[Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

Tue Jun 13 16:20:13 UTC 2006

--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about trying to decentralize the "licking envelopes" part? Allow a
> large number of reasonably trusted volunteers to send "thank you"
> notes (add some legal disclaimer about the sender not being a
> Wikimedia employee etc. if necessary). Compensate them for postage,
> but not for time. I'm not sure this is a viable model, but it may be
> worth trying out.

Getting that to work should be easy enough. All we really need are a number of trusted people
willing to do the work. However, getting this wrong could have enough of a penalty to warrant an
in-office solution that periodically uses a limited number of supervised volunteers who can travel
to the St Pete office. We have a meet-up each year in St Petersburg in mid-January and the
deadline to get notifications out for the previous calendar year is at the end of January. I’m
sure we could get some trusted people who would already be in St Pete for the meet-up to help with
a mailing. 

> > 3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes
> 
> That's a good point. How good are we presently at complying with these
> regulations, e.g. notifying people who make >$200 donations outside
> regular fund drives? 

This has already been taken care of for the 2005 tax season. 

> Does the applicable law already allow for the use
> of digitally signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail?

It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment
confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to change
what those emails say). 
See 
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485

-- mav

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