Hi all,
A couple of things popped into my head that I am unsure of, but hope someone might be able to answer.
1) I understand that processing of UK donations in the US has significant tax implications on the funds collected. I would imagine that the WMF couldn't claim anywhere near the same tax relief on this income in the USA? 2) If there are tax implications, wouldn't it make more sense for the WMF to register its own charity in the UK, thereby it could essentially take WMUK out of the equation completely? 3) Could the fact that WMUK is currently spending approximately 50% of its income on non-project costs[1] be partly the reason for this decision by Sue? I understand that 3 years ago there was no staff in the UK and something like 90% of income was spent directly on projects, and now there are 12 staff with at the very least 50% of income being spent on non-project activities based on reports presented for the last FDC proposal. This could be a message that WMUK needs to trim the fat, especially if there are more overheads that are "hidden" within programme activity funding.
Not really sure what's going on here with the WMF, but the likelihood that what Nemo and Mircu state is possible, but we shouldn't discount other things as well.
But I would like to thank WMUK for sponsoring the "Airliners" project on Commons,[2] which will see over 200,000+ aviation images being made available via Fae's great work, and the chapters generosity. It's something that I don't think sponsorship would have come as easily from other sources.
Cheers
Russavia
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FDC_portal/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/W... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Batch_uploading/Airliners