On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow wikipedia@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
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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