Regarding fundraising. From the recent discussion I've come to the conclusion that there isn't a fundraising committee, yet, so when there is one, I'll forward such ideas to it. But in the meantime, here you go.
I think there is a lot of untapped potential in selling existing WM items to try and increase the average donation. 'sweeteners'. The CafePress merch at the moment is a little bit crud. For example some Wikibooks already offer PDF versions (well, Learning German in English does, at least). So you could say, "Donate $X and receive a free e-book to learn German!" Or a "best of" the cookbook. The only extra cost to the Foundation is the bandwidth.
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers". Since we have so many I think we could even offer a choice between a few of these, by theme (eg landscapes, art, sunsets, science-y, insects having sex). We could set the donation bar for this $5 higher than whatever the average donation last time was.
I would also like to create some templates and put together some themes to allow people to easily make their own calendars from Commons material. And back to fundraising, CafePress does calendars. I don't really know who controls all that but I assume there'd be no objection if I/we put some together for that? I imagine they would sell really well in Nov/Dec. They also do prints and mousepads, gift cards...
Of course the markup on CafePress stuff is not great, it would be better if could be done inhouse somehow, but I haven't figured out a good solution to that yet. The "computer wallpapers" and PDF books stuff exists already though. I guess all you would need is to have the files on the foundation wiki and when a donation is over the target, they get some special 'download link'.
So, is what I'm proposing technically feasible, is it a good idea or will it probably be a lot of fuss for negligible impact, and should I start trying to find good candidates for such things?
cheers, Brianna en|commons:user:pfctdayelise
PS. I also think there is great potential in the Spoken Wikipedia material, but I haven't figured out what the best format for it would even be. How many could you reasonably ZIP?
On 6/7/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
I think there is a lot of untapped potential in selling existing WM items to try and increase the average donation.
Not to mention the branding benefits -- and my Wikipedia bag has been a conversation starter a few times already.
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers".
This has worked well for a few webcomics artists: make a donation, get a wallpaper. Of course, given that all our content is out there anyway, people may feel a bit cheated if they don't get something exclusive.
Erik
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers".
This has worked well for a few webcomics artists: make a donation, get a wallpaper. Of course, given that all our content is out there anyway, people may feel a bit cheated if they don't get something exclusive.
I don't think so, because (A) I don't think your average "Wikipedia rocks, man!"-appreciative donor probably even realises that the other projects exist. Let's face it, half the Wikipedians don't. ;) Also they are essentially paying for the convenience. Of course they could go and get them for free (that's rather the point), but they were going to donate anyway, right? And hey, we make it so easy for them...seems like warm fuzzies all round to me.
Besides being able to offer lots of PDFs of featured material from a range of projects in a range of languages (particularly a few European ones), we could also offer country/region-specific items to encourage parochial donations. eg. I could probably dig up 10 wallpaper-worthy pictures from Australia, to encourage Australian donations. Definitely the same with the UK, possibly NZ.
I'm not taking it so much from the angle of "let's sell these" as "let's encourage them to donate a tiny bit more with a feelgood 'freebie' and simultaneously display the breadth and quality of our coverage which they probably didn't realise existed".
Brianna
Hoi, What would be really cool if we can make a contest out of creating these pictures. When we want to provide pictures in certain categories for EVERY country, we can use it to stimulate interest in these countries.. when the "enemy" has a face, it becomes more like a "friend".
Even when a contest costs us money (a T-shirt a Certificate with the name of the photographer and the picture on it) it also helps us raise awareness of Commons. When we make this an anual event it will only be bigger next year.
Yes, the photo's that are the price winners would be offered in all the ways that are mentioned...
I am sure we can find a sponsor to pay for the prices as well ....
Thanks, GerardM
On 6/7/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers".
This has worked well for a few webcomics artists: make a donation, get a wallpaper. Of course, given that all our content is out there anyway, people may feel a bit cheated if they don't get something exclusive.
