On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)frontier.com>
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how
the funds are spent
other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we
can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it
should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
...
When I was getting legal advice on the issues of Wikimedia UK becoming
a charity, one of the issues I had to bend my mind around was the tax
implications of how the charity could provide grants to non-UK
projects.
It is not possible for a UK charity to offer restricted grants without
risking having to pay tax as if they were paying for a profit making
commercial service, rather than gifting money. For this reason the UK
charity will only offer *unrestricted* grants, based on a published
proposal from the non-UK organization that will spend the grant on
charitable purposes. I have little doubt that the IRS rules are just
as stringent, otherwise US charities would be frequently used as
container companies for tax avoidance and money-laundering. Something
the WMF is extremely careful to avoid.
I have no doubt that this will be specifically explained in the
detailed governance report that is being worked on by WMF Legal and
will hopefully be published next week.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae