All affiliates are required to follow local laws, and that is checked when we are asked or it is needed.
Our affiliates are increasingly diverse, so much of this really applies more to chapters and thematic organizations than all user groups. A majority of user groups are not legal entities.
Manuel was speaking to the user group requirements set out in the affiliation models, which as he said, are meant to be easier and less time consuming than the requirements for chapters and thematic organizations. That is separate from the requirements involved with doing some types of activities. The programmatic need for one user group may far easier to manage than the programmatic needs of another user group, and the model is designed to allow for that diversity.
-greg
On Oct 19, 2015, at 1:45 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Every country is different, in Australia you cant have a bank account for a User group without being registered, you cant work with GLAM without having public liability insurance for which the UG needs to be registered to obtain. If you operate unregistered all members are personally legally liable for the activities of any person who operates under the name. Even grants from the WMF could be taxable as income if your not part of a registered organisation
I think care should be used when chosing terms to describe affiliates and their requirements especially terms like liability which have legal implications,
Does the WMF/Affliiates committee check if due diligence is done on the local legal aspects for UGs before recognising them?
On 19 October 2015 at 13:27, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:
It is limited liability on both parts, meaning that user groups are not required to become legal entities, or maintain the higher reporting and capacity requirements that chapters and thematic organizations are required to maintain.
The considerations that you are mentioning are tied to your activities and not your status as a user group. It is a misleading and discouraging to others to imply that running a user group in the United States requires all of that liability and workload. User groups are not required to become legal entities (which Cascadia has opted to do), and can be as simple as a student club at a university. In other words, not all user groups are alike. The level of liability is tied to the activities the group engages in, not the affiliations model.
-greg (User:Varnent) Vice Chair, Affiliations Committee
On Oct 19, 2015, at 12:56 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Manuel,
Can you clarify what you mean by "limited liability" for user groups? I think you mean limited responsibilities as far as WMF is concerned. As
far
as the United States authorities are concerned, we have plenty of
paperwork
that we're expected to deal with, particularly if we're handling funds and/or hosting public events. Most of the paperwork is the same whether there are 5 people or 500 people involved, so it's a pretty complex operation, particularly if volunteers are dealing with all of this with
no
paid help. I had some experience with business law prior to my
involvement
in Cascadia Wikimedians, and even with that background I'm finding that there is a lot to learn and a lot of paperwork to deal with in order to keep our user group on solid legal ground.
Pine
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:05 AM, Schneider, Manuel < manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch> wrote:
Hi Ilario,
it is the will of the board to make it easy to start a recognised body
to
do work and it is totally acceptable if these bodies also die after
having
fulfilled their purpose - or grow and develop into other affiliation models. So the criterium for us is easy entry.
Anyway the user groups have limited liability and responsibilities,
access
to ressources is controlled on a case by case basis eg. through the
Grant
Avisory Committee and every year user groups must be renewed, for this
we
want so see a simple report. So every ug with the minimum of activity -
a
report written, having responded to our follow-up e-mail - is renewed.
/Manuel
-- sent from mobile phoneAm 18.10.2015 4:46 nachm. schrieb Ilario Valdelli
<
valdelli@gmail.com>:
I personally think that the main concern, in this proliferation of groups, is an lack of the implementation of a "good governance".
A user group is like a body, it can born, can develop and can die.
At the moment there is an unclear guideline about the monitoring and
the
development of these groups: they can only born.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups
Basically the affiliation committee creates these entities, but don't monitor them and don't evaluate to retire (or the best would be to freeze) some old entities when they become essentially inactive or
silent.
In this case the balance would be compensated and the proliferation of these groups would have a sense.
Kind regards
On 18.10.2015 16:48, Gregory Varnum wrote:
The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) has been preparing for the
increased momentum since the user group model was implemented, and it follows a pattern that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years.
In
2013, we approved 10 user groups, last year we approved 19, and so far
this
year we have approved around 20. That number will likely increase next year. This growing momentum is why we have continued to tweak the
approval
process to be faster and able to handle the growing momentum. So, from
our
perspective, this is something we have been preparing for from the
start,
and not a surprise.
Personally, I think further complicating affiliate classifications is
a bad idea. “Small” and “larger” are very culturally relative, varies across the models (there are user groups “larger” than chapters),
changes
over time, and implies that “large” affiliates do work “small”
affiliates
cannot, when we continue to see that is in fact not the case at all. The current criteria for WMCON is active and inactive, which seems far more appropriate. Additionally, dividing them will not save much money, if
any,
as there would still presumably be a gathering for the “small”
affiliates.
I agree with Leigh and others that affiliates should receive more
support, but I do not think those efforts will be served well by further dividing them.
-greg (User:Varnent) Vice Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee
-- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch
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