I don't think so, because (A) I don't think your average "Wikipedia rocks, man!"-appreciative donor probably even realises that the other projects exist. Let's face it, half the Wikipedians don't. ;) Also they are essentially paying for the convenience. Of course they could go and get them for free (that's rather the point), but they were going to donate anyway, right? And hey, we make it so easy for them...seems like warm fuzzies all round to me.
Besides being able to offer lots of PDFs of featured material from a range of projects in a range of languages (particularly a few European ones), we could also offer country/region-specific items to encourage parochial donations. eg. I could probably dig up 10 wallpaper-worthy pictures from Australia, to encourage Australian donations. Definitely the same with the UK, possibly NZ.
I'm not taking it so much from the angle of "let's sell these" as "let's encourage them to donate a tiny bit more with a feelgood 'freebie' and simultaneously display the breadth and quality of our coverage which they probably didn't realise existed".
Brianna _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 08/06/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What would be really cool if we can make a contest out of creating these pictures. When we want to provide pictures in certain categories for EVERY country, we can use it to stimulate interest in these countries.. when the "enemy" has a face, it becomes more like a "friend".
Hm... Featured Pictures is already quite a contest, and not such a friendly one. God forbid you nominate yet another sunset. :) I am not sure that encouraging generic-type images is such a great idea. It tends to be better if we have images created for a specific purpose, that happen to be beautiful and awesome and wallpapery.
Or if you mean encourage it just for specific countries, that's probably a good idea (save half a dozen countries which are probably already overrepresented).
Even when a contest costs us money (a T-shirt a Certificate with the name of the photographer and the picture on it) it also helps us raise awareness of Commons. When we make this an anual event it will only be bigger next year.
CafePress also does prints. We have some amazing panoramas that would go perfectly on your corporate boardroom wall.... or your parents' hallway.
Didn't Wikimania have several photo competitions last time, or was that something else? Is Wikimania doing that this year?
Also I don't know if cash is even necessary - we're talking about wikicontributors, after all. Prestige and bragging rights tend to be a big drawcard.
Brianna
On 6/7/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/06/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What would be really cool if we can make a contest out of creating these pictures. When we want to provide pictures in certain categories for EVERY country, we can use it to stimulate interest in these countries.. when the "enemy" has a face, it becomes more like a "friend".
Hm... Featured Pictures is already quite a contest, and not such a friendly one. God forbid you nominate yet another sunset. :) I am not sure that encouraging generic-type images is such a great idea. It tends to be better if we have images created for a specific purpose, that happen to be beautiful and awesome and wallpapery.
Why are they such a fierce contest? Probably because there are only so many days in a month. We have precious little material illustrating many countries. And when we get great quality expressive pictures, not necessarily beautiful and wallpapery but certainly awesome it will stimulate the articles we are lacking. Yes, there is some notion of an article on every locality in the USA but do we have the same for Iran of the Ivory Coast?
Or if you mean encourage it just for specific countries, that's probably a good idea (save half a dozen countries which are probably already overrepresented).
When we have a contest and we exclude the Netherlands, the USA or the UK we will have many people call foul. The rules of the contest can be such that the photos that we have are part in a category are part of the quality demands for a winning picture. When we have many GREAT pictures for the USA, the price winning pictures have to truly add something that was not there before...
Even when a contest costs us money (a T-shirt a Certificate with the name of the photographer and the picture on it) it also helps us raise awareness of Commons. When we make this an anual event it will only be bigger next year.
CafePress also does prints. We have some amazing panoramas that would go perfectly on your corporate boardroom wall.... or your parents' hallway.
Didn't Wikimania have several photo competitions last time, or was that something else? Is Wikimania doing that this year?
Also I don't know if cash is even necessary - we're talking about wikicontributors, after all. Prestige and bragging rights tend to be a big drawcard.
Bragging rights, do you have a T-shirt saying that you are a winner of the Wikimedia Photo challenge? A T-shirt does not cost much but it can be a really attractive item. I would only talk prices as in money when a sponsor takes up the tab.
Thanks, GerardM
On 6/7/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not taking it so much from the angle of "let's sell these" as "let's encourage them to donate a tiny bit more with a feelgood 'freebie' and simultaneously display the breadth and quality of our coverage which they probably didn't realise existed".
