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 representatives both from the Foundation’s board and from across the Wikimedia movement. I currently serve as the Committee Chair. Continue reading →

After a long and public discussion period, the Board has passed resolutions on two important topics for our movement: fundraising and funds dissemination. Ting just emailed them around to a few lists, and below is the text.

Continue reading →

The Wikimedia Board just published a letter to the community following-up on our ongoing discussion around fundraising and funds dissemination. As the Wikimedia Foundation Board’s Treasurer, its Audit Committee Chair, and its Trustee most responsible for oversight of financial matters, I think it’s appropriate that I share some of my personal views which led me to support the letter.

This is a difficult, complicated issue. But, how our movement focuses volunteer time and donor dollars is incredibly important. To help form my views on the issue, I’ve read hundreds of pages on meta, closely followed the statements made by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Italia, Wikimedia UK, Amical Viquipèdia, Continue reading →

One idea we’ve had on the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee is to put in place a visitor program.  We think it could be a good way to drive additional transparency, and also to help share some useful practices with other movement organizations.

Our next meeting is scheduled for 14 February from 1:30-3:00 pacific time.  The primary agenda item is the review a draft of our annual public disclosure filing with U.S. tax authorities.  If that sort of thing interests you,  Continue reading →

Today, together, the Wikimedia community did a really powerful thing. We raised an incredible amount of awareness about an issue critical to achieving our vision.

More importantly, we demonstrated once again the power of our community model. The thousands of you who participated in the community RfC. The volunteer administrators who Continue reading →