User:Sj/Design chats/Funds dissemination

Reminder: This is a wiki! Edit and refactor at will.
Problem
Our budget and dissemination supply is growing while our mechanisms for evaluation, deduplication, alignment, and facilitation (of supported projects) has been fragmenting.
Current discussions
Last FDC report; missing exit interview of past FDC members; Council discussions.
Banner message review on en:wp. Uses of endowment across contexts. regional grant hubs on meta.

Ideas

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Kinds of funding flows + dissemination we currently engage in:

  1. The WMF runs the major giving campaign each year.
    • Most of this funds the WMF itself. Its annual and multi-year plans briefly had community review under the FDC, which I found useful (when I was on the board), helped inform the planning of others, and did not in any way limit the Foundation's work. Since then, no substantive review.
    • 10% of this goes to the endowment. [data fuzzy as of 2020]
    • <10% of this funds large chapters.
    • 2% goes to other grants.
  2. The endowment distributes some grants & has some staff (~2% of total revenue?)
  3. Large chapters also raise independent funds, <5% of the total, mainly WMDE. [hard to find consolidated data]
  4. We have some [very] limited in-kind contributions.
    • Major standing content initiatives via GLAMs (Internet Archive, ...)
  5. WMF supports some coalitions + parts of the ecosystem
    • External grants (esp in regions underrepresented in our project communities)
    • Big Open collabs on free knowledge, countering disinformation, ?
    • Tidelift? Check our contribs there; Luis came through WM

Challenges + questions

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Five questions to answer as a movement to understand how we're doing:

 . In locales with little community or current capacity, resource sharing and capacity building need to bootstrap one another. What are preferred roadmaps for prioritizing + investing in community, language, knowledge coverage?
 : For central initiatives to support underrepresented communities: how much of such work should be coordinated through hubs? how much directly via WMF, other global/thematic orgs, or other large established partners [e.g. UNRWA]?
 ⋮ As regional groups build capacity / once we have ample capacity in a region, how should funds ideally be distributed, for which programs? What's a healthy equilibrium state of our investment of funds raised into different sorts of initiatives; and which are most effective and robust when decentralized? What % of banner fundraising should go to regional + local orgs for further allocation? What is a healthy balance of funding staff / outreach / hardware / education / scholarships + awards / other?
 ᠅ Global tactics: once we reach an equilibrium, should all orgs grow/shrink together with fundraising or are there better ways to think about where we want more short- and long-term institutional capacity? What should WMBE's budget really be?
 ⸭ How should we think about hiring community members as staff liaisons + facilitators + translators: is this 'funding the local community'? is it (at some %) a way to build aligned orgs and communications, but coming at the cost of community-internal health? How does this strengthen and weaken regional development? [examples here from past support in India as well]


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