Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Dirk Riehle wrote:
Transfering money out of the U.S. has not been a tax problem for us, the IRS so far has played nicely with us. But getting money from Germany to the U.S. has eluded us. If you figure out how to do it without endangering non-profit status in Germany, please let me know!
Dirk
This is just a thought out loud, but what possible arrangements could be made for not necessarily returning the money to the US, but using funds from local chapters that may be furthering goals in 3rd countries? i.e. spending money on developers in 3rd world countries, helping develop specific language wikis, seed money for new chapters, etc.? Or is the money "stuck" in Germany proper and can't go anywhere else at all for any reason?
Good point.
A week ago, at Wikimania, when it was pointed out that the german chapter had money, while the french and the italian did not, I suggested that possibly some of the german money could be used for other chapters, in particular when there is common currency and these countries are in certain common frame (here, european union). I am not sure I got a positive feedback on this (nor a negative actually).
Maybe it would help to clarify in which cases we could actually use the money and in which we can not.
As I understood things, what we can not do is simply transfer from one organisation to another, which is totally fair.
Here are some examples where I would like to know if feasible or not.
* buying hardware and "donating" the hardware to the foundation (this would typically be the case for servers; but is that possible ? why would donating hardware more acceptable than donating money ?)
* buying hardware, putting it in the general pot, but staying the owner (maybe for such things as certain servers, switches, memory stick (:-)))
* paying for some of the costs for some meetings (in Germany is easy enough to imagine, but would it be possible for example for the German verein to fund a Polish meetup ?)
* paying some travel costs which would otherwise be paid by the Foundation (easy enough probably would be to pay for some speakers to come to wikimania in Germany, but would it be possible for a german chapter to pay travel for Jimbo to Germany to meet with german partners, or for the german chapter to pay travel for Angela to go to South Africa to meet with some possible african partners ?)
* Paying for some promotional items (easy enough in german for a conference in Germany, but would it be possible to pay the publishing of an italian-language leaflet for a conference in Belgium for example ?)
* Paying people for certain activities (such as, but non restricted to, development). Could these people be paid if non german ? Could they be paid to work on global issues ? (for example, grant specialist ?)
And there is again the big discussion of whether there would be a way for a local chapter to make a official donation to another chapter or to the Foundation. Which would probably require a legal expert to say.
Other than that, I can also imagine financing specific projects, but these need to be defined (and set up). And *this* is the main issue. We can always say "let us use the german money to develop for example arabic wikipedia". Right, but who set this up ? Where are the volunteers ?
I do not think there is any bad will from anyone to use/spend this money, just need ideas, understand of what is legally authorized and volunteers to do the job.
All these being limited to german discussion as they now have money, but will be applied to all other chapters later on.
Do we have ideas on these first points ?