On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Do we know how other Wikimania organising teams did this (....Delphine...?) I can't remember having heard of any local trading company having been opened anywhere for this. Was it not usually the WMF that would have signed contracts if necessary? See also eg. http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contact "*Wikimania* is a yearly international conference organised by the Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/>." Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Understood and I defer to the judgment of others on whether it would be easier for WmUK (through a subsidiary) or WMF to handle it. I would just advise to actually take this up with the WMF (Cary Bass and Mike Godwin) before relying on this for strategic planning - it might be that the WMF objects to *not* being the formal organiser. I'm not saying they will, I just think that this should be confirmed with them before you act according to a "We will be Wikimania 2010 organisers" scenario (all of course contingent upon whether Oxford actually succeeds in the bid, but this should be known rather soon and I actually do not have many doubts ;-) Hm. Well, think big, yes, but I doubt whether Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Germany have ever exceeded this sum in a year, and they're both more established chapters with a larger country to serve. But then, I'm all for optimism...just do make sure to check whether the expenses (time and money) for setting up and registering a new subsidiary will not actually exceed the profit (or even the income) made in the end. It would be a pity if we paid twice as many registration fees than we get from selling merchandise! But is this really common practice? I can again only speak for Switzerland here, but I'm familiar with the practices of a few largish NGOs (Amnesty International, WWF etc.) and they never open a subsidiary for their annual conferences or indeed any other large event. They just take the risk qua charity. Do you know how this is usually handled in the UK? Do other big UK NGOs often create subsidiaries for such and other purposes? Regards, Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: See, that's one of the points which I didn't know and I'd be interested in reading more about it. Is there guidance available on what constitutes significant business risk? I've interned for two Swiss NGOs and in the second of them, I have been closely involved (well, as closely as you can be in an office with just 15 employees) in the preparation of the Annual Meeting 2009 of one of them, which will involve several hundreds of participants, including (European) heads of states and senior ministers / UN agencies heads. The budget for it runs into atmospheric heights (what with renting a well-known hotel and organising a lot of social events), but it has not been "outsourced" to a trading subsidiary. I know for a fact that Swiss law does not have a "charity may not take significant business risks" provisions, therefore I maintain that this is not a usual practice here. But this is really not so important, after all we want to look at how things are done in the UK. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

2009/3/19 Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: I've just been reading through that guidance again myself, and actually we might be ok. The conference would probably fall under "primary purpose trading", which you are allowed to take risks doing. I knew primary purpose trading was tax exempt without the need for a subsidiary, but I thought the risk requirement still applied, but it looks like I may have misremembered that. This is why we need to seek professional advice on these things!

Why is registered charity status predicated on a successful Wikimania bid? Gordo -- "Think Feynman"///////// http://pobox.com/~gordo/ gordon.joly(a)pobox.com///

2009/3/18 AndrewRT &lt;raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk&gt;uk>: You may have to wait a little after we win the bid in order to get confirmed sponsorships - CC will almost certainly want written confirmation (unconditionally, that is - what we have at the moment is all conditional on us winning the bid). If the current board has time to do it, starting work on the CC application now wouldn't hurt.