Plus the way these are delivered may make a difference. Yes, our stuff is free, and they could go do it themselves, but if they want to kick in a few extra pounds, dollars, etc., we could send them what they wanted and save them the trouble of having to find it all. Like if I was going to donate 25 pounds, I wouldn't mind kicking in an extra 5 if someone wanted to send me say, 12 good landscape pictures (or baseball, or trains, or whatever) so I could make myself a calandar. The time saved not having to find quality images is probably worth 5 pounds. Maybe it's just me. --LV
Yes ! I like your ideas.
Good news : the board just approved the creation of the Fundraising Committee. Get in touch with Mav to help on it.
Mav, there was a comment made by a board member about the scope of the committee. Can you draft us a scope pretty quickly and let's agree on it.
Ant
Brianna Laugher wrote:
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers".
This has worked well for a few webcomics artists: make a donation, get a wallpaper. Of course, given that all our content is out there anyway, people may feel a bit cheated if they don't get something exclusive.
I don't think so, because (A) I don't think your average "Wikipedia rocks, man!"-appreciative donor probably even realises that the other projects exist. Let's face it, half the Wikipedians don't. ;) Also they are essentially paying for the convenience. Of course they could go and get them for free (that's rather the point), but they were going to donate anyway, right? And hey, we make it so easy for them...seems like warm fuzzies all round to me.
Besides being able to offer lots of PDFs of featured material from a range of projects in a range of languages (particularly a few European ones), we could also offer country/region-specific items to encourage parochial donations. eg. I could probably dig up 10 wallpaper-worthy pictures from Australia, to encourage Australian donations. Definitely the same with the UK, possibly NZ.
I'm not taking it so much from the angle of "let's sell these" as "let's encourage them to donate a tiny bit more with a feelgood 'freebie' and simultaneously display the breadth and quality of our coverage which they probably didn't realise existed".
Brianna
On 6/8/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Good news : the board just approved the creation of the Fundraising Committee. Get in touch with Mav to help on it.
Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee for details.
Also, fundraising ideas are always welcome on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas regardless of participation in the fundraising committee.
Angela.
On 6/8/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/8/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Good news : the board just approved the creation of the Fundraising Committee. Get in touch with Mav to help on it.
Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee for details.
I've taken the liberty to add a list where people can register their interest in participating.
Erik
Looking around meta, I see now that there have been a few related concepts to what I have suggested, such as [[m:WikiReader]] (although it focused on printing) and [[m:Webshop]] (now long gone? I don't recall ever seeing it). I will probably write up a meta page with some of my ideas within the next week.
There are a few (very few) topics where we could put together really cool high quality content from nearly ALL the projects on the one theme. Wikibooks has European History as its BOTM which made me think of it. There is definitely Wikisource material available relevant to this. Definitely Wikipedia, maybe spoken Wikipedia too. Wikiquotes, yes. Commons, probably. OK not Wiktionary and probably not Wikinews. But I like the idea of bundling up all these high quality items from different projects on the one theme in a ZIP and offering them as a "Wikimedia Reader" or "Wikimedia Pack".
Brianna
All I have time to say is this - all good ideas that should be looked into.
Please sign-up at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee
Only a few people on the committee need access to sensitive things like the internal wiki, the PayPal and MoneyBookers accounts and the CafePress shop. Thus the fundcom will likely be the most open committee in the foundation.
Much work needs to be done by a great many fundcom advisers/associates/volunteers (title for non-core members not set yet); we have a donation queue in ORTS, the fundraising pages need a facelift, the CafePress shop needs *weekly* updates to keep people checking back for new merchandise, we need an army of translators, and need to explore new ideas for maximizing donations (such as those below).
-- mav
--- Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
I think there is a lot of untapped potential in selling existing WM items to try and increase the average donation. 'sweeteners'. The CafePress merch at the moment is a little bit crud. For example some Wikibooks already offer PDF versions (well, Learning German in English does, at least). So you could say, "Donate $X and receive a free e-book to learn German!" Or a "best of" the cookbook. The only extra cost to the Foundation is the bandwidth.
