These are some questions and answers the staff suggested on sub-national chapters. As mentioned, these are more preliminary than definitive. The observant will detect that they were prepared before the board met, because it refers to Brazil as a large country without a chapter, but the board approved a chapter for Brazil at its meeting. Q What do chapters do? A Currently, each chapter carries out a unique mix of activities as it sees fit. Most chapters engage in the following program activities: 1., Public outreach, advocacy and media relations work on behalf of the projects; 2., volunteer recruitment and coordination; 3., development and execution of non-monetary partnerships designed to increase quality (e.g., A TV program donates 100 interviews under a free license); 4. technical work such as MediaWiki software development and provision of dedicated hardware and software infrastructure which supports the local community. In order to fund those activities, chapters generally aim to bring in revenues, typically via some combination of fundraising, grant seeking and business development. Q Where do chapters exist today? A Chapters exist in 17 countries. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters for the complete list. Q Is the main argument in favour of sub-national chapters geography (meaning, the United States is so big that people from Florida and California will never naturally work together)? A Some very large countries have formed chapters (e.g., Russia, Australia, Argentina) and some very large countries have not (e.g., China, Canada, the United States, Brazil, India): it's hard to separate out the role that geographic size has played. However, anecdotally, we do know that Canadian and American volunteers have cited geographic size of their countries as inhibiting their ability to form a nation-based chapter, which has led to their wanting to form sub-national chapters. So it probably does play some role, for some countries. Q Should countries be required to form a nation-based chapter before sub-national chapters can be formed? A No. Where sub-national chapters are formed, we shouldn't presuppose that a nation-based chapter is necessary or even desirable. Q Should we distinguish in any way among different types of sub-national chapters, such as state-based versus city-based? A No. All sub-national chapters should have the same status. There's no compelling reason to differentiate between for example a Wikimedia Banagalore (city) and a Wikimedia Karnataka (state). Q Should the Wikimedia Foundation allow sub-national chapters to form where geographic boundaries are disputed? A Provided that the local community can form an organization with legal standing, there is no reason not to form a sub-national chapter in regions with disputed geographic boundaries. It's important to note that Wikimedia does not take a point of view on contentious political issues, so it should not be part of the purpose of any chapter to advocate for or against resolution of a particular political dispute one way or another. Q Aren't we setting up sub-national chapters to compete for funding with nation-based chapters? A Thus far, our experience suggests that lots of people and organizations want to help fund Wikimedia. We have not had a challenge finding potential funders – our challenges have centred around our lack of capacity to cultivate and steward funders. In other words, more organizations mandated to solicit funding would be a good thing for the Wikimedia movement. It's also true that every funder has different interests and motivations. Many are constrained to a specific geographic area or a specific field of interest. Sub-national chapters may be effective at securing regional funding that a nation-based chapter could overlook or be less suited to. However, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that in the future sub-national chapters may be in competition with nation-based chapters, or even with the Wikimedia Foundation, for funds – resulting in a kind of 'natural selection' process in which some entities thrive and others do not. In our view, that is not a terrible outcome. Q In the United States (and possibly other countries), it is possible to take advantage of something called the “group exemption” - which allows an existing non-profit to act as the parent organization for its sub-groups, thereby allowing the sub-groups to exist as non-profits without themselves needing to file the necessary paperwork. Should the Wikimedia Foundation, or a Wikimedia U.S. organization, act as the parent organization for U.S.-based sub-national chapters, enabling sub-national chapters to take advantage of the group exemption? A No, for a number of reasons. It is true that the Wikimedia Foundation could serve as the parent organization for any prospective U.S.-based sub-national chapters. However, we feel that would be inadvisable for the following reasons: *The chapters are intended to function independently from the Wikimedia Foundation. However, the group exemption requires the affiliated entities to be “subordinates” “under the control” of the parent organization. This is inconsistent with how we view the relationship between the Foundation and the chapters. *The Wikimedia Foundation is an international organization based in the United States. The experience of the U.S.-based sub-national chapters should, as much as possible, be protected from distorting influences due to the Wikimedia Foundation's presence in the same country. As much as possible, we want the U.S.-based sub-national chapters to travel the same path and have the same experiences as sub-national chapters elsewhere. To do otherwise would be to risk unintended negative consequences to both. *There may be legal issues. We would not want to create legal exposure for U.S.-based sub-national chapters, due to association with the Wikimedia Foundation. *It doesn't actually save that much paperwork. For example, under a group exemption, each sub-national chapter must still file tax returns. --Michael Snow