On 20 March 2014 10:39, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
They are an independent organisation with whom we have worked and hope to continue to work.
We are not currently funding them in any way. We do have an active member of the chapter associated with them, (who has declared any potential conflicts of interest) who is working with us to promote Wikimedia projects in line with our programme.
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This would appear a significant reputational risk to the charity and a failure in governance if no attempt has been made to do basic checks before promoting joint events with commercial organizations.
I believe neither organization is registered currently with Companies House, and and may be for-profit unregistered organizations enjoying direct benefit from commercial advertising. As well as BBM working to "promote Wikimedia projects", the reverse is true as Wikimedia UK, as a national registered charity, is directly promoting the website, http://www.britishblackmusic.com, making it a more valuable internet property. As a past Chairman of the charity, I find it disappointing that Wikimedia UK and its current board of trustees has chosen to perfer uncertainty with regard to its public partnerships and has left it to unpaid volunteers to ask the most basic questions.
As you suggest, sometime this week I shall take the responsibility of writing to Mr. Kwaku (Black Music Congress) the owner of BBM,[1] and K Kaywrite (MusicWrite Plus) the owner of BTWSC[2] and confirm their status.
I believe they already follow this email list, however as an early head's up, I have copied WMF Legal into this email.
Links: 1. http://whois.domaintools.com/britishblackmusic.com 2. http://whois.domaintools.com/btwsc.com
Fae