Re our chicken and egg situation: if I understand correctly all we need to
do is to be able to show HMRC and the CC £5000 in cheques addressed to Wiki
Educational Resources (correct me if I'm wrong). We don't have to cash them
until we actually are a charity (so we don't need to worry about getting a
bank account now). Nor if I understand Paul's e-mail correctly do we have to
demonstrate that we can generate that level of income consistently in future
years.

There are two solutions to this I see that could get us those cheques within
at most a month.

1) We discreetly and politely contact one of WMF's rich donors. £5000 is by
no stretch a large amount of money and for some it is certainly pocket
money.
OR 2) We offer life membership to people. Say £250. (a concessionary
discount would probably be inappropriate as being unwaged is normally
temporary, and a significantly larger level for both might be pushing it a
bit as I doubt any of us are completely confident WM UK will be around in 20
years).

I hereby commit publicly that I'd donate £250 for life membership if that
was the agreed upon cost. If another 19 were prepared to do the same we'd be
there.

I'm a little worried this will create unnecessary and unwanted pressure on
others to make similar gestures, but I thought it was probably necessary in
this instance to put my (limited) money where my mouth is. To ameliorate
this as much as possible I have created a pledgebank where other's can sign
up without posting to this list and thus increasing pressure on others:

http://www.pledgebank.com/wikimediauk-life

Of course I may have grossly misunderstood Paul and this avenue may not be
available, in which case, please correct me.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Businessfirst
Sent: 21 July 2008 23:12
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Hello

----- Original Message ----

From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, 21 July, 2008 9:48:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Hello

> Yours,
>
> -- P.

Does "P." stand for Paul Sinclair? If so, perhaps you would like to
start by introducing yourself - keeping your on-site identity secret
does not fill one with trust... (I believe I've met you in person and
know who you are, but not everyone has had the pleasure.)


Yes, I'm him :)

The last few emails in the archive are about the state of WMUK, introduction
about me, and reassurance if anything's actually happening. Anything else,
ask.

I was into social volunteer work offline, edited a lot for a few years on
Wiktionary and Wikipedia, and enjoy it, so I went along to the meetings to
find out more. A natural extension of interest like most people here I
guess. I met David at one of the 2007 wiki meetups, we got chatting about
the problems we saw, and it came out WMUK were having problems. Fixing
business problems is my job, so conversation ensued, and we discussed it
further. I had free time and relevant skills, they needed a finance guy who
understood the aims of the chapter and charity. I attended my first meeting
two or so months after that time.

I'm a career financial manager - I first ran a business in the 80's,
qualified as an ACA, moved to the board of a £multimillion company as their
finance and admin manager, and I've worked as a financial controller or
manager for two PLCs and a number of small businesses since. I'm all for
open source, open knowledge, and building something that'll help others,
that's the attraction for me. Sue Gardner's seen my CV, and my full
references back to the nineties got taken when we talked. Alison's got
copies of them all.

Where WMUK is, has been a bit of a "chicken and egg" problem. When I took on
the role, I was told it was a problem, but we're getting there on it. To
register as a charity (formally) you need to show actual, first year of
registration, expected income of £5000 or more. That's the Charity
Commission rules for registering any trust, foundation or legal entity, as a
charity. Alison has been trying to address this, and get commitments for
that level of income. (Below this level you can get HMRC tax recognition
which does the same thing financially but it's not actually "registered
charity" status. Some people get confused on that.)

Until we have committed income of £5000 or more pledged, which must not be a
loan of any kind, we have a problem under UK banking conventions. Without
that status, all that WMUK is, is a company like any other, and it gets
treated as a business by almost every high street bank or building society -
business banking, charges, minimum balance, and so on. The full works. If
WMUK were a trust, club, or any other unincorporated entity, then it would
be easier, but it isn't. That would also be a fundamental change to WMUK's
structure and nobody is inclined to do that if it can be avoided. (If we
did, then migrating back later and legal paperworks would be expensive, and
a procedural/legal pain in the posterior.) Thus in effect, with the present
structure, a non-profit bank account really requires charitable status;
charitable status really requires a bank account, and that circle is what's
held it back previously.

The options going forward all require circumventing the chicken and egg
situation that the HMRC and CC have. There's ways to do that; a few we can
do ourselves, one or two of the quickest would take some arranging and
funds. Getting £5000 of prospective commitments is almost the easiest (no
change to the company at all, direct charitable registration), so we're
working on that too, but that one takes time. I appreciate it's taken a
ridiculously long time to date, but hopefully that will be resolved in the
fairly near future now. Alison and I are meeting up this week to review how
it's going and decide which route's the best. After some discussion with
HMRC and the Charity Commission, I'm looking at one other option that's
promising, but it needs careful review before going ahead. If it would work,
then it would be a quick resolution, but even so getting the commitment
level is still preferable.


I'm not sure what else I can usefully say at this time. I will promise a
regular update until it's resolved, and action, though, that's the best I
can do. It's a full board matter rather than a purely treasury one. I'll
give it my best and now I'm signed up, I'll try to keep the list in the
picture.


Paul Sinclair
businessfirst


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