From: "Lars Aronsson" <lars(a)aronsson.se>
I also learned that the Wikimedia Foundation is not a
"foundation" in
the European sense of the word. Swedish law defines different cases
for non-profit membership organizations, for-profit membership
organizations (coops) and foundations. Foundations are inherently
void of democracy, since they cannot have members. A typical Swedish
foundation is the Nobel Foundation, formed according to the will of
Alfred Nobel. In Sweden, churches, political parties, and trade
unions are defined as non-profit membership organizations. Naively I
had assumed that the German "e.V." was a direct equivalent of the
Swedish non-profit membership organization. However, I was told that
in Germany, churches, political parties, and trade unions are not at
all of the "e.V." form, but organizations of other kinds, defined in
separate laws.
Yes, Foundations have an ancient origin in Roman/Eclessiastical law in
the European civilian legal tradition in that the foundation was usually
tied
to an "endowment" of some sort most commonly used to perpetuate the
legacy of a donor or family so that a religious institution might prosper
under such patronage.
In the United States the law of "private foundations" is primarily federal
tax law that has to do with the status of an organization that has funding
from one or a limited number of sources and the requirement that the
"private foundation" spend some of its income each year in order to keep
its tax exempt status.
However, the law of not-for-profit entities is within the jurisdiction of
each
state and, as far as I know, there is no restriction on using the word
"foundation" to mean organizations that are funded by a private
philantropist
rather than a "public charity" (that is what the Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
hopes to be) funded by a great number of persons. Some public charities
adopt such a name as it seems to lend them creedance upon benefactor
as the word has an air of permanance about it in American English.
So while in Europe one would expect, as you have stated Lars, that the
foundation is an endowment, in the United States a foundation can be
a membership organization, or quasi-membership organization such as
Wikipedia (it is not truly a membership organization as not all the board
members are elected by members, only a minority are so voted at the
inception of the organization according to the Bylaws).
Alex R. (en:user:alex756)