Most of you only care about Wikipedia's "health" or "quality". None of you seems to much care about
the fact that the WMF, under Sue Gardner, has become a very effective fundraiser.

Wikipedia is not a focal point for the WMF anymore, it is only a "money magnet", to serve the WMF itself.

Why should you care? Because if they have a large "war chest", there is a good chance they will go on
a litigation spree, both to silence their critics and to stop anyone else from starting or running an
online encyclopedia. It has happened before, and some of the best-regarded nonprofits have engaged in it.
Not to mention a greater risk of internal corruption and graft.

For example: the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is getting a reputation.
Not for curing cancer......for suing the bejesus out of other nonprofits in the same area.
(This is in addition to their recent, bizarre, attempt to punish Planned Parenthood.
And just being sleazy.)

Consider this incredibly-stupid lawsuit. Did the supporters of the AEF know their charity would be
fighting a '70s rock-n-roll band in court over a trademark, using their donated money?

How about the Salvation Army suing to get a bigger piece of a dead man's estate?
The Salvation Army loves to sue, and is often sued, over all kinds of stupid things.

Remember that old man who ran for President in 2008? His wife had a charity.
The operating word here, is "had".

Or the PipeVine disaster. Supposedly, people died because of that.

Or consider what has happened to the many nonprofit health-care organizations across the US over
the past 30 years. Many of them became for-profit--after regulations were loosened. It's happening
right now in Michigan. It already happened to Blue Cross/Blue Shield groups in other states,
plus to groups like Kaiser Healthcare. A result: higher health-care costs for everyone.

And I haven't even mentioned the routine scandals around nonprofit-group corruption. There are
literally too many to list here.
A recent example: Ward Connerly. Another: the Fiesta Bowl.

Go ahead. Tell me the WMF's current management is not capable of pulling such disgusting stunts.
Pure as the driven snow, are they? Full of Wiki-Luv?

Once a "charity" becomes a moneymaking machine, the likelihood of it becoming more oriented
towards making more money than to pursuing its charitable cause can increase dramatically.
Not to mention the possibility it will abuse others doing similar work.......

The WMF always appeared to me as highly disorganized like headless chickens running around. They can raise money, but do they know how to spend it right? It would be very bad for their image to sue people for dissenting opinions. "Information wants to be free," right?

O've been involved, have been on the Board, of nonprofits, and have seen this happen:

1. Organization starts with all volunteers.
2. Performs useful services, gets a grant to continue and expand.
3. Hires staff to do what volunteers had done before.
4. Staff now has vested interest in status quo, or in expansion of funding.
5. Staff is tight with the board, and board decisions increasingly are as advised by staff.
6. Board becomes unable to supervise staff and to make any decisions which might offend staff.
7. The organization loses its ability to function through volunteers, who are made increasingly redundant and unnecessary.

And it can go further downhill from there. I was on the board of a free clinic. They had obtained matching funding, i.e., the city would pay them what was raised independently to fund named positions, matching it. So two positions were being funded, the director and the volunteer coordinator. They were friends. Having some difficulty raising funds, the board directed the director to negotiate 100% funding for her own position, with the volunteer coordinator being paid through voluntary contributions, the reason was to provide flexibility.

The director, however, negotiated instead the dual position funding, making it impossible to replace the paid volunteer coordinator with a volunteer (as it had previously been).

With difficulty raising funds, the organization was issuing paychecks to get reimbursement, with the employees holding the checks (or allowing the organization to hold them). They were getting further and further behind. Effectively, the city was being defrauded. I pointed out that the situation was untenable. I was considered a wrecker, attempting to demolish the organization through disrupting the good relations between the board and staff. I (and my wife at the time, also on the board) elected to resign. We did not blow the whistle, these were all friends. I lost touch with what was going on, don't know how it turned out.

But a series of decisions had been made like that, where the original purpose of the organization had been lost -- it was to serve people who could not afford regular medical care -- and, instead, the organization was serving the interests of the staff. Nothing wrong with considering staff and taking care of them. It's when the purpose is lost that it's a real problem.

If you want an example of a charity which suffered from a severe case of "Founder"'s syndrome try Arlington Housing Association/Bridge Housing Association/Novas/Novas Scarman Group and Michael Wake's trail of chaos.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/580...-employees.html and http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/070909/news070909_03.html

Wake hadn't yet reached those extremes when I worked for them, but I do remember his change of mind and the removal of some of the new toilets some two months after they were installed. A good use of public money there.