On 3/22/2014 2:04 PM, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
Michael Snow <wikipe...@frontier.com> wrote:
As such, it seems clear that the donor in question is in the
best position to evaluate whether the funds achieved their
intended purpose. We don't really have good information in
this case to do that for them, and imposing our ideas of
what should be done with someone else's money is just
wishful thinking.
At the same time, it is clear that there are legitimate
concerns with this project from the perspective of good
editing practices and conflicts of interest. This is a good
argument that it would have been better for the Wikimedia
Foundation not to participate in the transaction, and gives
reason to be leery of such pass-through arrangements in
general. And in terms of organizational philosophy, it's
also why the foundation focuses on fundraising from the
general public rather than restricted gifts from individual
donors. Looking at this from an audit committee perspective,
the information so far suggests that the foundation could
more carefully screen such gifts for alignment with our
values, but at this point I haven't seen indications that
this rises to the level of misuse of donor funds.
Eh, that is not the point in my mind. If A wants to assist
his relative B's work, and, "for administrative reasons",
they want to engage WMF as a middle man to make it appear as
if there is no direct financial flow, then it's not for A to
evaluate whether the funds "achieved their intended pur-
pose".
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent
other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we
can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it
should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
Wikimedia Foundation actually done that, it would be highly improper.
Depriving A of the ability to direct the use of the funds may vaguely
feel like a just consequence for acting with impure motives, but we do
not have the right to enforce such a result.
The correct answer is much more likely to be a set of two possibilities.
Either more work should have gone into ensuring alignment with our
goals, or the foundation should have declined to get involved. The
former is what Liam and others have tried to emphasize, and would
require having conversations along the lines of, "These are the kinds of
things Wikipedians-in-Residence are expected to focus on, are you
comfortable with your money being directed to those types of
activities?" The latter option, meanwhile, is always an acceptable
course for us to take if it's not clear that we have a mutual
understanding with the donor about how to spend the money.
Organizations that distribute funds according to the deposi-
tors' wishes are called banks and they have to ensure their
compliance with relevant regulations.
That's a very simplistic formulation which ignores the wide variety of
organizations and professions that may need to handle funds belonging to
other parties. Trustees, lawyers, and agents of various kinds do this
all the time without needing to be banks, although certainly they
typically use bank accounts as part of the process. Nonprofit
organizations effectively do this when they accept restricted gifts. For
many nonprofits, private foundations in particular, this is basically
what they do with all the money that comes in the door.
Compliance with the relevant regulations, meanwhile, is precisely the
point. If the Wikimedia Foundation accepts such a donation, the rules
require it to be distributed according to the terms set by the donor.
Which again is why the fundraising emphasis is on general, unrestricted
donations.
WMF should make it
very clear that it doesn't engage in any fishy transactions.
No disagreement there. It's not clear if any of the staff involved were
aware of the relevant facts at the time or understood their
implications, but if the real motivation for the arrangement was to
avoid disclosure or scrutiny of a related-party transaction on the part
of either the Stanton Foundation or the Belfer Center, it suggests that
the Wikimedia Foundation should have declined to participate.
--Michael Snow
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