Le printemps s'est acoquiné avec l'hiver et à eux deux ont créé une nouvelle saison. Lumière de printemps et chaleur d'hiver. Il fait moins quelque chose mais le soleil brûle les yeux par le biais du vert tendre des feuilles nouvelles.

Aujourd'hui j'ai rêvé que je refaisais le monde.

Dans un an il ne restera absolument rien de ces bleus qui ornent l'un l'oreille de ma fille (un bleu sur l'oreille, une prouesse, fait par une balançoire) et l'autre le front de mon fils (un bel oeuf, il est bien tombé, le sol était dur). Rien que les photos que j'ai prise pour la postérité et ces quelques mots (moins de cent) qui rappellent que l'humain est fragile.

Stu West, treasurer and vice-chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, published an interesting post about "Fundraising, chapters, and movement priorities", where he asks questions. Sebastian Moleski gives a very thoughtful and rational answer based on the idea of subsidiarity (Subsidiarity as a fundamental principle), one which I subscribe to.

There are however a few comments that come to mind while reading both posts, which I will try to bring to light here. To try and keep some clarity, I will structure this around Stu's questions. Note for those too lazy to read all the other posts (although you really should), we're talking about Wikimedia, and Wikimedia chapters (the national associations that foster free knowledge and support Wikimedia projects).

The infamous 50%: Where do we really need them?

Stu says

The issue is whether our approach to distributing funds to chapters should change along with all the other things that have changed over the past five years. Here are a few key questions I’m asking myself: Is it right that 50% of rich country donations stay in those rich countries?

Sebastian argues (with a few calculations at the top of his head) that the actual amount of donations that stay in the "rich countries" is much more than 50% of the overall money received (which, incidentally, I agree with).

But this conversation right here is a bit awkward, because it seems to me we are mixing apples and oranges. Let's try and remember where those infamous 50% come from. Actually, we don't really know where they come from, but they are the backbone of the fundraising agreement between Chapters and Foundation and have been for a few years. I'll pass on the details, but here is how it works: if 100€ are donated to a chapter, 50€ go to the Foundation, 50€ stay with the chapter. So the latter 50€ are the 50% which Stu says stay in "rich countries".

Well, since this 50% rule only applies to money raised through the chapters, what we're really talking about here are $2.15 million (50% of $4.3 million, which is the amount raised by the chapters), which, indeed do stay in "rich countries". Sebastian points out that if you actually look at the whole (donations to the Wikimedia Foundation included), much more than just 50% of the donations to Wikimedia actually stay in "rich countries". What I genuinely don't understand here, is why and how that would be wrong.

Actual figures are clear, Wikimedia spends most of its money in "rich countries", but if we're going to go that route, the amount that stays in rich countries due to chapters is actually only 7 or 8% of the total (the 2.15 million I mentioned above) 50% of 15% of the total amount of donations received by Wikimedia worldwide. Is that really insane? I personally don't think so. Also, I don't see anytime soon where the Foundation is going to spend 50% or even more than 50% of its revenue in the "Global South". It will, and should, as per the strategic plan, increase its investment there, but whether or when that amount will ever reach 50%+ of the total donations is, at least for now, and until the real need and impact are measured (as suggested by Sebastian), unlikely and/or unknown.

Now for the real question, which Sebastian hints at:

The emphasis on the Global South just started last year and there’s been, so far, no evaluation of how much impact Foundation spending in the area has actually had. We simply don’t know how much money needs to be spent on the Global South in total, or even within the coming year, to achieve the goals set out in the strategy. But if we don’t know that, how are we to decide whether 50% is enough?

How much money do we, as a movement, actually need to invest in the Global South? Stu seems to regret that money is staying in "rich countries" instead of going to the Global South,^[1] but it is not clear to me what Wikimedia's investment in the Global South actually needs to be.

Whatever it needs to be, however, the next question is: are we actually short on money to invest? Is the money that stays "in rich countries" through chapters, missing anywhere else? And if that's the case, could it be an option to ask those chapters in rich countries to actually direct some money from their own programs to invest (or support the investments made by the Wikimedia Foundation) in the Global South? I have a hard time imagining that if the money is sorely needed and the programs make sense, a chapter would not consider this option.

