2009/3/3 James Forrester <james(a)jdforrester.org>rg>:
2009/3/3 AndrewRT <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk>uk>:
The Board has an action to register with the
Charity Commission as
soon as it's likely that our income will be more than £5,000 - which
will be as soon were announced as the winning bid for Wikimania 2010 (-
grin-), or, failing that, when our donations get to that level in I
guess 1-2 years' time?
Hmm. Frankly, I expect us to clear the £5000 threshold in a matter of
months - there have been lots of expressions of interest over the
years. We on the old Board considered full Charity status to be an
absolute priority, and our failure to achieve it was what led the
Board to close WMUK v.1 down in favour of re-starting.
Registered charity status is a *bad thing*. All it means is more
paperwork. It's a way of making sure charities really are charitable,
it's not a way of benefiting charities. WMUK v1 failed due to not
being able to get a bank account set up, that has nothing to do with
registering with the CC (the board had a tendency to make out that it
did, but that was clearly a misconception on their part).
How long it takes to reach £5k will depend on what the new board
elected at the upcoming AGM decides to do regarding fundraising. Just
waiting for the WMF drive next winter is one option, although it
wouldn't be my choice if I'm elected. If elected, fundraising would be
something I would like to concentrate on. Getting £1-2k should be easy
- just a matter of making sure people know we exist and that we need
money and then sitting back and watching the pounds roll in. Getting
up to £5k would probably require some active fundraising, but there is
no reason we can't do that.