It is posted. And there is a handy Q&A page intended to deceive us all.

Let's tear them apart, shall we?



Sue Gardner's total compensation:
$175,050

Mike Godwin's total compensation:
$128,139

Veronique Kessler's total compensation:
$121,859



Total program expenses: $3,308,546.

Total revenue: $8,137,235.

Ratio of program expenses to revenue: 40.66% (about half of what reputable charities strive for)



Highest-paid contractor:

SQUIRE SANDERS AND DEMPSEY LLP of Tysons Corner, Virginia, for legal services totaling $131,564 (stuff that Mike Godwin couldn't handle on his own)



Return on investments:

The WMF reported between $2.8 million and $6.2 million stuffed away in cash savings/investments. The interest on that was about $31,000. A net return on investment of somewhere between 0.5% and 1.1%. Somebody ought to "consult" them on the concept of risk and return.


Whew!

Cripes, Mike G. is making more salary in constant dollars than Hitler took.

So, that's it?

We are all shocked, shocked, that WMF is so corrupt. Shocked.

Alas, we have not yet determined if their fraudulency and corruption is of a criminal nature.

Gardner and Kessler's compensations seem reasonable (Gardner's is maybe a little bit high but about $25,000 of it appears to be due to some sort of taxable relocation benefits). As for Godwin, I can't really figure out what it is that he does which couldn't easily be done by someone paid much less. But maybe that's just cause he's such a humble guy...

Perhaps he writes and approves contracts all day. It's hard to believe he does the WMF taxes, and we know they don't defend any civil suits.

I suppose they must have to execute a lot of contracts.

This is the part I found interesting:


with expenditures of $753,127.

Presumably some of that was spent on the progress on Flagged Revisions so far?

That would be the $27 at the end, unless you also count the money that was spent ensuring it did not progress.

You could easily build an entire ERP and enterprise management system from the ground up for that much. True, it would probably suck, and you'd then have to maintain it and train people on it, but... that's not the point, dag-gummit!

I mean, if we're trying to "AGF" here, it's logical to presume that most of that money is going into bandwidth optimization - storage, MySQL, and Apache, probably in that order. Except that you'd think that optimization would be part of the "general support" bucket, for which they're claiming an expenditure of $1,872,934.00...

Also, their returns are prepared by KPMG Consulting, a fairly high-priced firm - they sponsor golfer Phil Mickelson, among others. For the money they're probably paying them, and considering the nature of the client, you'd think they could manage proper spacing-after-punctuation.

And then there's this:...which comes to $603,333.00.

What are they, the least-efficient organization on the planet? Practically everything is done by volunteers, and they're spending all this money! And besides, since when is it their job to "ASSESS AND IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF EXISTING CONTENT"? They're not supposed to do that, FFS! It messes up their Section 230 immunity!

I mean, isn't this basically lying to the IRS?

I can see why they're desperate to maintain the illusion that they're a "charity," though - without that, their tax returns would be ten times harder to deal with.

Well yeah.

But whether that's a criminal offense or a civil infraction is for others to say.

I'll just say that it's a fraud on the donors.

I suspect they could counter those charges my pointing out that the "content" referred to could be the user documentation which they are paying Pete Forsyth to rework, if memory serves...


Jimbo seems to be weakly pushing for progress on flagged revisions, perhaps someone should ask him to find out the amount of money that has been spent on this since the vote on WP. I'm sure it will make some eyes pop.

That would be for litigation services. Godwin is not a trial attorney, and I would say from his CV that he never has been.

Why do they need to do all those fundraising drives with videos of Jimmy trying to look deeply concerned if they're ending the year with such a surplus? If they are only spending 3 million of the 8 million they received that means they gained 5 million that is sitting there doing nothing? Or am I reading it wrong? Because if that's right then they don't need to do a fundraising drive for another couple of years ...?

No, you are not wrong, and no, yours are not the only raised eyebrows over this.

Well, here's Sue Gardner's answer:



http://blog.p2pedia.org/2008/06/foundation...cried-wolf.html

Fraud? Deception? No no no... It's merely a matter of conservative mispositing.