Dear Ashwin Sir,
With all due respect you are deviating from the topic. In my different
capacities with different affiliates, I have been bestowed with the
responsibility for communications. Please understand EC is *collectively*
responsible to its members, your statement is undermining its office.
If you are concerned about other EC members not active, I would
recommend you to check the reports <
gt;.
All have some contribution or the other.
Now, I recommend you not to deviate form the principal issue. Funding is
not the only issue, earlier Foundation was mentioning about Chapter not
being a registered organisation and subsequent to that much more which is
not authentic <
.
Please don't punish me by putting such statements, I am involved in
several User Groups and could have easily put some hat on.
Abhinav
On Sat, 20 Jul 2019 at 14:17, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Is the funding issue the only issue that is the
problem? It appears
that there are other issues as well. The EC members except for Abhinav, who
is a recent inductee, are silent. They need to speak up to give their view
on all the issues concerned, especially as they were in the EC during the
period of non-compliance.
On Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:51 AM Subhashish Panigrahi <
psubhashish(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I feel that there is a lot of negativity which comes from some genuine
> frustrations but also impulsive action. As the situation is fairly complex,
> it would be useful to stick to the facts only. A lot of new subscribers to
> this list who might not have context will simply be affected adversely if
> this continues. My note below is not to undermine the efforts or genuine
> interests of anyone but to share some clarity around compliance based on
> some similar experiences.
>
> When Anirudh’s response gives a good sense of FCRA, I just wanted to
> reiterate the fact that receiving FCRA approval has a 50:50 chance and it
> is a three-year long process. Clean records, full-time staff and a long
> list high-impact activities can still lead to a decline if one doesn’t have
> the right kind of connections. However, an NGO can apply for a prior
> permission for a one time foreign funding for a standalone activity and the
> chances of receiving that funding is higher as compared to a regular FCRA
> approval. Coming from a donor’s perspective as I was dealing with the same
> issue of funding Indian affiliates for an organization that I worked for, I
> believe, FCRA should not be compliance criterion for any Indian NGO. Many
> NGOs that have a much longer history and have done a lot of paid work (and
> hence in large volumes) with bigger teams (and especially lawyers on the
> payroll) have failed to acquire FCRA just because of their activities and
> publications that might have openly criticized a government.
>
> Furthermore, a mission-aligned NGO with FCRA approval can always help
> another smaller NGO as a fiscal sponsor till the time the latter builds a
> portfolio with some local grants. This has to be done very carefully so
> that the funding doesn’t look like a circumvention of FCRA meaning that the
> entire activities will need to be organized/co-organized by the fiscal
> sponsor. In real terms, no matter who is involved in the activity, all the
> work, vendor payments, and even the branding must include the fiscal
> sponsor. It becomes the said fiscal sponsor’s activity funded by a foreign
> donor and supported by volunteers or paid contractors from other
> collectives/NGOs. Considering the hardship (or more of chances of a
> ballgame) this is probably a model a donor organization like WMF can
> explore so that individuals or collectives don’t have to pay taxes while
> receiving any funding. This arrangement might have a compliance cost factor
> and availability of staff as the fiscal sponsor has to pay its staff and
> should have the bandwidth to manage the additional work.
>
> Another model that IEEE and many others have explored is allowing
> nonprofit (and even for-profit companies) to become the grantee. I’m not
> very sure of the tax exemption part but I believe that a for-profit company
> can only receive investments (and not grants) and must pay tax. That could
> be an extra expense but it’s much safer. The actual work must be reported
> as a work by this company just like the previous situation. IMHO foreign
> nonprofit donors should definitely have the flexibility (that the grantee
> profile can range from a not-for-profit society or trust or company to a
> for-profit company) for their Indian grantees because it’s risky to operate
> as an NGO in India since the last few years and manage to get FCRA approval
> at the same time while doing good work. When Wikipedia is all about open
> knowledge sharing in multiple languages, issues related map/border can work
> against a grantee and the law enforcement agencies can go behind them.
>
> My request to WMF and AffCom would be to reconsider WMIN’s situation
> with the lens of FCRA-related compliance issues because FCRA as a
> compliance factor could jeopardize any smaller Indian NGO.
>
> Subhashish
>
> On Jul 20, 2019, at 2:36 AM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar <
> sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I have replied on the thread on meta. Copying that content here for
> reference:
> Anirudh has already mentioned most of the points I also wanted to say.
> (Check here:
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2019-July/014215.html)
> I will add a few more things here. WMF is very very keen on all kinds
> of legal compliance. The recent example is the "Germany court order".
