I'm curious, and maybe this is the wrong thread, but can someone explain to me the difficulty in setting up a US organization that is essentially a Wikimedia membership chapter? I get the issues with trademark ownership (although it seems you could solve that with a license of some sort) and the issue of diverting donations, but what are the other impediments if any? I set up a non-profit corporation in high school, it didn't strike me as that difficult at the time.
If this has been discussed at length, as I'm sure it has, on meta - could I get the link as well?
thanks,
Nathan
On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
effe iets anders wrote:
What you seem to mean to me, is a group of enthusiast volunteers who want to do stuff. Yeah, the Volunteer Coordinator (Cary) might be a good point of approach then. And maybe in some cases (conferences, Wikipedia academies) the guy who is handling reachout (Frank). But the same goes for enthusiast volunteers in southern Spain, Zambia, Nepal or New Zealand. They would have to approach the same people for the same things, and I still do not see why US volunteers should take a different position on this. They are not more important, at most higher in number (although that would have to proof itself first).
As soon as there are legal entities (or at least groups with formalized structures) in the US, incorporated or not, I guess their point of approach would be the chapters coordinator (Delphine) / chapters committee . As long as you're not, I think that the regular current structures should be sufficient (because you're no "affiliate" anyways)..
BR, Lodewijk
Effe's correct.
Delphine is the point person for chapters, so if volunteers in the United States want to formally organize, she would be their contact for that. The fact that she's not in the United States doesn't/shouldn't matter - she's the chapters' global representative (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Argentina, Israel) and is used to working with people who are far from her geographically. There's no need for the United States to get any special treatment.
People who don't want to organize formally into chapters or chapter-like entities can continue to work with Cary, who is the point person for individual volunteers. So Pharos working with Cary for Wikipedia Takes Manhattan makes perfect sense :-)
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Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
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