I am constantly amazed at the quality of Wikimedian photography at the Commons and we could easily bundle, say, 10 super high quality images together in a ZIP and offer "10 free computer wallpapers". Since we have so many I think we could even offer a choice between a few of these, by theme (eg landscapes, art, sunsets, science-y, insects having sex). We could set the donation bar for this $5 higher than whatever the average donation last time was.
I would also like to create some templates and put together some themes to allow people to easily make their own calendars from Commons material. And back to fundraising, CafePress does calendars. I don't really know who controls all that but I assume there'd be no objection if I/we put some together for that? I imagine they would sell really well in Nov/Dec. They also do prints and mousepads, gift cards...
Of course the markup on CafePress stuff is not great, it would be better if could be done inhouse somehow, but I haven't figured out a good solution to that yet. The "computer wallpapers" and PDF books stuff exists already though. I guess all you would need is to have the files on the foundation wiki and when a donation is over the target, they get some special 'download link'.
So, is what I'm proposing technically feasible, is it a good idea or will it probably be a lot of fuss for negligible impact, and should I start trying to find good candidates for such things?
cheers, Brianna en|commons:user:pfctdayelise
PS. I also think there is great potential in the Spoken Wikipedia material, but I haven't figured out what the best format for it would even be. How many could you reasonably ZIP? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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OK, I have started putting together some preliminary 'packs'.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/WikimediaShop & http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Commons:Packs
I gather the next fundraiser is coming up reasonably soon, so I suggest that instead of rolling out something huge, we offer something quietly. I think I can probably finalise 2-3 'Commons Packs' within the next few weeks (ZIP consisting of a set of 12 wallpaper-suitable Wikimedian-created images grouped by theme, + a README/licensing/intro/seealso/WMpromo HTML page) - definitely a Science one, plus maybe an animals/insects one or flowers, plus something landscape-y (we have tons of great images like this and I haven't started grouping them yet).
Here's the Science one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Commons:Packs#Science
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Avgsizebyday2005.png , only 3 days out of all the days during the 3 2005 fundraising drives had average donations of US$40. So I suggest we set that as target for this sweetener, to try and lift the average donation to $40 more of the time.
We could then make a statement like "donate more than US$40 and receive a set of 12 beautiful computer wallpapers for free! 3 themes to choose from" and then that would take them through to a download page where they can choose. I don't know anything about what would be technically required here.
Two possible problems there, one is that it might drag down some donations if people were already planning to donate, say, $50, they might think, "Hey, $40 is enough" and only donate that instead. Another possible problem is that it might take away from all the goodwill fuzziness and people will instead think, "Hey, $40 for computer wallpaper, that's a rort. Stuff them" (except possibly think this in a less Australian way :))
So if, for these reasons, all ye foundation-l folk aren't keen to do this, then I have a backup suggestion! Offer the downloads to people who donate above $40 (or whatever), but as a (semi-)secret - don't tell them before they donate. Then we can say, "Since you donated above $40, you receive a free wallpaper set as a special thankyou." I can't see anyone having a problem with this since hey, they already donated...
I guess we would be able to get download statistics, so we would at least be able to see if people are keen to download such things, and we can set up a feedback page obviously and hopefully if people like them they will let us know. If it seems to be liked then I would look at expanding into more "Packs" and cross-project material. And if nothing else, it will promote the Commons ;) and our fabulously talented Wikimedians.
so... ?
cheers, Brianna
On 6/11/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
OK, I have started putting together some preliminary 'packs'.
We have to make absolutely certain that the copyright on those are all absolutely kosher before WMF burns and ships anything.
Kelly
On 12/06/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/11/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
OK, I have started putting together some preliminary 'packs'.
We have to make absolutely certain that the copyright on those are all absolutely kosher before WMF burns and ships anything.
Well, of course... I have said that from the start. Most of them in the Science set are from well-established regulars on en.wp or commons Featured Pictures. And I explicitly didn't propose to "burn and ship" anything.
