[Could people please make unofficial translations of this for posting on *.wikipedia.org wikipedias?]
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States. I am transferring to this new corporation the assets that follow:
1. All Nupedia.com/net/org/etc. domain names 2. All Wikipedia.com/net/org/etc. domain names
3. All copyrights in software or articles that were previously owned by Bomis, Inc. and already placed under a copyleft license. (This includes work-for-hire by Jason, Tim, Larry, Toan, Liz, and myself, as well as any other Bomis employees who may have worked on these projects as a part of their job, but doesn't include any work by those parties conducted on their own time or while not an employee of Bomis.)
(All that stuff was already under GNU GPL or GNU FDL, so the contribution of copyrights is basically a formality. Even so, we want to set a good example.)
4. Additionally, I am contributing all of my personal copyrights to work already released under GNU GPL or GNU FDL in Wikipedia and Nupedia to the foundation.
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For the time being, the two machines on which Wikipedia runs will be continue to be owned by Bomis, but my intention is to donate those if the tax implications make sense. I have to consult with an accountant on that, first.
I do NOT encourage you to make donations to the Wikimedia Foundation just yet! I am still working on tax exempt status with the IRS, and I have not yet set up a bank account for the foundation anyway. Those things will take a couple more weeks.
On my TODO list here are:
1. Complete the IRS process for tax-exempt status 2. Create forms for the transferance of copyrights to the foundation, if anyone wants to do that. See: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html for reasons why this might a Good Thing. 3. Setup a bank account for the foundation 4. Setup a merchant account for the foundation to make credit-card donations an easy option
I'll update everyone in a couple of weeks with the status.
--Jimbo
cprompt wrote:
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States.
Woohoo! I didn't expect to see this kind of message for a while. :-D
Well, thanks really go to Erik, who called me on the phone about it this morning. That call kicked my butt to investigate the holdup, only to find that there was no holdup, and everything is ready to proceed.
Now I'm looking in fear at this huge 43 page IRS document I have to fill out. (Form 1023)
On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 11:44, Jimmy Wales wrote:
cprompt wrote:
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States.
Woohoo! I didn't expect to see this kind of message for a while. :-D
Well, thanks really go to Erik, who called me on the phone about it this morning. That call kicked my butt to investigate the holdup, only to find that there was no holdup, and everything is ready to proceed.
Now I'm looking in fear at this huge 43 page IRS document I have to fill out. (Form 1023)
Well, could be worse. I misread that as saying "43 _pound_ IRS document" at first (about 20 kg for you more civilised folk).
I had previously suggested that legal advice (or at least a not-for-profit accountant) should be obtained for filing the 1023 for 501(c)(3) status. I would also like to point out (as I have before on Meta Wikipedia) that it is not necessary to file if the organization's donations are under $5,000. Thus if you wish to announce donations you can accept them if they are under a certain amount. I would also urge you to look into filing with the necessary state authorities regarding charitable contributions some states have made these rules rather tough.
There is also a grace period for filing the 1023 that can be extended for a variety of reasons. I cannot stress to much that seeking legal advice (even pro bono which is what I offered and no one has taken me up on) is a good thing as MANY groups are refused tax exempt status due to the fact that they have not checked the various IRS rulings and have drafted a corporate charter/certificates without the proper exempt purposes or correct recitials regarding termination transfers, etc.. I am working on a church case right now where a church was denied 501(c)(3) status. (No, the US Consitution does not protect religions from everything). This is a complex and complicated area of tax law.
Sincerely, Alex T. Roshuk Attorney at law 325 8th St Brooklyn NY 11215-3313 USA +1(718)788-6696 fax:+1(718)788-2791 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 12:44 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Announcing Wikimedia Foundation
cprompt wrote:
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States.
Woohoo! I didn't expect to see this kind of message for a while. :-D
Well, thanks really go to Erik, who called me on the phone about it this morning. That call kicked my butt to investigate the holdup, only to find that there was no holdup, and everything is ready to proceed.
Now I'm looking in fear at this huge 43 page IRS document I have to fill out. (Form 1023) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Alex T. wrote:
I had previously suggested that legal advice (or at least a not-for-profit accountant) should be obtained for filing the 1023 for 501(c)(3) status.
I'm sure that we have enough smart people to figure this out. The possible problem may be with having a single donor footing all the bills. We need to make some decisions regarding the corporate structure of the foundation.
I would also like to point out (as I have before on Meta Wikipedia) that it is not necessary to file if the organization's donations are under $5,000. Thus if you wish to announce donations you can accept them if they are under a certain amount.
The $5,000 floor is convenient in the short run, and I would be surprised if we get that much during 2003.
I would also urge you to look into filing with the necessary state authorities regarding charitable contributions some states have made these rules rather tough.
This may be moot since Florida does not have a state personal income tax.
There is also a grace period for filing the 1023 that can be extended for a variety of reasons.
Of course, so we don't need to rush.
I cannot stress to much that seeking legal advice (even pro bono which is what I offered and no one has taken me up on) is a good thing as MANY groups are refused tax exempt status due to the fact that they have not checked the various IRS rulings and have drafted a corporate charter/certificates without the proper exempt purposes or correct recitials regarding termination transfers, etc..
What are you suggesting might be the potential difficulties in this case?
Eclecticology
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
[Could people please make unofficial translations of this for posting on *.wikipedia.org wikipedias?]
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States. I am transferring to this new corporation the assets that follow:
Great news! Thanks, Jimbo.
Two thoughts you may want to add to your TODO list:
1. Once the merchant bank account is set up for the corporation, you may want to set up a PayPal account for donations over the Internet. (I'm not pushing PayPal per se -- I believe there are other companies that do the same thing, & may waive the handling fees for the tax deduction.)
2. If you continue to subsidize Wikipedia by paying for bandwidth & co-lo fees (I don't know where the servers are located), you may be able to deduct these costs too.
Just offering my input, Geoff
Jimmy-
I'm pleased to announce the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States.
YAHOO! Ahem, sorry, no trademark violation intended. Great to hear that it's called "Wikimedia" - I really like the name.
I suggest not submitting this to any major news sites (*cough* Slashdot *cough*) until easy options for donations are in place. So let's keep quiet about this for a while, OK? I know it's hard :).
Thanks for checking up on this, Jimbo, and good luck in dealing with the bureaucracy. Sorry for being intrusive, but sometimes it helps ;-)
All best,
Erik