2009/3/22 Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton@gmail.com>
It's not, but getting it soon is. You need an annual income of over
£5000 to register, we're not likely to get that kind of money (or
pledges for it) for several months at least without including
Wikimania sponsorship.
Exactly how strict are the Charities Commission criteria's on this, Do they actually need to see evidence of cash in the bank? Are pledges to that value enough? What about evidence to support a reasonable expectation of achieving greater than that amount?
I am wondering if the foundation was to write a letter stating that:
A) the WMF received donations totalling over £50,000 in sterling last year [1]
and
B) in future UK residents and taxpayers will be given the option to donate to WMUK (they may even be able to give an idea of what sort of percentage have done this when other chapters have gone live)
and therefore
C) WMUK can expect approximately £X (where X is greater than 5000) due to WMF fund-raising
then might this be enough for them?
Unrelated to this, I assume that if I donate now and make a declaration that I am a UK Taxpayer, that declaration can be held on to and then the tax can be claimed back once WMUK is registered. Am I right?
[1] Source: Delphine at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediauk-l/2008-August/002049.html when charity status was discussed last year. I am aware that the sterling zone is not exactly the same as the population of UK taxpayers, but I suspect that the colonies and crown dependencies that use Sterling are not a huge factor, neither would foreign taxpayers with sterling accounts/uk taxpayers with non-sterling accounts, so I think this works as a rough approximation.
James Hardy