Brianna
All of this fundraising talk is very nice and dandy, but it sounds like plans for the local glee club, not an international foundation. No one has yet mentioned any of the legal/accounting requirements of fundraising, the costs, or the actual manhours involved. For instance:
1 Are we allowed to solicit funds anywhere? Not quite as simple as you may think.
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).
3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes, Any donor who gives over $200 must receive written notification for IRS purposes. This includes multiple donations--for instance, if someone gives $20 a month over a period of a year, they will require such notification. That's a lot of donors to keep track of
4 Someone suggested that the committee "oversee" the sending of proper thanks, etc. Note that the average donation last year was $25 and we raised about half a million, i.e., 20,000 thank you notes. While it is good of you to volunteer overseeing me sending them out, it would be much more helpful if you would actually lick the envelopes.
These are just a few items off the top of my head. Note that donations come via Paypal, Moneybookers, direct deposit to either of two accounts (US and Europe), and checks mailed to the office. A percentage of our donors are repeats. Proper records must be kept for all donations for accounting purposes or else we risk losing our tax-free status, yet no one has considered GAAP for not-for-profits. Hey, guys, welcome to the real world.
Danny ________________________________________________________________________ Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.
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?
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.
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?
Erik
--- Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Getting that to work should be easy enough. All we really need are a number of trusted people willing to do the work. However, getting this wrong could have enough of a penalty to warrant an in-office solution that periodically uses a limited number of supervised volunteers who can travel to the St Pete office. We have a meet-up each year in St Petersburg in mid-January and the deadline to get notifications out for the previous calendar year is at the end of January. Im sure we could get some trusted people who would already be in St Pete for the meet-up to help with a mailing.
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?
This has already been taken care of for the 2005 tax season.
Does the applicable law already allow for the use of digitally signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail?
It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to change what those emails say). See http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485
-- mav
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On 6/13/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
Does the applicable law already allow for the use of digitally signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail?
It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to change what those emails say). See http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485
-- mav
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."
Anthony
--- Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to change what those emails say). See http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485
-- mav
Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written" communications. From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide the acknowledgment electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
Anthony is correct. My point though, is that I'm pretty sure that the confirmation emails sent by PayPal and MoneyBookers do not clearly provide all the information needed for donors donating $250 or more. Most importantly, they do not explicitly declare whether or not we gave the donor "any goods or services as a result of [the donor's] contribution (other than certain token items and membership benefits)."
Giving people gifts for donating would complicate that equation. The current system simply can't handle that can of tracking. Something I'd like the fundcom to tackle. We need people familiar with php, HTML and/or MySQL to work that out.
Sign up at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee
-- mav
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On 6/13/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Giving people gifts for donating would complicate that equation. The current system simply can't handle that can of tracking. Something I'd like the fundcom to tackle. We need people familiar with php, HTML and/or MySQL to work that out.
There are several good software packages out there for donor management. Unfortunately, none of them are open source. There are no such packages in the open source world (while there is a rudimentary open source CRM solution, it is primitive at best and is not specifically designed for the needs of a non-profit). Our problem is that we need a solution now, today, not in the two to three years (if ever) it would take for the open source community to develop such a package.
Perhaps the Foundation would care to hire a few developers to write such a package; if they're not up for that, I'd strongly urge them to consider using one of the commercial packages, ideological differences about nonfree software aside. (Hey, we use Cisco hardware, which runs on the very proprietary IOS, and I suspect you'll find that a majority of Wikimedia contributors run either MacOS or Windows, neither of which is free either. We have no real claim to ideological purity.)
Kelly
On 6/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
All of this fundraising talk is very nice and dandy, but it sounds like plans for the local glee club, not an international foundation. No one has yet mentioned any of the legal/accounting requirements of fundraising, the costs, or the actual manhours involved.
How was this handled in the past? Did it go well? What were the problems? Can someone give a report?
Do you have any idea where one could go about looking up the legal/accounting requirements of fundraising, or is this a first step that needs to be taken?
