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

Kinds of funding flows + dissemination we currently engage in:

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.
The endowment distributes some grants & has some staff (~2% of total revenue?)
Large chapters also raise independent funds, <5% of the total, mainly WMDE. [hard to find consolidated data]
We have some [very] limited in-kind contributions.
- Major standing content initiatives via GLAMs (Internet Archive, ...)
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

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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