[Wikipedia-l] foundation of a German registered association

[Kurt Jansson]

The German Wikipedia community is working on setting up an 
"eingetragener Verein" (I found these translations on dict.leo.org: 
"incorporated society", "membership corporation", "registered 
association", don't know which one fits best). Presumably the foundation 
meeting will take place in february, we will apply for tax exempt status 
soon afterwards.

Our goals are
1. to be able to collect donations (tax-free)
2. to communicate with organisations from outside the project in a more 
professional, official way (e.g. with universities or foundations)

There has also been a bit of talk about using the association as an 
democratic institution for decision making, but nothing has been decided 
yet. I'd say we should only use the association for this in case of 
emergency or when all other attempts fail.

For more information you can feed Babelfish with these URLs:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein/Satzung

Jimbo, is this okay for you? Do you have any wishes or worries?
The association will support all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia. 
We will support the whole international project, and transfer part of 
the donations to the foundation if this is legaly possible, but focus on 
the German-speaking projects. Of course we're not planning a fork, and 
of course there is no cabal, at least not a German one.

Kurt