Establish solid movement-wide financial controls

Stu asks:

How do we establish solid movement-wide financial controls to protect donor funds?

Sebastian's answer is one I would subscribe to. He points out:

My approach to „how to establish solid movement-wide financial controls“ would be to start conversations between Foundation and chapters both on a set of global minimum standards and a solid and independent reporting/enforcement structure.

The minimum standards are a must, and have been discussed in various places, not least within the development of the Wikimedia Charter started by the Movement Roles project. While the charter probably has a wider scope than just financial, it could actually contain the criteria for financial control needed to ensure our donors' money is used well.

Every time the subject comes back on the table, I can't help thinking about the International Non-Governmental Organisations Accountability Charter, which in my opinion is an excellent basis as to what we could be looking at for Wikimedia. I also started, in the frame of my work in the Chapters Committee, developing a set of chapter assessment criteria that could be used as measurement points somewhere along the line. In any case, I do believe, like Sebastian, that the standards need to be far reaching within Wikimedia, and that all Wikimedia organisations should be held up to them.

Who is ultimately responsible for stewarding donors’ contributions?

Actually, I find this to be the most interesting question of all. I find it interesting that in the past say 4 or 5 years, the question of "Shouldn't the Foundation be the one responsible to ensure transparency, financial control, and actually, complete control?" still is out there. It may be that I am old and remember a time where there was Wikipedia, and a very weak (not to say inexistant) Foundation. Because that's what history says. The Foundation was built to support Wikipedia, as were the Chapters. Wikipedia is not a product (in the generated sense) of the Foundation, nor is it a product of any Wikimedia organisation. As a matter of fact, it was there before all organisations. What I don't understand, and this is a genuine "not understand", is why in all of these conversations, I always have the impression that many Foundation affiliated people, be they staff of board, are under the impression that the money belongs to the Foundation. Does it? If yes, why?

I won't hide that for me, the elephant in the room is that the Wikimedia Foundation today acts both as an international coordinating body and a chapter. Seeing that the only existing chapter in the US is not allowed to fundraise, this makes the Foundation the national entity in the United States, and hence, a chapter by default, if not by design. Which to some extent skews the equation.

I am a strong believer that the money belongs to the projects, and that if an organisation is best placed to steward donations, it is indeed the Foundation, but not the Foundation as it exists. A truly international coordinating body would not actively fundraise in one country or another, since, if we agree with the principle of subsidiarity, a "local" organisation is best placed to do that. It might (and actually should) act as a fundraising recipient in countries where there is no organisation to apply the principle of subsidiarity, but would let local organisations fundraise where they can do it best.

I'll join Sebastian here to say that we (all Wikimedia organisations) are all responsible for stewarding donors' contributions. In a constellation where the Wikimedia Foundation is not a US chapter, but more something like a "Wikimedia International", it could then more easily steward donations and redistribute them appropriately, where needed. Each chapter (US included) would have a duty to finance operations and programs, and do so by giving X (where X could be 50%, 80% or 20% or whatever, depending on designed programs and needs) of the donations originating in their country to Wikimedia International. A truly international coordinating body would also have the necessary political power to develop a binding development strategy, which all entities in Wikimedia would follow. Whether the existing Wikimedia Foundation has that is yet to be confirmed.

I am convinced that having "Wikimedia international" in the US is a good thing for what we're doing (legal frame for hosting providers being one of the strongest points), and also convinced that the chapters should never argue about giving money to keep the projects up and advance the overall mission. But as long as the Foundation is effectively a chapter, I can understand why we're hitting the same wall again and again. After all, color me a French chauvinist, but why should the US rule the world of free knowledge and decide what's best for us all? And here, I am refering to returning intercultural problems in how to fundraise (you just don't fundraise in Germany, the UK, the Philippines, the US or India the same way), how to work on messaging (be it fundraising or overall presentation of who we are and what we are doing), how to develop organisations (should every chapter have an office? To do what?) etc. If, indeed, subsidiarity is king, then "Wikimedia International" should be empowered to make the high level strategical decisions, which local organisations would then have a duty to implement on a local level, and to fund where necessary on a global level (investments in the Global South, for example).