1 Are we allowed to solicit funds anywhere? Not quite as simple as you may think.
I would think under US law that this is allowed, but obviously a lawyer needs to be contacted about that. I'd suggest taking that to juriwiki. Maybe you or someone else could give a report, since many of us don't have access to that list.
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).
It certainly wouldn't make sense to have you stuff the envelopes. Is direct mailing definitely something that's going to be done?
3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes, Any donor who gives over $200 must receive written notification for IRS purposes. This includes multiple donations--for instance, if someone gives $20 a month over a period of a year, they will require such notification. That's a lot of donors to keep track of
Are you sure this isn't just a requirement in order for the donation to be tax deductible? Can you give a cite so we can look at this? I know there is a requirement that cash donations over $250, including over the course of a year, must be substantiated in order to be deductible, but I always thought that the burden was on the donor to provide correct contact information. It's certainly *possible*, for instance, for me to put $10 a week in cash into the church basket without the church knowing to give me a written receipt. It just wouldn't be fully deductible in that case.
4 Someone suggested that the committee "oversee" the sending of proper thanks, etc. Note that the average donation last year was $25 and we raised about half a million, i.e., 20,000 thank you notes. While it is good of you to volunteer overseeing me sending them out, it would be much more helpful if you would actually lick the envelopes.
It's good that you pointed this out. The committee should certainly consider making sure there are enough volunteers to handle such a task. And someone should buy you one of those sponge things so that Wikimedia doesn't have to pay for your worker's comp when you get poisoned by envelope glue :).
These are just a few items off the top of my head. Note that donations come via Paypal, Moneybookers, direct deposit to either of two accounts (US and Europe), and checks mailed to the office. A percentage of our donors are repeats. Proper records must be kept for all donations for accounting purposes or else we risk losing our tax-free status, yet no one has considered GAAP for not-for-profits. Hey, guys, welcome to the real world.
Danny
Geez, someone should certainly be considering this. Isn't this the job of mav and/or the treasurer?
If no one is considering this, I'd say call three or more CPAs right now and get quotes. And get the job listings ready - you need a bookkeeper.
Anthony
On 6/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes, Any donor who gives over $200 must receive written notification for IRS purposes. This includes multiple donations--for instance, if someone gives $20 a month over a period of a year, they will require such notification. That's a lot of donors to keep track of
Are you sure this isn't just a requirement in order for the donation to be tax deductible? Can you give a cite so we can look at this? I know there is a requirement that cash donations over $250, including over the course of a year, must be substantiated in order to be deductible, but I always thought that the burden was on the donor to provide correct contact information. It's certainly *possible*, for instance, for me to put $10 a week in cash into the church basket without the church knowing to give me a written receipt. It just wouldn't be fully deductible in that case.
See publication 1771 for more on this. Now I don't know if this was what you were talking about, but according to the publication:
"An organization which does not acknowledge a contribution incurs no penalty; but, without a written acknowledgement, the donor cannot claim the tax deduction."
The publication also says that "An organization can provide the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
It also says "Separate contributions will not be aggregated. An example of this would be weekly offerings to a donor's church of less than $250, even though the donor's annual total contributions are $250 or more." I guess I was mistaken that such donations wouldn't be fully deductible.
Note that none of this applies to quid-pro-quo donations, which have a different set of rules. So if you're giving cafe-press T-shirts to donors, and these shirts don't meet the "token exception", then you have to play by different rules.
Obviously that whole publication should be read. It outlines the exact requirements of the acknowledgement letter, which I won't copy here.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
4 Someone suggested that the committee "oversee" the sending of proper thanks, etc. Note that the average donation last year was $25 and we raised about half a million, i.e., 20,000 thank you notes. While it is good of you to volunteer overseeing me sending them out, it would be much more helpful if you would actually lick the envelopes.
It's good that you pointed this out. The committee should certainly consider making sure there are enough volunteers to handle such a task. And someone should buy you one of those sponge things so that Wikimedia doesn't have to pay for your worker's comp when you get poisoned by envelope glue :).
Alternatively, use self-adhesive stamps that you can just peel off of a backing sheet.
Ec
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