> Surprisingly, possibly for the first time in Wikipedia history, all the
> relevent content was WIPED out from Wikipedia within a day of the court
> order where only one person was affected by the content. Compared to that,
> here in India, FCRA issue is affecting thousands of organisations in a
> serious way and AFFCOM is still not able to understand the FCRA compliance
> issue. (Maybe, compared to Indian languages, German language is better
> understood by concerned people!!)By the way, What was the support
> given by WMF/AFFCOM to WMIN in the FCRA matters? Have they provided any
> consultant or legal help to WMIN. Or even some high level contacts in the
> concerned Government office to put up our case further.It will also
> be interesting to know if by any chance, CIS looses FCRA, (I sincerely wish
> that does not happen anytime) AFFCOM/WMF will remove their affiliation?
> Read the WMF news article here:
>
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/04/11/a-german-court-forced-us-to…
Indian
> Wikipedian community is very very keen on expenditure, especially wherever
> they feel that some wrong expenditure is made (not just by Indian
> organisation but even when WMF money is spent) They become very very
> concerned about it and become very vocal. Mail thread goes on for months
> asking for justificaiton of such expenditure.(eg. check here:
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2018-July/013400.html)
> Hardly anyone from WMF/AFFCOM comment on it. Compared to that, when India
> chapter is not spending any money and doing all zero budget activities,
> what could be the problem with it for the community or AFFCOM or WMF.
> Actually they should appriciate and should be happy about saving lots of
> money and still doing activities. The closure of India chapter topic
> comes up again and again and some lengthy discussions happen on it. I am
> referring to one such mail thread a few years back and specificaly want WMF
> people to read my comment that time in a reply to Gerard Meijssen. Please
> check it out here:
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2014-September/01156…
Now
> that AFFCOM is showing so much concern about the India activities, it will
> be better if they can tell us (the stake holders in this- Indian
> Wikipedians, volunteers, current and past WMIN EC members and general WMIN
> members) the comparision of performance of affiliates in India namely WMIN
> and CIS-A2K. What is the expenditure on various activities, paid staff etc
> etc. And give us a clear understanding of where the real objection is. I
> suppose this should be with reference to the contract between WMF and WMIN.
> I read the contract document again some time back and could hardly see any
> possible serious violation of the contract that AFFCOM is referring to.
> Regards
> -Sudhanwa
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 5:13 PM Anirudh S. Bhati <anirudhsbh(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> For now I am not going to get into other issues, but would like to
>> get clarification on the following:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 6:20 PM Chris Koerner <ckoerner(a)wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Wikimedia India was first recognized as a chapter in 2011. In 2015,
>>> it
>>> experienced difficulties meeting chapter agreement obligations.
>>> Working with the Affiliations Committee and the Foundation, the
>>> chapter developed a plan of action and returned to good standing by
>>> 2017. However, between 2017 and 2019
>>>
>>>
>>> *the chapter was unable to secure a license to act as a fiduciary
>>> organization, and is not currently legally registered as a charity in India
>>> to accept funding from the Foundation*. The Foundation and
>>> Affiliations Committee both hope that
>>> this licensing and registration can be secured, and that the chapter
>>> will again be eligible for recognition.
>>>
>>
>> AFAIK, the Wikimedia Chapter (Wikimedia India) *is* registered as a
>> charitable society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act.
>> Therefore, it *is* a fiduciary organization acting in public interest. I
>> would like to hear a clarification on your claims above.
>>
>> Further, my understanding is that the Chapter has been unable to
>> renew/secure its permissions under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation)
>> Act, which prevents it from receiving funds from foreign sources, including
>> the Foundation. This is not a situation unique to Wikimedia India, as more
>> than 20,000 NGOs nationally faced cancellations of their licenses last year
>> due to reasons that have largely to do with politics rather than compliance
>> related issues.
>>
>>
>>
https://www.firstpost.com/india/fcra-licences-of-20000-ngos-cancelled-act-b…
>>
>> If the inability of Wikimedia india to secure these permissions is
>> one of the primary reasons for de-recognition, as a founding member of
>> Wikimedia India and as someone who is largely an external observer, it
>> appears to me that the Foundation is choosing to punish the chapter for not
>> having the political clout to retain its license. For most of its
>> existence, the Wikimedia Chapter has been a volunteer-run body with limited
>> expertise in public policy. Can you please clarify whether the Foundation
>> has extended support to the Chapter in form of, for example, contracting a
>> government relations specialists to help renew/secure their FCRA license?
>>
>> Looking forward to hearing from you.
>>
>> Yours,
>> Anirudh
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>
>
> --
>
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