And what I still don't get, is that many other international organisations fundraise on a local level, see for example the WWF which claims on its international page: You can also donate to your local WWF office: they can do more with your donation! , or SOS Children's Villages which states Please select the country you live in from the list below in order to get tax advantages which could help you to give even more support to help children in need with your online donation. or again Amnesty which sends you to the local website to donate if there is one. Why couldn't we?

As a sidenote: I understand, and actually share, the concerns about newly formed chapters coming into way too much money in their first years, and this definitely is an attempt at putting together a set of guidelines which will prevent failure and ensure continuity in how chapters develop. But this is not solved by simply saying "All the money must go in one place". And since this post is already way too long, it'll do for another one.

More to read

I'll edit this section to point out posts or comments that I find interesting about this conversation

• Phoebe's conversation appeal: Chapters, fundraising, and “the movement”
• Florence's take on Stu's questions: Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Chapters, Fundraising ... giving less to get more

So here I am, looking for this blogpost I am positive I wrote one day, and I can't find it. I've looked, really, on both this blog and the other one. But nope, it's not there. Strange. So I guess I'll have to write it. To be fair, I brush upon the topic in this post.

But this Scale Theory of mine is not exactly an intercultural theory per se, it's more of a communication thing, which I developped a long time ago, way before I even thought I'd ever work in trying to understand how people communicate. Anyway. This is a theory about giving (and taking, as I think both are intrinsically linked and can't work without each other, but that could be the topic for another blogpost) and about how giving and taking are highly dependant on language. Not so much language as in French or German (although actual language issues may come into play) but rather language in a "thing I lug around with me when I try to interact with people" kind of way. Something like your expectations, your intent, the meaning you put behind words etc.

To understand the idea, you have to put yourself in a state where you are giving something. This something can be a physical thing (a book, a bunch of flowers, whatever), a hug, or even a word of appreciation. Done that? Good. Now imagine that the "effort" (for lack of a better word) it takes you to give that thing is measured against a scale, your scale. In order to make things easier, we'll decide that this scale of yours has the inch (in) as a unit and that the tool your use to measure it is a 5in ruler. When you give, what you give will be measured against this ruler, and for you, giving 5in is more "important" than giving 1in. The "importance" can be measured by many different values that all converge into this 1 to 5in scale. Values can be, in no particular order: how much that thing has cost you, how difficult it was for you to give it, how complicated it was for you to express it, how often you usually give something like this etc. All of this results in your final measurement.

Now say you give a book. This is a book that is out of print, so really hard to find, and you've loved it a lot because it tells a lot about who you are and what you think. So when you give it to someone (we'll call that someone "deserving-person"), you decide that on your scale, this act of giving is worth a 4. 4 inches on your inner ruler. 4in is a rather big thing on a scale of 5, right? So here you go, giving that book to deserving-person, all happy about yourself and how great a gift you're giving them. And for some reason, deserving-person looks at the book and goes: Oh, thanks. (you know, with this little undertone that goes "eh, you shouldn't have, and means it litteraly), and that's it. Quite a turn off, right?

So why was deserving-person not quite as excited as you when you gave your gift? Well, my take is the following. While your ruler is expressed in inches, their ruler might be expressed in centimeters. So while your ruler is 5in (approximately 10cm), their ruler is 10 cm long. If you put both rulers side to side, they'd be virtually the same length. What changes is the scaling. So what happens? Deserving-person might have seen the 4, and not gone further. They measured that 4 against their ruler, and it came out to mean 4cm. Not much on a scale of 10. It might be they don't like books, or have three copies of that one, or don't understand why you would offer them a book. Whatever. In the end, the problem lies not so much in what you've given, but in what the other percieves they're getting. And if they stop at the number without looking at the unit, they might get disappointed, because your scaling and theirs are different. Makes sense?

The theory behind this is that we'll take what's given to us and more often than not judge the gift against our personal ruler, without trying to put things in perspective. Your friend hardly ever hugs you? Bummer, you're quite the hugging type and hug them all the time. But then, do they hug anyone else? Ever? Often you'll realise that if you do put things in persepctive, and for a minute put yourself in the other's shoes, you might understand how difficult it was for them to give whatever it was they were giving and feel honored, grateful, happy that they gave precisely this to you. The value of the gift should be measured against their ruler, not yours. It's a damn hard thing to do, but trying it, you're in for really great discoveries. At least, that's what I found.

