On 28 September 2012 23:20, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sep 28, 2012 11:11 PM, "Deryck Chan" <deryckchan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is, an will always be, the option to donate to WMUK rather than WMF even if WMUK isn't the default payment processor anymore.
>
> What I can certainly see is a fragmented 2012 fundraiser, with certain donors staying with WMUK and others switching to WMF because that's where the default landing page now points them to. Lots of returning donors will be very very confused either because they can't gift-aid their donations, or because two "Wikipedia organisations" are asking for their money at the same time.

What will happen is exactly the same as what happened in the countries where the foundation took over fundraising last year which was, indeed, los of people being very confused and not understanding who it was they had just given money to.

The foundation will need to be very clear about its messaging. I would recommend a prominent notice on the landing page that the WMF is not a registered charity in the UK, so that there can be no claims that they have misled donors.

The main difference here is, I believe, that the UK donor base is much larger than the countries whose payment processing was taken over by WMF last year. And they speak English. Therefore the media outcry from the confusion is likely to be much louder.

From a regular reader-donor's point of view, being confused about where their money went to is almost certainly worse than learning that some trustee is involved with a conflict of interest scandal, weirdly, between multiple projects all to do with Wikipedia.