Hi Thomas, and all who showed concern about Wikimedia Portugal's planned expenses.
I am one of the persons who calculated that budget, and thus I feel I should provide you with some information. First of all, I'd point out that none of us has any experience in nation-wide nonprofit organizations. We thus had no way to know what we would need to make it work, and chose to play safe. Obviously, we were aware that the value for meetings was fairly high, and we pointed that out in our proposal, as you can read in the page you linked: "We are (...) willing to reduce the frequency of the meetings if the total value is considered too high" And we indeed were advised to do so, when the grant was conceded: "The award was reduced from the requested USD $7,909 to encourage a smaller budget for travel." Let me assure you, we are as much as yourself concerned in not wasting the grant's money with "lunches for the members". We have plenty of planned activities (as you can see in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Portugal/Actividades) for which we didn't include a budget in our request, since it was for the start-up only. But we are very much willing to find ways to meet less and apply the money in these projects instead. We would love to receive advice on how we can make the chapter work (well) with people so spread across the country (almost all the involved people live in different cities), and since much of the money WMF has was volunteer-contributed, we will take into account the wishes of the community. If you feel we should meet less (how many times do you think are enough? let us know your thoughts on our mailing list: wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org), then we certainly will consider your advice. Thanks, Waldir On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com>wrote: > 2009/9/10 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com>: > > 2009/9/10 Pharos <pharosofalexand...@gmail.com>: > >> There are 21 accepted proposals listed on this page: > >> > >> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/Reporting_Guidance > > > > Ah, well found! I didn't think to check that page - the title doesn't > > suggest it would contain such info. > > I must say, I am amazed that this was approved: > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_PT/Start-up > > WMUK managed to get set up without paying for any meals and all > meetings have taken place in pubs or rooms we've got hold of for free. > Paying nearly $3,500 for that out of charitable donations is patently > ridiculous. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
