- offering or engaging in consultancy services related to Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects'.
- The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a community consultation on conflicts of interest wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest
The Charity Commission for England and Wales states that 'a conflict of interest is any situation in which a trustee's personal interests, or interests they owe to another body, may (or may appear to) influence or affect the trustee's decision making'.
We note that the Commission guidance:
- focuses on potential conflicts of interest as well as actual ones
- includes conflicts of loyalty where an individual may owe loyalty to another organisation as well as the charity in question
- considers that 'it is inevitable that conflicts of interest occur'
- requires both transparency and appropriate management of potential conflicts
- states that 'the issue is not the integrity of the trustee concerned but the management of any potential to profit from a person's position as trustee, or for a trustee to be influenced by conflicting loyalties'.
The Commission notes that much of its guidance is based on the fact that 'the law states that trustees cannot receive any benefit from their charity in return for any service they provide to the charity unless they have express legal authority to do so' and that 'trustees should bear in mind that when they are dealing with the business of the charity, their overriding duty is to act in the best interests of the charity'.
As the declaration and management of conflicts of interest was the particular trigger for this review, we looked in detail at the sequence of events in 2011 and 2012, from which we noted a number of points[1]
- Wikimedia UK policies and procedures were established and have been further developed over the last 12 months. These were well researched and professional advice on them was sought and generally taken at most appropriate junctures.
- ↑ This report concerns the governance of Wikimedia UK. As indicated above the Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a community consultation to draw up movement-wide guidelines to help identify potential conflicts of interest when asking for resources belonging to the Wikimedia movement.
