Board faces diversity and skill-base issues in new FDC appointments
Nominations for four new seats on the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have just closed. The FDC is a volunteer WMF body that strongly influences how a high proportion of donors' funds are spent. The Committee was created in 2012 after the Foundation Board stopped all but a few chapters from directly processing donations raised on its behalf. The move brought the review and funding of most "eligible" affiliates under more centralised community review, and the FDC has since been the primary instrument for scrutinising their applications for recurrent operating expenses, and recommending to the Board who should get what. Thus far the Board has accepted all of the FDC's recommendations from the twice-yearly application rounds.
The FDC has been no stranger to controversy. In late 2015, with the Foundation in turmoil over issues of governance, funding, and leadership, the FDC stepped outside its official mandate to publish a scathing critique of the WMF’s performance. This step was well received: the WMF accepted and acted on the feedback (video 14:27), and invited the FDC’s comments in the subsequent funding round.
The FDC's two-year memberships have been designed around a leap-frogging process of yearly alternating Board appointments of four volunteer voting members and community elections of five volunteer voting members. In addition, the Board maintains a close relationship with the FDC through the appointment of two of its own members as non-voting FDC members (currently ex-chair of the FDC, Dariusz Jemielniak and Guy Kawasaki), and the participation of three non-voting staff members in FDC processes (Katy Love, Winifred Olliff, and Delphine Ménard, herself a former voting member of the FDC).