[Foundation-l] Chapters

[Lodewijk]

John is unfortunately right. The (currently not publicly available as I
understand) draft includes clauses that require every chapter that receives
a grant to abide all US law, including but not exclusively US anti terrorism
laws and trade bans (unless a court has ruled that... etc). This puts imho
chapters in an awkward position - being forced to follow laws they cannot
reasonably know about unless they hire expensive expertise.

It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I don't
know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar
requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the
board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise.

Because although it is claimed differently (and although Thomas seems to
hope differently) the interpretation by the staff is clearly that no chapter
except WMDE should fundraise - no matter how hard they work to improve.

The exact reason for this seems to be vague to me. I really do hope the
board will step forth and makes clear what their reasoning was and is - and
doesn't hide behind staff (board members who already did so are being
appreciated, but I'm still missing important voices). Is the reason really
transparency? Is it about transferring money? Because that is important, but
(sometimes easily) fixable. Or is the reasoning you don't like the projects
the chapters work on? Because *then* we should have a discussion about that,
and not hide behind non-reasons.

Lodewijk

2011/8/29 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>

> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at frontier.com>
> wrote:
> > On 8/28/2011 9:00 PM, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
> >> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Nathan<nawrich at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>> Which activities are these?
> >> Copyright and internet law lobbying.
> > This is incorrect.
>
> Michael,
>
> Have you seen the draft Chapters Grant Agreement?
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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