I strongly supoprt the idea that we should get *something* set up, and a non-profit corporation seems to be the easiest to achieve. From what I've heard, lack of charity status will not signifcantly dissuade people from donating. Lets get something set up so people can join (and donate) to something definate.
(Seperate note: while I would very much like to contribute to the chapter's activites, I'm not putting myself forward for any formal roles because I'm currently in Canada on a very restrictive work permit... the last thing I need is for some over-zealous immigration official to take a narrow view of things and use it as a reason to refuse my permament residency application.)
Tom(pw)
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Message: 2 Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:23:34 -0400 From: P Lahiry plahiry@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-Canada] Next step To: Wikimedia Canada planning list wikimedia-ca@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: AANLkTimICap758nzl2zQgff-Qcmajg66Q0x-80NPYqB_@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
A couple of things I'd like to say,
I've watched this mailing list be hung up on charitable status. And I don't see why it's of such huge concern. Yes, Canadians currently can't get tax receipts when they donate to wikipedia. Is that why we need to be a charity? If so, I've been on the mailing list since the beginning of this year and I have yet to see anyone say that. If that's the focus, you need to have documentation from WMF on what the costs are for providing canadian access to wikipedia and other WMF directives, and then use that as a basis to collect donations from Canadians. Then only if the charity decides to, does the money flow back to WMF. That's how it would need to work.
But a non-charity corporation can still receive donated funds. They just can't issue tax receipts. If your donor is the government or a very large corporation, it isn't that big an issue. A non-profit I work with hasn't bothered becoming a charity because of just that. We will be changing it fairly soon to open up the donor list but there's no urgency to it.
While charitable status can be granted to non-corporations it's not an easy task. From what I know, they are designated as charitable trusts and so require a declaration of trust. Some of the religious organizations and foundations do this in order to "tweak" the governance to their requirements. It is always easier to just incorporate and put a charitable head on the corporation unless there's a strong overriding interest. If the CRA has said otherwise, I'm not going to go against them on what they've stated but I would strongly recommend that someone doublecheck the CRA on that. Also if at some point a charitable non-corp decides to incorporate it will need further approval from the CRA.
On the issue regarding Corporations Act, Canada - I've asked this before but why is there such a focus on the federal act? You can easily incorporate under one of the provincial statutes. In fact, the federal act is almost dead-on to the Ontario Corporations Act. There's been a focus on keeping it Canadian but this type of minute attention is unnecessary. There's no reason why a corporation can't be incorporated provincially and act nationwide and in the interests of all Canadians with all languages in mind. That's what most charities have been doing. Why are we trying to do something different? Ontario, for good or for bad, has had the most experience with a wide range of profit and non-profit corporations. Hence their legislation is the most current. It's the same reason why most corporations in the US are based out of Delaware.
I would think the first real issue is the manpower. Are there enough people with enough time to actually get something going? You also need to find someone or someones to actually bear the administrative burden of running this. Is there anyone prepared to do that? I know I can help but I don't have a whole lot of time to volunteer. And I'm pretty sure most people are in the same boat.
I forget who it was, but someone on the list mentioned that wikimedia australia started off (and maybe still is) a non-profit corp. And that's exactly how I personally envisioned it. Collect enough funds from interested people to incorporate, get it started now and get the kinks out of the system. There will be problems with staffing, direction (definitely that) and people. Once that's done chase the charitable vision. Right now it seems people are torn between inaction and chasing the dream.
I'm not trying to aggravate anyone but these are my thoughts.
Jit
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