I think this raises some important questions. I am giving only partial answers right now, but they should be some indication of the direction, at least as I see it.
In a message dated 6/13/2006 6:21:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time, eloquence@gmail.com writes:
On 6/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
1 Are we allowed to solicit funds anywhere? Not quite as simple as you may think.
I remember that we've had those discussions before about the fundraising page and the way it should be worded. In recent fund drives, however, we've become more aggressive, with a personal appeal from Jimmy, slogans like "Help empower the world", and so on. We still have a disclaimer that this does not constitute a solicitation, but is that sufficient? Are we currently registered in any U.S. state other than Florida for solicitation of funds? If not, would such a registration make sense? Yes, however, I would hope that a genuine fundraising campaign would extend beyond placing a banner on our websites. It would involve solicitation and, especially, donor cultivation, especially of people making large gifts. The registration process to do this outside of Florida is complicated. It is well underway, but requires time and oversight, as it must be done annually in each state individually.
2 What is the cost of a direct mailing? Try multiplying postage costs by
1000s,
add printing costs, then add hourly rates. We can either do the mailing
in-house
(at which point you must consider whether it is worth paying my salary to
have
me stuff envelopes) or a service (which adds to the costs).
How about trying to decentralize the "licking envelopes" part? Allow a large number of reasonably trusted volunteers to send "thank you" notes (add some legal disclaimer about the sender not being a Wikimedia employee etc. if necessary). Compensate them for postage, but not for time. I'm not sure this is a viable model, but it may be worth trying out.
I agree that this may not be a viable model but worth trying out. Note that in an earlier email, I asked for volunteers and specifically mentioned this. So far one person has volunteered. Regardless, there are some other issues taht should be considered, such as the uniformity of the thank you note. This would mean shipping cards, letters, printed envelopes, and what have you to people--another cost that should be considered. There is also the issue of oversight. I can imagine people pushing off the tedious stuffing of envelopes for any number of valid reasons. What assurance do we have that the proper mailings get sent. Note that I do not believe these problems are insurmountable--just that they should be considered. There are also other options, such as paying a commercial service to do this, however, this is an added expense.
3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes
That's a good point. How good are we presently at complying with these regulations, e.g. notifying people who make >$200 donations outside regular fund drives? Does the applicable law already allow for the use of digitally signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail? To date, this has been done in time. I have even instituted a policy that a letter is now sent immediately upon receipt by snail mail of any gift over $200. I also have PDFs of each letter for our own records. One practical thing to note is that the bulk of larger donations is sent via bank transfer or personal check mailed to the office, not by Paypal. As such, even if we were able to send such letters electronically (and I was under the impression that we could not), the only contact information we often have is a snail mail address, so the question is moot.
Danny
On 6/14/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Yes, however, I would hope that a genuine fundraising campaign would extend beyond placing a banner on our websites. It would involve solicitation and, especially, donor cultivation, especially of people making large gifts. The registration process to do this outside of Florida is complicated. It is well underway, but requires time and oversight, as it must be done annually in each state individually.
Are there ways in which the community or the fundraising committee could help with that process?
I agree that this may not be a viable model but worth trying out. Note that in an earlier email, I asked for volunteers and specifically mentioned this. So far one person has volunteered.
Prod, prod, prod! :-) Let's make a page on Meta for people to sign up and indicate their interests to do this for particular countries, and then announce it widely (most Wikimedians don't read foundation-l). But before we do this, I would like to clearly distinguish between the _legal_ requirements and what we _want_ to do. Anthony said:
Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written" communications. From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
Is that correct? What is Brad's opinion on the legal requirements? In some EU countries, we have also gradually introduced digital signatures as a valid definition of "written communications". I would like to be absolutely clear on what we have to do. If we can use digitally signed e-mails, we should do so, even if it requires an initial investment in know-how and a certificate.
Written thank you notes and Christmas cards are a good idea to maintain donor relations, of course. But if we can keep the legal requirements separate, we might be able to more efficiently decentralize our communications by not burdening our volunteers with unnecessary legal complexity -- we could send out standard e-mails _and_ creative volunteer greetings from around the globe. This would also make the checking whether a letter has been sent less critical. And let's face it -- getting a personal greeting from a Wikimedian is cool in its own special way.
