From: "Lars Aronsson" lars@aronsson.se
I also learned that the Wikimedia Foundation is not a "foundation" in the European sense of the word. Swedish law defines different cases for non-profit membership organizations, for-profit membership organizations (coops) and foundations. Foundations are inherently void of democracy, since they cannot have members. A typical Swedish foundation is the Nobel Foundation, formed according to the will of Alfred Nobel. In Sweden, churches, political parties, and trade unions are defined as non-profit membership organizations. Naively I had assumed that the German "e.V." was a direct equivalent of the Swedish non-profit membership organization. However, I was told that in Germany, churches, political parties, and trade unions are not at all of the "e.V." form, but organizations of other kinds, defined in separate laws.
Yes, Foundations have an ancient origin in Roman/Eclessiastical law in the European civilian legal tradition in that the foundation was usually tied to an "endowment" of some sort most commonly used to perpetuate the legacy of a donor or family so that a religious institution might prosper under such patronage.
In the United States the law of "private foundations" is primarily federal tax law that has to do with the status of an organization that has funding from one or a limited number of sources and the requirement that the "private foundation" spend some of its income each year in order to keep its tax exempt status.
However, the law of not-for-profit entities is within the jurisdiction of each state and, as far as I know, there is no restriction on using the word "foundation" to mean organizations that are funded by a private philantropist rather than a "public charity" (that is what the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. hopes to be) funded by a great number of persons. Some public charities adopt such a name as it seems to lend them creedance upon benefactor as the word has an air of permanance about it in American English.
So while in Europe one would expect, as you have stated Lars, that the foundation is an endowment, in the United States a foundation can be a membership organization, or quasi-membership organization such as Wikipedia (it is not truly a membership organization as not all the board members are elected by members, only a minority are so voted at the inception of the organization according to the Bylaws).
Alex R. (en:user:alex756)