[Foundation-l] Chapters, deductibility and donation profiles (was Wikimania 2006 - host city contest to open onSeptember 1st 20)

Tue Aug 16 21:12:02 UTC 2005

Tim Starling (t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au) [050816 23:48]:

> Chapters exist for national pride, grants and dubious tax minimisation
> schemes

The tax minimisation angle is good to encourage donations at all - people
will happily throw money at a deductible charity they wouldn't at something
that isn't. Also (assuming a recent court case brought by the Inland
Revenue doesn't fuck it up), Gift Aid [1] in the UK makes the donation even
larger than it would be otherwise.

> which require locking up money in places where it can't be spent
> on servers.

There are other uses for such money, e.g. the possibility of paying a
MediaWiki dev or Wikimedia admin. I believe you were desperate for some of
these ...

There is the problem that people may donate to the local chapter
(everything but DB servers) *rather than* the Wikimedia Foundation in
Florida (DB servers). One would want to make sure that a country's
donations going to the chapter rather than the WMF would not leave a hole
in the budget.

- d.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_Aid