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

Wed Aug 17 15:10:48 UTC 2005

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Dirk Riehle wrote:
> 
>> Transfering money out of the U.S. has not been a tax problem for us, 
>> the IRS so far has played nicely with us. But getting money from 
>> Germany to the U.S. has eluded us. If you figure out how to do it 
>> without endangering non-profit status in Germany, please let me know!
>>
>> Dirk
> 
> 
> This is just a thought out loud, but what possible arrangements could be 
> made for not necessarily returning the money to the US, but using funds 
> from local chapters that may be furthering goals in 3rd countries?  i.e. 
> spending money on developers in 3rd world countries, helping develop 
> specific language wikis, seed money for new chapters, etc.?  Or is the 
> money "stuck" in Germany proper and can't go anywhere else at all for 
> any reason?

Good point.

A week ago, at Wikimania, when it was pointed out that the german 
chapter had money, while the french and the italian did not, I suggested 
that possibly some of the german money could be used for other chapters, 
in particular when there is common currency and these countries are in 
certain common frame (here, european union). I am not sure I got a 
positive feedback on this (nor a negative actually).

Maybe it would help to clarify in which cases we could actually use the 
money and in which we can not.

As I understood things, what we can not do is simply transfer from one 
organisation to another, which is totally fair.

Here are some examples where I would like to know if feasible or not.

* buying hardware and "donating" the hardware to the foundation (this 
would typically be the case for servers; but is that possible ? why 
would donating hardware more acceptable than donating money ?)

* buying hardware, putting it in the general pot, but staying the owner 
(maybe for such things as certain servers, switches, memory stick (:-)))

* paying for some of the costs for some meetings (in Germany is easy 
enough to imagine, but would it be possible for example for the German 
verein to fund a Polish meetup ?)

* paying some travel costs which would otherwise be paid by the 
Foundation (easy enough probably would be to pay for some speakers to 
come to wikimania in Germany, but would it be possible for a german 
chapter to pay travel for Jimbo to Germany to meet with german partners, 
or for the german chapter to pay travel for Angela to go to South Africa 
to meet with some possible african partners ?)

* Paying for some promotional items (easy enough in german for a 
conference in Germany, but would it be possible to pay the publishing of 
an italian-language leaflet for a conference in Belgium for example ?)

* Paying people for certain activities (such as, but non restricted to, 
development). Could these people be paid if non german ? Could they be 
paid to work on global issues ? (for example, grant specialist ?)

And there is again the big discussion of whether there would be a way 
for a local chapter to make a official donation to another chapter or to 
the Foundation. Which would probably require a legal expert to say.

Other than that, I can also imagine financing specific projects, but 
these need to be defined (and set up). And *this* is the main issue. We 
can always say "let us use the german money to develop for example 
arabic wikipedia". Right, but who set this up ? Where are the volunteers ?

I do not think there is any bad will from anyone to use/spend this 
money, just need ideas, understand of what is legally authorized and 
volunteers to do the job.

All these being limited to german discussion as they now have money, but 
  will be applied to all other chapters later on.

Do we have ideas on these first points ?