We're hoping to make the business side of the AGM as quick as possible, but does anyone have any resolutions they would like to be put to the meeting?
At the moment the resolutions are:
1. Setting the maximum number of Directors to seven 2. Appointing those people elected under the Election Rules as directors 3. Setting the Membership fee to £12 per year and £6 for concessions 4. Entrenchment of Election Rules 5. Adoption of Membership Rules 6. Entrenchment of the Chapter Agreement
(entrenchment is a legal term which means a future Board would be unable to repeal or revise them without the permission of the membership)
Members will be able to vote by email for these if they prefer, or in person at the AGM. Full details are set out at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009_AGM/Resolutions.
Also, does anyone want to propose any amendment to any of these resolutions?
Please let me know if you have anything you would like to raise.
regards,
Andrew Turvey Company Secretary Wikimedia UK Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.
At 16:09 -0800 2/3/09, AndrewRT wrote:
We're hoping to make the business side of the AGM as quick as possible, but does anyone have any resolutions they would like to be put to the meeting?
At the moment the resolutions are:
- Setting the maximum number of Directors to seven
- Appointing those people elected under the Election Rules as
directors 3. Setting the Membership fee to £12 per year and £6 for concessions 4. Entrenchment of Election Rules 5. Adoption of Membership Rules 6. Entrenchment of the Chapter Agreement
(entrenchment is a legal term which means a future Board would be unable to repeal or revise them without the permission of the membership)
Members will be able to vote by email for these if they prefer, or in person at the AGM. Full details are set out at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009_AGM/Resolutions.
Also, does anyone want to propose any amendment to any of these resolutions?
Please let me know if you have anything you would like to raise.
Where does the "registered charity" status and hence the application fit?
At the AGM, or later?
Gordo
On Mar 3, 4:00 pm, Gordon Joly gordon.j...@pobox.com wrote:
Where does the "registered charity" status and hence the application fit? At the AGM, or later?
Gordo
As Tango said, charities can be of two types: those with an income of more than £5,000 ("registered charities") are registered with the Charities Commission and those under £5,000 ("exempt charities") may register with HMRC if they want to reclaim income tax on Gift Aided donations.
At the moment we are working on getting HMRC recognition as a charity so we can reclaim Gift Aid - in fact I'm writing them a letter responding to some queries right now!
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?
I don't think there's anything we need the AGM to do in this regard, although it will be mentioned in the Board's report and can be discussed then if need be.
When we drafting our "Objects" clause in the constitution, we took care to ensure that they were exclusively charitable so that our application would be as smooth as possible.
Let me know if you need any more information on this,
regards,
Andrew
2009/3/3 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.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?
I reckon we'll get more than £5k in the annual fundraiser next winter. If all the Wikimania sponsorship goes through us, we'll probably go over the next threshold and have to do audited annual reports and stuff...
2009/3/3 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.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.
Yours,
2009/3/3 James Forrester james@jdforrester.org:
2009/3/3 AndrewRT raturvey@yahoo.co.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.
On Mar 3, 10:26 pm, James Forrester ja...@jdforrester.org wrote:
2009/3/3 AndrewRT ratur...@yahoo.co.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.
Yours,
James D. Forrester
Unfortunately, the Charities Commission are currently not considering applications for charitable status from organisations with a turnover of less than £5,000 per year unless there are exceptional circumstances:
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc21.asp#32
"65. We will only consider an application for registration from an organisation below the minimum income in exceptional circumstances."
I'm afraid I think we have no choice but to wait until we're at that level - which as you say, hopefully won't be too long.
regards,
Andrew
In any case, we almost certainly want to be a charitable incorporated organisation, not a registered charity, due to the lower paper-work requirements.
We'll apply to be one as soon as they're accepting applications and we have the time to write one.
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l- bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of AndrewRT Sent: 03 March 2009 23:09 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] AGM Resolutions
On Mar 3, 10:26 pm, James Forrester ja...@jdforrester.org wrote:
2009/3/3 AndrewRT ratur...@yahoo.co.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.
Yours,
James D. Forrester
Unfortunately, the Charities Commission are currently not considering applications for charitable status from organisations with a turnover of less than £5,000 per year unless there are exceptional circumstances:
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc21.asp#32
"65. We will only consider an application for registration from an organisation below the minimum income in exceptional circumstances."
I'm afraid I think we have no choice but to wait until we're at that level - which as you say, hopefully won't be too long.
regards,
Andrew
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
2009/3/4 Tom Holden thomas.holden@gmail.com:
In any case, we almost certainly want to be a charitable incorporated organisation, not a registered charity, due to the lower paper-work requirements.
We'll apply to be one as soon as they're accepting applications and we have the time to write one.
I think a CIO would be a type of registered charity. I'm not sure of the technicalities of the definitions. Regardless, CIO's aren't likely to be available for another year or so yet - they keep putting it back.
I'm rather late with this, but I've just left a number of comments/ queries at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Meetings/2009_AGM/Notice
Comments / thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks, Mike
On 3 Mar 2009, at 00:09, AndrewRT wrote:
We're hoping to make the business side of the AGM as quick as possible, but does anyone have any resolutions they would like to be put to the meeting?
At the moment the resolutions are:
- Setting the maximum number of Directors to seven
- Appointing those people elected under the Election Rules as
directors 3. Setting the Membership fee to £12 per year and £6 for concessions 4. Entrenchment of Election Rules 5. Adoption of Membership Rules 6. Entrenchment of the Chapter Agreement
(entrenchment is a legal term which means a future Board would be unable to repeal or revise them without the permission of the membership)
Members will be able to vote by email for these if they prefer, or in person at the AGM. Full details are set out at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009_AGM/Resolutions.
Also, does anyone want to propose any amendment to any of these resolutions?
Please let me know if you have anything you would like to raise.
regards,
Andrew Turvey Company Secretary Wikimedia UK Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org