Hi all,
I'll throw in another idea that has been floating around for a while.
(I think it may originally have come from Gordon, but I could be wrong
- it will be in the archives somewhere). This weekend I ran it past a
friend who also happens to be the local (i.e. UK) contact for the
charitable fund run by a very large e-commerce company that gives
grants in the UK. He thought it was the sort of thing that may be
funded by such an organisation.
One of the things we could encourage is the creation of free images
for wikipedia, wikinews and wikicommons. There are loads of local
history groups, local nature groups and so on around the UK who may
want to be involved in creating such content. What we could do is
offer a project where we would provide a digital camera and training
on basic concepts of intellectual property and producing images for
websites to such groups. We could look for funding / sponsorship to
fund the project (or provide the cameras) and expect to get
significant new free content in return.
Thinking about it, we may even want to get schools involved.
Cheers,
Andrew
On 3/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/03/06, Caroline Ford
<caroline(a)secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
I think there is loads of potential with
wikibooks. National curriculum
topics, community language instruction, sports/health/fitness instruction.
The British girl guiding wiki or the Manchester United wiki are
possibilities.
That's a fantastic idea!!
I presume we don't want to stop people
donating directly to the foundation -
or do we? Is ours ring fenced for UK work? (This will depend upon the
mems&arts).
That is the idea. We get some tens of thousands of pounds sterling
donated directly to the WMF, taxably; we think it's safe to assume
that's almost entirely from people in the UK, who could reasonably be
expected to give even more tax-exempt or Gift Aid.
(I say "some tens of thousands" without being quite sure of the total.
But
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_21
lists that one day's GBP donations as about 1/10 of one day's USD
donations.)
Money that comes into WMUK can not be used on:
* stuff outside the UK, until we're *very* sure we can make specific
grants or whatever. (We are working on the assumption that we're
surrounded by people watching us like hawks and looking for an
opportunity to wreck our charity status and fuck us up, because we are
;-)
* servers, because of the UK's unspeakably awful libel laws.
We have ideas of what to spend it on, but I'm looking for the ones
that make a good marketable story.
- d.
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