I don't find this line of thought compelling at all. There is no need for a separate legal national organization, and indeed this would be confusing and counter-productive.
I can see an argument for US chapters not need a legal organization at all (just use the Foundation for this), and I can see an argument for each of them having their own legal organization (this seems better to me), but I can't see having one non-Foundation organization for multiple chapters.
Henning Schlottmann wrote:
Anthony wrote:
Here's my current thoughts on the matter, after talking with you about it privately. It's an attempt at a grassroots bottom-up strategy (which both the WMF and the chapters-to-be seem to want) which at the same time attempts to avoid constantly reinventing the wheel.
I don't see the beef. The United States don't need a number of local chapters, they need one national chapter to provide for a membership organization associated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Local groups can form under the national umbrella without being incorporated themselves.
Get the organizers of all local meetups, the Pennsylvanians, the New Yorkers and everyone else who ever made some steps to chapterhood together on a mailing list, ask around if one of the Wikipedians involved is a lawyer who can handle any questions, choose a state where to incorporate the chapter (based on locality of a few core members and the answers of your lawyer) and set up the chapter. That's not rocket science. Wikipedians usually are smart people, you should be able to get it done without any problems.
You need a charter, send it to the Foundation to have it approved, send it to the state office to have it registered, and that's about it.
Henning [[user:H-stt]]
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