Regardless, there are some other issues taht should be considered, such as the uniformity of the thank you note. This would mean shipping cards, letters, printed envelopes, and what have you to people--another cost that should be considered.
Well, I'm not sure how uniform they have to be given the above. The legally required communications should be standardized, of course.
Erik
On 6/13/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
But before we do this, I would like to clearly distinguish between the _legal_ requirements and what we _want_ to do. Anthony said:
Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written" communications. From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
Is that correct? What is Brad's opinion on the legal requirements? In some EU countries, we have also gradually introduced digital signatures as a valid definition of "written communications". I would like to be absolutely clear on what we have to do. If we can use digitally signed e-mails, we should do so, even if it requires an initial investment in know-how and a certificate.
Publication 1771 is available at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf if anyone wants to read it. And to clarify, there's no requirement for the email to be digitally signed.
Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is rather moot. Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating $250, that's only four tenths of one percent. Email would be more useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to release their address.
I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the United States, but then again how many people living outside the United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US tax return where they itemize deductions? Probably 0.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/13/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
But before we do this, I would like to clearly distinguish between the _legal_ requirements and what we _want_ to do. Anthony said:
Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written" communications. From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
Is that correct? What is Brad's opinion on the legal requirements? In some EU countries, we have also gradually introduced digital signatures as a valid definition of "written communications". I would like to be absolutely clear on what we have to do. If we can use digitally signed e-mails, we should do so, even if it requires an initial investment in know-how and a certificate.
Publication 1771 is available at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf if anyone wants to read it. And to clarify, there's no requirement for the email to be digitally signed.
Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is rather moot. Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating $250, that's only four tenths of one percent. Email would be more useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to release their address.
I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the United States, but then again how many people living outside the United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US tax return where they itemize deductions? Probably 0.
Anthony
How, I do not know how you arrive at that $1. It typically is substantially more. It is not only postage, you are sending something that is printed, there is the handling, there is a certain percentage that returns. You do want to maintain your database and register those RTS. You then have to consider how to follow up, do you want to find out what is wrong with the address. On average it costs over $5 to handle a RTS. When you do not handle this well, you get yourself on the wrong side of organisations that monitor charities that ask for money. This can cost you your license in the first place but worse, it can give a organisation a bad name.
Once you decide to do professional marketing, you have to ensure that you maintain your database. This should mean that you commit to doing it well. The benefits can be huge and given our brand recognition it is likely to be huge. But please do this well or do not do it all. Thanks, GerardM
On 6/14/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is rather moot. Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating $250, that's only four tenths of one percent. Email would be more useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to release their address.
I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the United States, but then again how many people living outside the United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US tax return where they itemize deductions? Probably 0.
Anthony
How, I do not know how you arrive at that $1. It typically is substantially more. It is not only postage, you are sending something that is printed, there is the handling, there is a certain percentage that returns. You do want to maintain your database and register those RTS. You then have to consider how to follow up, do you want to find out what is wrong with the address. On average it costs over $5 to handle a RTS.
I don't know how you arrive at $5, but that's only for letters that are returned to the sender. What about the others, and what percentage is generally returned to the sender?
And what if you just want to ignore those letters that are returned to the sender?
Let's think about 1000 letters. High quality business paper should be less than $50. Add $50 more for toner. Envelopes are $10. Labels are $10. A paper folder is $100 (should last a lot longer than 1000 letters, though). That makes $220 to produce the letters. Add in $390 for postage, which assumes you don't have the volume to send at the nonprofit rate. Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor, which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help. At 50 letters an hour (slow) and $10/hour (expensive) that's $200. Comes out to $810, so at that volume with those assumptions we're still under $1/letter with about 20% to spare.
If volume goes down price goes up, but take the volume under 500 letters or so and it's something Danny could do by himself in a couple days.
Now I assume the foundation already has a decent laser printer. Am I wrong here? And I was neglecting the cost of keeping the database, because that's something that has to be done anyway.
When you do not handle this well, you get yourself on the wrong side of organisations that monitor charities that ask for money. This can cost you your license in the first place but worse, it can give a organisation a bad name.
What license is going to be lost by making what types of mistakes?