Depuis quelques semaines (mois ?) maintenant, la plume me démange. La plume, la vraie. Il y a vingt ans, j'aurais pris mon stylo-Waterman-à-l'encre-bleu-noir et j'aurais écrit une lettre sans queue ni tête à celle-qui-se-reconnaîtra pour lui dire le soleil du printemps qui s'incruste, mes pensées du jour et mes délires de la nuit.

Il y a vingt ans, cependant, je n'aurais pu dire la fatigue liés aux pleurs incessants de mon enfant malade, ou la peur, celle qui tire des larmes, d'être une mauvaise mère parce que je ne sais pas calmer mon enfant qui, ayant fait l'impasse de la sieste, hurle de colère et de fatigue. Il y a vingt ans, je n'étais pas mère.

Mais là n'est pas mon propos, si propos il y a. J'ai des envies de mots. Des envies de retrouver ce moment magique où d'une pichenette on fait tomber le premier mot qui entraîne, en réaction en chaîne, le poème, la lettre, la prose, la nouvelle et qui sait... le roman. Ce flot simple, évident, plein de heurts, d'obstacles et de secousses mais dont le seul but, tel un ruisseau de montagne se jouant des courbes de niveau, est d'arriver à la mer, par les méandres des rivières et des fleuves.

J'ai coutume de dire que la lecture est du temps volé. Du temps que l'on n'a pas mais que l'on prend sur tout le reste. Écrire, raconter, bleu-noir sur page blanche, est aussi du temps volé. Mais c'est beaucoup de temps volé. On peut lire à la sauvette, entre la poire et le fromage, dans le bus ou la salle d'attente ou juste avant de s'endormir. Quelques lignes, quelques pages. Écrire, en revanche, demande (me demande) du calme. La plume bleu-noir veut son lot de cigarettes, de musique parfois, de flamme vacillante d'une bougie qui menace de s'éteindre à chaque coup de vent. L'écriture ne supporte pas d'être pressée, de regarder sa montre en se disant qu'il ne lui reste qu'une heure, une minute, une seconde.

Alors je tape. Ici, en passant, rarement, trop rarement. Et j'ai mal au clavier, car il lui manque la rature, la larme qui dissout l'encre et fait d'un "e" un nuage. J'ai la tête trop pleine et ne sais plus prendre le temps, ce temps volé.

Wikipedia turned 10 about a month ago. For me, the adventure is about five and a half years old. I started editing Wikipedia in October 2004. I remember how I found Wikipedia, it was through the Firefox Crew Picks at the time, a bundle of links to cool open source/free websites included in the Firefox browser, which was then in its infancy. I remember why I contributed the first time, I found that there was no article about Greta Garbo on the French Wikipedia, which I thought was like "wow, this is an encyclopedia and there's no article about Greta Garbo? That can't be a good encyclopedia." What I don't remember, however, is how I found the edit button. I just found it. I registered right away, and started translating the Greta Garbo article into French from the English article. I had never looked at Wikipedia before, and I don't remember it taking me more than 5 minutes to actually get into the editing part of thing. It was, somehow, rather natural.

From my first edit, everything went very fast. I started editing like crazy, spending nights improving articles, translating a lot, correcting spelling mistakes, fighting vandalism. Very quickly, I ended up in the wikipedia-fr chatroom on IRC, asking here and there about how to edit, how to organize, basically how to go about being part of this adventure. I had no clue about Wikipedia being free content, and frankly, I didn't care. It was fun, and most importantly, it was full of cool humans I could interact with from my little Parisian appartment.

A few weeks into Wikipedia, I got to talk to "Anthere" (Florence Devouard), who was on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. She asked me what I did for a living, and when I answered "event manager", she said "great! we're looking to organize an international conference, and we have no clue where to start, you're the right person for that". So two weeks into Wikipedia, I was brought into the "organisation", introduced to Jimmy Wales, and asked to help with the organisation of the first Wikimania (the name came later). What was but a virtual adventure became pretty quickly a human adventure. I kept on meeting people, at Fosdem first, then at various international and local meetings. The translation of a virtual world into a real-life world was quite a natural thing to me, as I had been a long-time chatter in other channels and had met a bunch of people on the internet, who had quickly become real life friends through meetings across the globe.

