With only about 30 members the UK chapter is at a very early stage
with a limited internal market. If you had 3,000 members you could get
some economy of scale and order say 100 T shirts, but with a market of
30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. Producing
ties, mousemats, cufflinks and presumably monogrammed bathrobes for
the minority of those 30 who want such things is at best a distraction
and at worst a drain on resources. Not least because selling stuff at
cost means you have to invest the capital to buy the stuff hoping that
if you sell all of them at full price you will recover your capital.
That ties up capital and sooner or later you will make a loss when you
discover that fewer than ten of your thirty members want a mousemat.
As for recruiting new members, perhaps you would. But you are also
putting off prospective members like myself who would not join an
organisation that is setting itself up to fail.
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com>om>:
At 23:40 +0100 13/9/09, Andrew Turvey wrote:
Hopefully it will be the kind of perk that will
attract people who
are already active in the projects to become members. As to selling
at above cost, the Foundation wasn't too keen on that - worried that
we would develop into some kind of commercial arm of the Foundation,
which is not really their idea of the role of chapters.
Andrew
Run that by me, one more time?
Why then seek to gain a tax advantage?
Gordo
--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK:
http://uk.wikimedia.org
--
WereSpielChequers