2008/8/28 Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com:
On Thu, August 28, 2008 00:24, Thomas Dalton wrote:
The WMF would have control of the money once we gave it to them. There is a section on the charities commission website about charities supporting foreign organisations, have you not read it it? It would seem to be highly relevant to the chair of Wikimedia UK... Would you like the URL?
Selective quoting or what!
You wrote: "For example, as a company there is nothing stopping us sending money to the WMF (that I know of, at least, feel free to correct me). As a charity, we can't do that because the trustees wouldn't have control over that money."
and I pointed out that as a Charity *we* (not you) *can* do that as the Trustees can decide to give money to the WMF, indeed possible methods of doing so were discussed some time ago now at a Chapters meeting in Frankfurt. The Trustees of the (WMUK) Charity can use the funds donated for any purpose in line with the Objects.Indeed "3(e) to encourage the adoption of practices and policies to widen education, participation and dissemination of information worldwide;" was specifically written by me in order that donations to WMF would be possible, so please don't suggest I need a URL ...
I'll give you the URL anyway so that you can explain to me where I am going wrong in my interpretation of it:
http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/supportingcharities/cwi.asp#9
That seems pretty clear to me. You have no control over what the WMF does with the money, so it giving money to them would not count as charitable. You can spend the money on things for the WMF (new servers, for instance, which I believe the German chapter has done), but you can't just hand over the cash.