The more I got involved into organizing Wikimania, the less I edited. Parallel to the organisation of Wikimania, I followed the founding of the French chapter, and got more and more involved in the organisational part of things. I also got to understand more about open source and free content. I was very active on Wikimedia Commons at its beginning, as I saw in it probably the greatest achievement of the Wikimedia world. I still think that Wikimedia Commons has a tremendous potential, that is held up by the very thing it is built on, namely the "wiki" part of it. But that is for another debate.

The first Wikimania came and went. I met even more people, and edited even less, but got involved more and more in the organisational development. The Foundation, chapters, all of these things that made the whole virtual part of free knowledge less virtual, were the things that kept me there. And are the things that keep me here today. To me, Wikipedia, and even further, Wikimedia, is primarily a human adventure. That so many people around the world share the same ideal of bringing knowledge to everyone, and work together on making it happen, is the most important thing about Wikimedia. I am dedicated to the mission, but most importantly, I am dedicated to the people, because without the people, there is no wiki, no knowledge and no collaboration. I might not be the greatest contributor in the projects, but I am so conceited as to hope that my work (as staff, as a professional and of course, as a volunteer) has helped the whole Wikimedia ideal come a tiny bit forward.

I am extremely grateful to have been part of this adventure for the past 5 and some years and hope to be part of it for years to come. And I want to thank everyone who is making this adventure possible, because without them, well, you know... Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects would not have become the resource that they are today.

(This post was in the works, and got finished thanks to the prompt of Dieci anni di sapere (Ten Years of Knowledge) where it was translated into Italian.)

To this day, there are around 30 Wikimedia Chapters. Wikimedia Chapters, for those who don't know, are national organisations which purpose is to support the Wikimedia Projects. At this point in time, they are organized along national territories. The oldest Wikimedia Chapter, Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany), of which I am a board member at the time of writing, exists since 2004. It has now an office and around 12 employees. In the constellation of Wikimedia Chapters, it is the only one with such a strong presence of staff at all. Other chapters have hired people, but no other chapter, as far as I know, has more than 3 permanent employees.

I have been observing the development of Wikimedia Chapters for a while now, and I have been thinking a lot about what the best path for professionalization (read: hiring people and setting up an office) might be. I must say that I have no exact solution to the question, but here are three ideas I've come across, and the advantages/drawbacks I see associated with them.

Let me start with a simple question that bears answering before we get into specifics:

What do chapters do?

Chapters are usually non-profits established in a given country, whose general goal is to support free knowledge and/through the Wikimedia Projects (Wikipedia et al.). Their activities vary very much country to country, but here is a list of what a chapter may do:

• fundraising (not all chapters are in a position to do fundraising, but those who are usually offer tax-deductibility and participate one way or the other in the Wikimedia Fundraiser)
• real-life events: chapters may support community meetings, or organize conferences on topics related to free knowledge for example
• outreach: chapters support community members doing presentations about Wikimedia projects in all kinds of settings, they pilot programs to acquire new editors on the Wikimedia projects (students, elderly people...), they explain Wikipedia to children, teachers, librarians, companies, you name it.
• partnerships with local institutions: chapters work hand in hand with national/regional institutions, governements, museums, like-minded organisations etc. to either broaden access to free knowledge,

These, in no particular order, are the four main focus of Wikimedia Chapters. They certainly are not exhaustive, (one could add lobbying, support quality in the Wikimedia projects, technical development of tools to better the Wikimedia projects etc.), but they are, in my opinion, the main activities that may warrant sooner or later the need for staff and an office.

All of those, in the early life of a chapter, are taken care of by volunteers. All Wikimedia chapters to this day are member organisations, and have a board elected by a General Assembly of sorts. The details of how this works are country specific, but on the whole, the existing structures are rather homogenous.

When does a chapter need to professionalize?

