2008/8/27 joseph seddon life_is_bitter_sweet@hotmail.co.uk:
I believe I can expand on the situation of wikimedia uk, some of it you are aware of, some your not but its as complete as i could possibly make it with the limited information i have. We need £5000 to get the Charity status, however it is possible to get an account to handle this money. What has been said about it being difficult is quite frankly a very simplified view of it.
You've missed out one thing which the current board seems to be ignoring. It is possible to get tax free status without the £5000, you just have to fill in a form with HMRC and it's far quicker than the full charities application. That's all we need to begin accepting donations. We can also set up a bank account without worry about any of this, it will just require paying a few transaction costs, etc. (I'm not convinced the HMRC thing wouldn't be enough to get free banking, anyway). If we have to pay transaction costs for a while, then so be it, at least we can actually start doing something.
- The foundation pledge this amount and then give it to us when the status
is achieved. There are no issues with an international organisation doing this. This would be the quickest method and hold the most guarantee's to getting enough money.
- Funds raised during the annual fund raiser are redirected to WMUK. This
would be viable if up to or more than £5000 comes from the UK.
Are you sure there are no issues with the foundation donating money to WMUK? Under UK charities law, I know we can't donate money to the foundation (once we're actually a charity) - the trustees have to actually have control over the funds they are trusted with. Is US charity law different in that respect?
- or we try and get the money ourselves in some way shape or form.
Which we can do over a prolonged period, there is no reason for it to all be done at once. The £5000 requirement is designed to make things easier on small charities, not harder. We can remain a small charity until we naturally grow to a large enough size to require registering.
So we have 3 methods of doing this or possibly a 4th one consisting of a combination of the first 2 where the foundation simply tops up the difference between what we get from the fundraiser and £5000. Now what method we use is essentially down to the foundation and what they feel most comfortable with. At the moment there are other things that need to be dealt with first, so this isn't something that needs to be decided upon now. Just something that needs to be considered over the next couple of months.
It can all be discussed in detail at, or soon after, the AGM, once we have some competent people on the board.
With regards to the bank account, when set up it would not allow us to claim back tax until we got the charity status but it would allow us to take payments. According to the person I spoke to on the phone they could easily alter the account when the tax back charity status came through.
The HMRC thing resolves that issue completely.
In regards to the timeline. Attaining charity status before the annual fundraiser is honestly going to be doubtful. The application takes approximately 40 days to complete if there are absolutely no hitches. I would plan to get signatures at the next AGM which is planned for september sometime. This would put completion of the charity status at the earliest for early-mid november and that is purely on the basis that everything go absolutely smoothly. The best approach would be looking for the application to be finished by the start of 2009 and worst case scenario by the end of the financial year 08/09.
I hope this provides a clearer outlook on WMUK financially. Any questions I could clarify are welcomed as it may spot areas or things that i havnt thought about.
What signatures are required? I wasn't aware you needed to collect signature (Chair and Secretary of the board, or something, I expect, but nothing more). And we can't do any of that until we have the £5000, so that's going to be some time after the AGM.