Friday, March 25, 2011

Money makes the world go around

The #Wikimedia meta discussion on movement roles has a personal point of view published by Sue. One of the issues she addresses is funding.

Funding produces the go-juice for our many activities but this go-juice is not distributed equitably and its mileage can be improved. Funding has a life-cycle; first you acquire the spending power, then you spend it and finally you enjoy the benefits.

Money is best held tightly and in order not to pry it from tight fists, it would work miracles when it can only be held conditional on it going around our world. Benefits going around or not is observable Take WikiPortret, Toolserver or PDF export they all have limited use while having a global potential. Contrast that with Wiki Loves Monuments Europe, GLAM outreach or MediaWiki development where the result goes beyond a language, a country, a culture.

So lets make use of the inclination to be tight fisted and let our organisations retain control over money when its projects have an observable global reach. When "others" rate the reach of projects, it will promote cooperation. As each project is rated, it will be known and, that is in itself observably good.
Thanks,
        GerardM

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