On Fri, August 29, 2008 01:03, Thomas Dalton wrote: The issue is not so much one of protecting the Board (though that is, of course, a good thing!) but that with a non-incorporated body all monies are deemed to be the personal assets of those involved (bad for tax) and hence people - especially possible large donors - will not give money as it has no 'independence'. A 'Body corporate' is the only way to protect funds with proper disclosure and financial security (and Directors are personally liable if company funds are misused too). Alison

Which it certainly will. You can't fundraise specifically for each individual activity just before it happens.

2008/8/29 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>: If activities were all funded by the participants, we would be very limited in what we could do. There would be little need for a chapter, it would serve as nothing more than a source of fancy titles.

Hence why I said "little need", not "no need". They can come in handy, but are a pretty minor part of what having a chapter is all about.

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan seems to me to be a perfect example of what can be done with activities funded by the participants. But yeah, there's little need for a chapter to do that kind of stuff. What types of activities do you have planned that would require outside funding? How do you intend to get that funding? And why shouldn't this activity be pursued by the WMF, instead of the WMUK?

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:22 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think you got the cart before the horse. Who's going to donate money to someone who doesn't have any plans for what to do with it? How can you set up a chapter when you don't have any idea what its purpose is? Still if you insist: Thanks. My questions weren't meant as rhetorical. I'm truly interested in the answers. > There are others. Finding ways to spend money is never hard. Well, yeah, but finding ways to spend money that are going to attract strangers to donate money is, at least it is to me! On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 12:11 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: > > What types of activities do you have planned that would require outside > > funding? > Whatever the community can think of. I haven't given it a great deal > of though myself in anything more than general terms. I see the > chapter as existing to facilitate the ideas of the community, there's > no need for those running the chapter to come up with the ideas. I'm sorry, but that seems incredibly strange to me. It sounds like a Monty Python skit. "Why do you want to form a chapter?" "Because that's the only way to protect funds." "Why do you need funds?" "Because if we didn't have funds, the chapter wouldn't serve any purpose." "So what is the chapter going to do?" "Not sure yet, we need to set up the chapter in order to figure something out." Good luck though, honestly. And I hope you don't take my last paragraph as rude. I know I'm exaggerating what you've said in this thread, and taking things a bit out of context. Anthony

Basically I'm going on faith at the moment. I have faith in the community to make good use of the work I and others are putting in getting the chapter set up. We haven't spent time doing anything to verify that faith, so perhaps I'm completely wrong and we'll end up with an empty shell that never does anything, but personally I think that's unlikely. I this conversation rather strange, you seem to be talking as if this is a new idea. Plenty of other countries have chapters and make good use of them, if you want to know what chapters can usefully do you would be better of looking at them rather than asking us. We'll do pretty much the same things, just in a different country.

2008/9/1 Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt;rg>: You will probably find this page enlightening. <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Summaries> Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

Anthony wrote: In case this isn't just trolling: Whatever the members and / or the community of UK Wikimedians wishes - for example but not limited to the activities the German chapter have. Organising an event in and with a large university causes expenses in the preparatory stage even if the event as such is funded by the partnering university. Staffing a booth at a trade fair can be done by volunteers, printing a few posters and brochures needs funding. Maybe in the future there will be a chance to have staff and an office for Wikimedia UK in London, such as the German chapter has in Frankfurt (moving to Berlin these days). An incorporated chapter is mandatory to accept donations to fund these and other activities. Ciao Henning