Once you decide to do professional marketing, you have to ensure that you maintain your database. This should mean that you commit to doing it well. The benefits can be huge and given our brand recognition it is likely to be huge. But please do this well or do not do it all. Thanks, GerardM
I wasn't talking about professional marketing, I was talking about the cost to send letters to people who donated at least $250.
If it really does cost $5/letter, you could always tell people to include an extra $5 if they want a written confirmation letter. But I don't see where you're getting this figure.
Anthony
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor, which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.
In Tampa bay?
Do you think that just one person working for a few hours is enough to stuff 1000 envelopes? If not, I don't know what you're thinking... because pretty much not more than number of Tampa localers showed up at the last meetup there, and .. well.. A meetup isn't work.
You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our volunteers are willing to perform.
On 6/14/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor, which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.
In Tampa bay?
In the Tampa Bay area, say a 50 mile radius of the main office. Or say the USF campus, to make it even simpler.
Do you think that just one person working for a few hours is enough to stuff 1000 envelopes?
I've seen 2000 envelopes stuffed by 3 people in a few hours. But that was where the content of all the envelopes was identical, which is a lot easier.
As I said, I think 50 envelopes per person-hour is a slow estimate. That'd be 5 people for 4 hours.
If not, I don't know what you're thinking... because pretty much not more than number of Tampa localers showed up at the last meetup there, and .. well.. A meetup isn't work.
I'd be more likely to show up at a meeting where something important is going to be accomplished than to show up at a meetup where people hang out and socialize.
You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our volunteers are willing to perform.
We're not talking about a majority of volunteers, just a handful.
Anthony
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
In the Tampa Bay area, say a 50 mile radius of the main office. Or say the USF campus, to make it even simpler.
Actually, that's a great idea. Hit up some college or university campus, find a group of 5-10 people, tell 'em you'll give 'em a few bucks (20-40... depending on how many you recruit) for stuffing envelopes for WMF for a couple of hours. Most college kids are strapped for cash and would eagerly participate. While the speed of the work may not be that of a professional company, it would be cheaper, and perhaps even spark interest in Wikimedia projects if the university newspaper ran a little story about students helping out WMF (like we need more university student contributors 8^ ) ). I don't know, just throwing out some thoughts. --LV
On 6/14/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
In the Tampa Bay area, say a 50 mile radius of the main office. Or say the USF campus, to make it even simpler.
Actually, that's a great idea. Hit up some college or university campus, find a group of 5-10 people, tell 'em you'll give 'em a few bucks (20-40... depending on how many you recruit) for stuffing envelopes for WMF for a couple of hours. Most college kids are strapped for cash and would eagerly participate. While the speed of the work may not be that of a professional company, it would be cheaper, and perhaps even spark interest in Wikimedia projects if the university newspaper ran a little story about students helping out WMF (like we need more university student contributors 8^ ) ). I don't know, just throwing out some thoughts. --LV
If you're going to go that route, you should at least pay minimum wage. I rounded up to $10/hour in my estimate.
Of course I think you could probably get 5-10 people from the USF campus just by offering them free pizza and soda and telling them it's for a good cause. And more than 5 people is probably too much unless we're talking about a volume much greater than 1000. Those paper folding machines are an enormous time-saver, and just one inexpensive one probably isn't going to support more than 5 workers.
Anthony
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
If you're going to go that route, you should at least pay minimum wage. I rounded up to $10/hour in my estimate.
Of course I think you could probably get 5-10 people from the USF campus just by offering them free pizza and soda and telling them it's for a good cause. And more than 5 people is probably too much unless we're talking about a volume much greater than 1000. Those paper folding machines are an enormous time-saver, and just one inexpensive one probably isn't going to support more than 5 workers.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of a stipend in exchange for helping out a good cause (rather than an hourly wage... as I have found, that _sometimes_ leads to people dragging out the work). Or do pizza and soda with a small cash "prize" of like 25 bucks for the one who stuffs the most. I just ran by the Office Depot website and priced a few decent looking paper folders in the range of USD 150-1500 that fold between 1800 and 10,300 pages an hour. Just in case you cared. Although, my guess is that these could be found cheaper if you know who to go to (or have some connections) ;-) --LV
On 6/14/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
If you're going to go that route, you should at least pay minimum wage. I rounded up to $10/hour in my estimate.
