Earmarking of donations considered, trustees election starts
The administration of the Wikimedia Foundation was a topic of some discussion recently with a proposal for earmarking donations, while the election for two seats on the Board of Trustees starts this week after two candidates jumped into the race at the last minute.
Grants Coordinator Danny Wool proposed that instead of having all donations go into the general fund, donors should be allowed to earmark their donations for a specific purpose. He suggested that in order to account for overhead costs of running the Foundation, ten percent of earmarked donations would still be deducted to cover such costs.
This system of handling donations would allow small donors, who make up the bulk of the Wikimedia Foundation's financial support, to pool resources in a manner similar to large grant-making organizations. Sj suggested that the earmarking scheme should be kept simple, using broad categories like "hardware", "software", and "language development".