-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 20/11/2010 02:40, Nathan wrote:
> I've never heard of a major charity in the world without at least some paid > employees. Hello Nathan. I hope that you don't feel threatened by novelty. Please don't close your mind to my ideas just because you've never heard of them. The Wikipedia idea begins by "Imagine". Being paid and receiving very high salaries are two different things. It seems you're talking about the first. I'm talking about the second. > Some of the largest charities, like the Red Cross, have thousands > of employees including highly compensated executives. "Red Cross" and "Corruption" yield more than a million pages on google. Here's a sample (from 2005)[1]: "Despite landing in trouble for soliciting more donations than they need and squirreling the rest away, the Red Cross continues to operate this way. [...] Last year alone, the Red Cross spent $111 million in fund raising, and their CEO Marsha Evans made just under $652,000. It seems the the main value they offer is the free help of their volunteer force." Your comparison with the Red Cross is indeed insightful about what kind of profit can be done with a non-profit organization and how unethical behaviors can be found in ethical causes. > The type of work the > Foundation does requires full time staff with considerable talent and > experience. > It's unrealistic to expect the Foundation to acquire these > resources without fair compensation. You think that nobody amidst the hundred of thousands of motivated volunteers would have the skills while accepting to work for a decent and humble salary. I'd like to prove you wrong, if there were a authentic will from the Foundation to have a try. > [some stuff reducing the problem to my person] I think that shifting the debate to my insignificant person is pointless and uninteresting. If you're really interested about my person, which I doubt, we can talk on another channel. > In any case, the law presents both an obligation to report certain facts and > an obligation to keep other facts confidential. The Foundation discloses > what it needs to, and even were the WMF a for-profit corporation and you an > actual shareholder you would be entitled to no more detail than that. That's the US centric, legal aspect. But what about the ethical aspect and the big picture? Here's an article from 2003 [2], well worth the reading, that shows some dangers of nonprofits. An excerpt: "In recent years AIP has seen nonprofits increasingly attempt to silence their employees. We believe that nonprofit groups should discontinue employee contracts or severance agreements that contractually disallow employees or former employees to speak to outsiders about serious organizational problems. This serves to stop most employees or potential whistleblowers, who could warn the public of mismanagement or serious ethical breaches that charity executives may be attempting to cover up." [1]: http://www.damninteresting.com/can-we-trust-the-red-cross [2]: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJM6HVzAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LGKEIALOgElzy0nCNWwqUGgaMrQSS MfrNcrIMT49Mn67CG8Z1pi5GUCW9PMWBK8awyEjyjsJaf61h4Ev/AamdmKDl6NG7 6XHMWqbW16B84rPAwMfvkzVV0zJXR0T4DelvkWXQu9zoE4e4F5qkhOg8+cmCwfsa ZwrOZDcCkqSyAxjLEGJlJXTloU7cpbiHimcfZRsOIMrBzLmsArg0IJh+Y2C0icvH BorUwCbogKiVlCw/7mD6XB2qHdnUmWd6UNW4m5fQGDrxtT0vQNnhf2+ltUBecjXN jNybGkdHyqzRVH95stk2gKsKoidU4UH2Fso4UXYvD07cMcyGa+3aRNGtO0FI34U= =nHW3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