Of course I think you could probably get 5-10 people from the USF campus just by offering them free pizza and soda and telling them it's for a good cause. And more than 5 people is probably too much unless we're talking about a volume much greater than 1000. Those paper folding machines are an enormous time-saver, and just one inexpensive one probably isn't going to support more than 5 workers.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of a stipend in exchange for helping out a good cause (rather than an hourly wage... as I have found, that _sometimes_ leads to people dragging out the work). Or do pizza and soda with a small cash "prize" of like 25 bucks for the one who stuffs the most.
I'm not very familiar with minimum wage law, so I don't know whether or not calling it a stipend would work. I do hate minimum wage laws because of exactly this type of situation, though. And, unfortunately, Florida did just pass one recently.
I just ran by the Office Depot website and priced a few decent looking paper folders in the range of USD 150-1500 that fold between 1800 and 10,300 pages an hour. Just in case you cared. Although, my guess is that these could be found cheaper if you know who to go to (or have some connections) ;-) --LV
That price range sounds about right (a little on the high side, but not much). The thing you have to remember though is that these letters are almost surely going to be personalized. So if you plan on processing them first and then stuffing them later, you have to consider how you're going to maintain order.
As for connections, I live in Tampa and I *might* be able to borrow one of these for a couple days. Let me know when and if there are definite plans as to when this is going to be done.
These machines really are a time saver. Back when I was a volunteer firefighter we used to fold our donation request letters manually, and it took a *lot* longer.
Anthony
--- Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, that's a great idea. Hit up some college or university campus, find a group of 5-10 people, tell 'em you'll give 'em a few bucks (20-40... depending on how many you recruit) for stuffing envelopes for WMF for a couple of hours. Most college kids are strapped for cash and would eagerly participate. While the speed of the work may not be that of a professional company, it would be cheaper, and perhaps even spark interest in Wikimedia projects if the university newspaper ran a little story about students helping out WMF (like we need more university student contributors 8^ ) ). I don't know, just throwing out some thoughts. LV
Which reminds me - I have a standing offer from a professor at a university in the Tampa area to have his students help in just such an effort. All I think we would be expected to give the students is lunch, refreshments and maybe a ride.
-- mav
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Lord Voldemort wrote:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
In the Tampa Bay area, say a 50 mile radius of the main office. Or say the USF campus, to make it even simpler.
Actually, that's a great idea. Hit up some college or university campus, find a group of 5-10 people, tell 'em you'll give 'em a few bucks (20-40... depending on how many you recruit) for stuffing envelopes for WMF for a couple of hours. Most college kids are strapped for cash and would eagerly participate. While the speed of the work may not be that of a professional company, it would be cheaper, and perhaps even spark interest in Wikimedia projects if the university newspaper ran a little story about students helping out WMF (like we need more university student contributors 8^ ) ). I don't know, just throwing out some thoughts. --LV _______________________________________________
Better check out local labor laws. It is my understanding that occasionally tasks may be completed like this but if it becomes a regular thing then it is frowned upon as avoiding minimum wage laws and there can be substantial fines.
regards, lazyquasar
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our volunteers are willing to perform. _______________________________________________
Part of the problem attracting interest in what others choose to define as "work" is this mindset of telling others to shut up and get back to work or attempting to shut down information flow by calling others "windbags" or implying if they will not volunteer for your personally defined most important task they should minimize the impact on the mailing list.
This was chanted early and often by our lead editors and founding members. I arrived at 39k and counting. Now the English wikipedia has well over a million articles and counting and a few people on this list, which as I understand it is not the wikipedia english list, are presenting issues around the quality of articles throughout the english Wikipedia as a possibly generic problem with wiki data products built by internet volunteers. Shutting up and adding another article to the pile will not resolve this or many other issues which the Wikimedia Foundation is experiencing.
Feel free to ignore my posts. It will reduce the wind for the next few days, weeks, or months substantially.
I intend to particpate heavily in this list until it becomes time to initialize wikiversity and I shall vamoose for a while until in my perception it becomes advantageous to my pet project with wikiversity to show up and absorb some more information regarding the politics, organization, and procedures that seem to be impacting my preferred tasks in less than optimal ways.