Huge question, as a matter of fact, since this will as always vary with how a chapter evolves, what kind of activities it fosters (often driven by what kind of members it has), what kind of financial means it has etc. To cut a long story short, my assessment would be that a chapter needs to professionalize when the load of work is too heavy to be taken care of by volunteers (who, after all, only have a haphazard - if sometimes important - amount of time). More explicitely, I would say that a chapter should professionalize when the balance between doing fun stuff or boring stuff for chapter activities tips in the direction of the boring/stressful. In short, when administrative, accounting, organizing et al. becomes so important that as a volunteer, you feel you are lsoing the connection to whatever ideal/fun stuff brought you here in the first place (in many cases within Wikimedia, this will be contributing to the projects, but it can also be "meeting people", or "organizing cool events", or "challenging your brain", whatever). So first question to ask yourself as a chapter: which direction does the fun/boring-stressful balance tip? Mind you, I am convinced that for everything fun, there must be some boring/stressful, it's part of life, but the balance should stay...well, balanced. So let's say a chapter has decided that there is stuff to be done which the volunteers can't do anymore. How are they going to tackle the professionalizing thing?

Where do we start professionalizing?

Good question. I don't think there is one answer, of course, since there are too many things to be taken into account which could favor one way over another. But in the course of Wikimedia organisational development as I have witnessed it, I end up with three different directions a Wikimedia Chapter could take. And a fourth one which would be, don't professionalize at all (don't hire anyone, don't get an office etc.), which might be the topic of another post. But let's start with the prerequisites.

Prerequisite to professionalisation

Well, that one is an easy answer of sorts.

• First, money. Because hiring someone means that you have to pay them. And to pay them you need money. In the case of Wikimedia chapters, this money might come from incoming donations, grants (from the Wikimedia Foundation or other organisations) or any other legal way of getting money. Without money, forget about hiring anyone.
• Second. A clear list of minimum tasks that you expect your employee to carry forward. This ties in with the following point. Without clearly defining a basic task-list of what your employee should be doing, it's going to be hard to even find anyone.
• Third, a willing body of volunteers who will "manage". Now, managing is a broad subject. But if a chapter is going to have employees, there needs to be some kind of managing body (it can be a person alone) which is going to tell the employee what they should be doing. Mind you, noone should prevent the employees from coming up with initiatives as to what they might be doing, but you need a sense of direction.

Once you have those, there are in my opinion three possible directions a chapter could go on the way to professionalisation, these are defined by the person they might first hire. And I'll detail them in another post, because this one is just too long already.

Ils sont deux, ou dix, ou peut-être même qu'ils sont cent et je suis seule. Ils ont des mots qui les relient. Ils n'ont pas oublié comment on écrit inattendu et n'ont pas besoin de dictionnaire. Ou s'ils en ont besoin, ce n'est pas qu'ils ont oublié, mais parce qu'ils n'ont jamais su. Il paraîtrait que l'orthographe, c'est comme nager, on sait ou on sait pas. Enfin, c'est ce que j'ai décidé. Pendant longtemps, sur les bancs de l'école, qui d'ailleurs étaient des chaises, je corrigeais les fautes de mes camarades de classe au nez et à la barbe de Madame J. (vraie, la barbe) lors des dictées en cours de français. Et aujourd'hui, je fais des fautes ridicules que je ne vois plus.

Ici, les phrases sont à l'envers et les mots tellement longs qu'ils font un peu peur. Je me rends compte que je dis les choses au moins deux fois. Une fois dans me tête pour mettre les mots dans le bon ordre. Je joue dans ma tête avec les mots comme ma fille joue avec une pièce de puzzle et essaie de combler les trous. Sauf qu'au contraire d'elle, je n'ai personne à qui demander d'un air innocent si "ça rentre", comme elle le fait tout en sachant pertinemment qu'elle a forcé et que donc, non, ça ne rentre pas.

Ils sont cent, ou dix, ou peut-être deux. Ils ont des vies plus ou moins longues et troublées, des histoires sordides que d'autres ne leur envient pas ou au contraire des histoires magnifiques de couleurs et de vent dans les cheveux et de sourires dont tous sont jaloux. Je suis seule et j'écoute Anne qui chante, "que tu sois l'une ou l'autre, souvent la marche est haute, pour trouver le bonheur". Je ne suis ni l'une, ni l'autre, je suis moi et là tout de suite, alors que le train avance de tunnel en verts paysages à deux-cent quarante-huit kilomètres à l'heure, j'ai envie de pleurer sans raison. Peut-être aussi parce qu'Anne raconte l'histoire de Lazare et Cécile et que de toutes façons, cette chanson m'a toujours bouleversée à en rire et pleurer à la fois.