do we balance policying and trust?