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

Thu Aug 18 10:59:32 UTC 2005

On 8/17/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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).

The problem with this, like with almost every idea on how to spend the
german money is that we don't really know yet if it's possible :(

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

This question is not easy to answer. The usual case for a charity
organisation in Germany is to spend money for its own undertakings.
>From what I know (I'm neither an expert in this field, nor am I the
treasurer) every other spending is more or less difficult. Spending
money in Germany (for hardware or almost everything else) would be the
easiest way. Likewise easy would it be to buy hardware in Germany and
ship it to a data center, let's say in Amsterdam, providing the
purpose of this hardware is easy to explain (to the tax office) in the
sense that it can be separated from other things (eg. we wanted to buy
a big tool server until a nice company came around and donated us
one). Unfortunately, adding to the existing server park is much more
complicated to explain to the tax office.

To pay for general hardware might be possible but would probably be
much more difficult. For example, it *might* be possible to buy
general hardware in Germany, send it to Amsterdam and explain how it
is used to the tax office. This gets much more complicated if we buy
hardware in the US and add it to an existing pool. The idea is that
starting a whole new data center, anywhere in the world, as our own
undertaking, run by German money, would be easier to endorse as a
"Wikimedia Deutschland undertaking".

If Wikimedia Deutschland´s money is to be only a part of an existing
pool, then we need a clear idea of what Wikimedia wants to do (not
only now, but also in the next year or the year after). Then, and only
then, once we have a plan, a budget... we can ask a tax professional
to tell us, how this is possible and how - which paperwork (project
descriptions, contracts) is needed. To be sure that the tax office
will accept this later, we need to ask them beforehand. This will take
time, perhaps a few months (until they might respond with more
questions ...)

So far we (or at least I) have no idea what the mid-term plans are.
Some months ago the Kennisnet cluster seemed to be a comparative easy
option. But as I understood Jimbo, this is not an option "now". As I
said above this "now" is part of our problem. Given the work and time
it needs to find *one* way to spend a lot of our money and given the
fact that Wikimedia Deutschland not only now has money but will
probably have much more in the next months and years it would be much
more effective to work on mid-term plans. I wonder if this is
possible.

> * 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 ?)

Yes, we can pay for travel costs (in principle). But I'm not sure what
the tax office would say if we  spent 10k Euro for travel expenses,
for people who are not flying from or to Germany or are not somehow
connected with Wikimedia Deutschland.

BTW: As far as I know Wikimedia Deutschland did agree on paying 50% of
Tim's ticket for his trip to Berlin in December 2004. We never
reimbursed the money to the Foundation because we never got a bill :(

> * 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 ?)

Yes, we can pay for promotional items (in principle). Unless we don't
spend huge amounts on this, nobody will ask us, in which language the
stuff is printed and where and to whom it was given.

> * 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 ?)

Yes, paying people to improve free software is totally ok, but again,
this has to be well documented (what project is the developer working
on?). A grants specialist working abroad would be harder to explain,
but one in Germany working on grants in which Wikimedia Deutschland is
involved should be no problem.

In all these discussions we also have to keep in mind that the German
board is responsible for the money, and this not only in a legal way.
This also has moral implications. To give an example: Even if it is
legally okay, I would find it very hard to explain to the German
donators that *all* of their money has been spent on plane tickets or
a single development task or something like that.

I would be very happy if we can work together on other mid- or
long-term ideas to spend our money. And while we are doing this we
should give some money for some of the things mentioned above.

-- Arne (akl)