It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
-Steven
Sorry, thought this was going to foundation-l.
-S
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote in message news:7c402e010907301615q7f86e8a1v5edb56ced5a80a18@mail.gmail.com...
Sorry, thought this was going to foundation-l.
-S
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
Carcharoth answered that question in October or November: can't do it for reasons in 501(c) that give us tax advantages. For those tax advantages, we forfeit our ability to acquire self-sustaining amounts of investment wealth; forfeit becoming a donor institution like Carnegie was or is. Do not sweat it. It is more important to carve policy that is well understood, that serves to distinguish our standards from other channels, that is consistent, and that is therefore complied with. That alone would make us self-sustaining. _______ My mind is like a blotter: Soaks it up, gets it backwards, and if it is a mess to begin with, then you get a Rorshach.
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Jay Litwynbrewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote in message
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
I normally expect this.
Carcharoth answered that question in October or November: can't do it for reasons in 501(c) that give us tax advantages. For those tax advantages, we forfeit our ability to acquire self-sustaining amounts of investment wealth;
This is untrue. You can qualify as a publicly supported charity as long as 10% of total support/revenue comes from government funds and from public donations. (If over a third comes from government and public contributions, you're golden; but if you are clearly a publicly supported entity such as a library or educational institution, organized to 'attract new [government and public] support' you can get by with just 10%)
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf (see p.29)
We simply need to define a basic set of features and services that will be covered entirely by a self-sustaining foundation; and can raise further government and public funds to support new projects, R&D, creative PR or outreach schemes, or a print Wikipedia 1.0 in 1,296 volumes...
SJ
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Jay Litwynbrewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote in message news:7c402e010907301615q7f86e8a1v5edb56ced5a80a18@mail.gmail.com...
Sorry, thought this was going to foundation-l.
-S
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
Carcharoth answered that question in October or November
<snip>
I'm not entirely sure I did answer that question back then (I can't find anything on a brief search). I might have done, so if you point me to an e-mail I wrote to this list, I'll accept that. Even if I did, no-one should have accepted it at face value, as I was likely just giving an uninformed opinion (can you tag mailing list posts with "citation needed"?). And any case, what SJ (Samuel Klein) has just said is obviously much better informed!
Carcharoth
"Carcharoth" carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote in message news:206791b10908110309j4ef2cca3l777b8fcb5e86c78c@mail.gmail.com...
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Jay Litwynbrewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
"stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com wrote in message news:7c402e010907301615q7f86e8a1v5edb56ced5a80a18@mail.gmail.com...
Sorry, thought this was going to foundation-l.
-S
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it?
Carcharoth answered that question in October or November
<snip>
I'm not entirely sure I did answer that question back then (I can't find anything on a brief search). I might have done, so if you point me to an e-mail I wrote to this list, I'll accept that. Even if I did, no-one should have accepted it at face value, as I was likely just giving an uninformed opinion (can you tag mailing list posts with "citation needed"?). And any case, what SJ (Samuel Klein) has just said is obviously much better informed!
Mis-attributed. http://www.mail-archive.com/wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg00012.html It was Anthony. You were only in the message, sorry. I had fully intended to read source documents to find out if I would get a conclusion, and...well...even if I understand it, I hate legalese, and making chaos click less took longer than I thot. In any case, the way I see it, we are more likely to see donations from grateful dot coms (like *.wikia.com) and commercial interests who exploit our information -- our unannounced printer being an example. Those donations would reduce our cravings for donations from contributors. The DVDs at WalMart (an investment) were solidly a risk, because you would be depending on people with slow access or no access to the internet, and that is dwindling, TMK. I would not mind knowing how it panned out. _______ http://ecn.ab.ca/~brewhaha/