[Foundation-l] Optional advertisement on wikipedia

Sun Apr 23 16:48:39 UTC 2006

Delirium wrote:

>Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>  
>
>>I'd guess the open questions would be:
>>
>>1) How would this impact the charitable non-profit status of WMF?
>>  
>>    
>>
>
>The general rule is that a non-profit organization should have at least 
>one-third of its annual income come from a combination of: governmental 
>donations, donations from other public charities, and small (less than 
>2% of total income each) donations from the general public and private 
>charities (large donations can still have the first 2% counted).  If 
>that all adds up to less than 1/3, things get considerably more complicated.
>
>Whether advertising income would cause a problem depends on how much we 
>expect to get, and how much in large donations from private individuals 
>and charities we typically get.
>
>-Mark
>  
>

Interesting information.   Do you have any further detail.   Is the 
above a good general guideline because it is mandated by law;  accepted 
as good practice by accountants, IRS, rating organization, possible 
donors or other?

Any background you care to provide regarding where you gained this 
knowledge would also be appreciated but I can follow up elsewhere if you 
do not care to provide that private information on a public mailing list.

Thanks for the information.

Sincerely,
lazyquasar