Fundraising proposals spark a furore among the chapters
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees chair Ting Chen has published a letter to the members of the Wikimedia movement, stating what the Board intends to do with fundraiser money. This opened a new front in a war of words that had raged on Meta for weeks, as posts in a personal capacity by WMF's treasurer, Stu West on the foundation's mailing list and on his blog attracted waves of heated commentary.
The statement has brought to a head a complex set of issues that have been causing friction between the WMF and local chapters for at least a year. The disagreements appear to revolve around the extent to which WMF fundraising should be decentralised to the chapters, which currently operate under different tax-deductibility and donation laws. Each country has its own rules on how funds can be disseminated from the chapter to other organisations and countries, and in some cases it is messy to transfer locally raised funds to a foreign entity—in this case the WMF in San Francisco. Some chapters believe their cultural independence owes a lot to their ability to conduct fundraising and manage the proceeds in their own jurisdictions. Other Wikimedians have expressed disquiet at the proposed new "grant" system for disseminating donor funds.