James D. Forrester wrote:
Yes, I think that having chapters in countries in the
EU is worthwhile for
two reasons - firstly, it helps with donations by providing a tax-relieved
method of donating (at least, in some countries), and secondly, it helps
foster a sense of community and belonging in the members.
Thirdly, tax deductions. Fourthly, tax deductions ;-)
Currently just France and Germany have chapters set
up, but we are looking
at setting one up for the UK soon-ish. Eventually we may want to form a
Wikimedia Europe organisation to liase and so on at a larger level, but for
now this will suffice.
I do hope we can make progress on this tomorrow!
(Without me being dragged *too* deeply into it. I've done my time with
nonprofits and am entirely aware that being on the board of one and getting
anything done can take up 36 hours of any 24-hour day, and I have way too
many other things in progress ;-)
One this that you may want to look out for is what
exactly you can do whilst
retaining the special tax status - for example, a UK chapter will not be
able to merely blindly collect money for the main Foundation, but instead
have charitable aims in and of itself (which might in practice not make a
great deal of difference, of course - collecting money for international
Internet-based education and learning projects vs. collecting money for the
Wikimedia Foundation).
Apart from a proxy farm, there will be things like grants to other UK
nonprofits to do stuff or GFDL stuff; actively push the proposed Scots
Wikipedia forward; help along the other smaller British-language wikis;
provide a focal point to lure contributors for more British content.
All those are just off the top of my head. (Someone noting all this down
for tomorrow? I should be there 3pm-4pm ;-)
Of course, you will need to have a quite large group
of people willing and
able to put in the amount of work required to run the chapter, which I
imagine is not entirely simple (especially if none of you have done this
sort of thing before), and are able to stick with the chapter through the
longer term.
Yep. "Raise your hand if you've been on a nonprofit before ..."
- d.