I know little of your background but I will share with you in case it has escaped your attention that even when you are paying people it is usually counter productive to "yell shut up and get back to work" unless you are running an old style sweatshop or have very specific well defined tasks and plenty of supervisors standing around playing gestapo.
Modern business practice in the U.S. has generally concluded the getstapo overhead is too high to remain competitive. Perhaps this is true even when not paying some or most of the work force?
Have a nice day.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our volunteers are willing to perform. _______________________________________________
Part of the problem attracting interest in what others choose to define as "work" is this mindset of telling others to shut up and get back to work or attempting to shut down information flow by calling others "windbags" or implying if they will not volunteer for your personally defined most important task they should minimize the impact on the mailing list.
This was chanted early and often by our lead editors and founding members. I arrived at 39k and counting. Now the English wikipedia has well over a million articles and counting and a few people on this list, which as I understand it is not the wikipedia english list, are presenting issues around the quality of articles throughout the english Wikipedia as a possibly generic problem with wiki data products built by internet volunteers. Shutting up and adding another article to the pile will not resolve this or many other issues which the Wikimedia Foundation is experiencing.
Feel free to ignore my posts. It will reduce the wind for the next few days, weeks, or months substantially.
I intend to particpate heavily in this list until it becomes time to initialize wikiversity and I shall vamoose for a while until in my perception it becomes advantageous to my pet project with wikiversity to show up and absorb some more information regarding the politics, organization, and procedures that seem to be impacting my preferred tasks in less than optimal ways.
I know little of your background but I will share with you in case it has escaped your attention that even when you are paying people it is usually counter productive to "yell shut up and get back to work" unless you are running an old style sweatshop or have very specific well defined tasks and plenty of supervisors standing around playing gestapo.
Modern business practice in the U.S. has generally concluded the getstapo overhead is too high to remain competitive. Perhaps this is true even when not paying some or most of the work force?
Have a nice day.
regards, lazyquasar
Oh, we reached the Godwin point ;-) Well, whilst I certainly do not agree with all your points lazyquasar, I found many insightful comments in your emails. I do not ignore your posts.
Ant
Stop writing to me ! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony DiPierro" wikilegal@inbox.org To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:37 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble
On 6/14/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is rather moot. Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating $250, that's only four tenths of one percent. Email would be more useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to release their address.
I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the United States, but then again how many people living outside the United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US tax return where they itemize deductions? Probably 0.
Anthony
How, I do not know how you arrive at that $1. It typically is substantially more. It is not only postage, you are sending something that is printed, there is the handling, there is a certain percentage that returns. You do want to maintain your database and register those RTS. You then have to consider how to follow up, do you want to find out what is wrong with the address. On average it costs over $5 to handle a RTS.
I don't know how you arrive at $5, but that's only for letters that are returned to the sender. What about the others, and what percentage is generally returned to the sender?
And what if you just want to ignore those letters that are returned to the sender?
Let's think about 1000 letters. High quality business paper should be less than $50. Add $50 more for toner. Envelopes are $10. Labels are $10. A paper folder is $100 (should last a lot longer than 1000 letters, though). That makes $220 to produce the letters. Add in $390 for postage, which assumes you don't have the volume to send at the nonprofit rate. Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor, which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help. At 50 letters an hour (slow) and $10/hour (expensive) that's $200. Comes out to $810, so at that volume with those assumptions we're still under $1/letter with about 20% to spare.
If volume goes down price goes up, but take the volume under 500 letters or so and it's something Danny could do by himself in a couple days.
Now I assume the foundation already has a decent laser printer. Am I wrong here? And I was neglecting the cost of keeping the database, because that's something that has to be done anyway.
When you do not handle this well, you get yourself on the wrong side of organisations that monitor charities that ask for money. This can cost you your license in the first place but worse, it can give a organisation a bad name.
What license is going to be lost by making what types of mistakes?
Once you decide to do professional marketing, you have to ensure that you maintain your database. This should mean that you commit to doing it well. The benefits can be huge and given our brand recognition it is likely to be huge. But please do this well or do not do it all. Thanks, GerardM
I wasn't talking about professional marketing, I was talking about the cost to send letters to people who donated at least $250.
If it really does cost $5/letter, you could always tell people to include an extra $5 if they want a written confirmation letter. But I don't see where you're getting this figure.
Anthony _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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