QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Wed 23rd November 2011, 7:37am)
I think I have found a lever at long last. The clue is in the long time it took for Wikimedia UK to get recognised as a charity. As Ashley van H says here
http://bambuser.com/channel/pigsonthewing/broadcast/2140981 "it was quite a big story [i.e. charitable status] for the U.K - the charity commission struggled for a long period, and has had to refine their understanding of a public utility". What does he mean? Well it goes back to 2009, when the Charity Commission ruled ....
No, it wasn't the Charity Commission in that case. It was Her Majesty's Custom's and Revenue. Registration as a charity by the Charities Commission and recognition as a charity for tax purposes by HM Customs and Revenue are completely separate processes—although the former is a requirement for the latter unless the annual income of the charity concerned is less than £5,000 or it is
"excepted" or "exempt".
Orlowski's register article contains
a link to a mailing list on which Andrew Turvey, Wikimedia UK's secretary, reproduces the rejection letter from HM Customs and Revenue. Turvey's commentary and the replies to it on the mailing list indicate that the Wikimedia directors simply didn't do their homework before submitting their application. In his email, for instance, Turvey states that they should "probably" stop referring to themselves as an "exempt charity". What they meant by that is anybody's guess, since Wikimedia UK very clearly does not fall under any of the classes of "excepted" or "exempt" charities listed on the above-linked page on the Charities Commission website. Presumably, the reason why Wiki UK applied directly to HM Customs and Revenue without first registering with the Charities Commission is that their annual income at that time was less than £5,000. That may be what they meant in referring to it as an "exempt charity".
Turvey also says "Whilst we can still get Gift Aid declarations (HMRC have previously confirmed this was ok) ... ". It would be interesting to see what this "confirmation" consisted of. I strongly suspect that Turvey has misunderstood it, since his statement is inconsistent with what is written on
the Gift Aid basics page of HM Customs an Revenue's website:
QUOTE(HM Customs and Revenue)
You don't have to register to claim Gift Aid but your charity must be recognised by HMRC as a charity for tax purposes. Recognition by HMRC as a charity is a separate process from registering with the Charity Commission as a charity.
QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Wed 23rd November 2011, 7:37am)
....
So kudos to Jonathan Burchfield, partner at the law firm Stone King (specialists in Charity and Education Law, for reversing this decision:
QUOTE
In accepting Stone King’s application on behalf of Wikimedia UK, the Commission has been at pains to point out that the publication of information useful to the public and the promotion of open content are not inherently charitable activities. Any similar organisation seeking to become registered with the Charity Commission
would need to demonstrate that its activities are exclusively for the public benefit and that the content promoted has sufficient editorial controls and safeguards on the accuracy and objectivity of the information provided. In Wikipedia’s case, for example, the continuous development and operation of editing policies and content security tools assure an increasingly high quality of content.â€
http://www.stoneking.co.uk/news/articles/-/page/1244 (Stone King press release)
QUOTE
“Burchfield said that in order to be registered, Wikimedia UK had to demonstrate that it had
high standards for controlling and monitoring the content of Wikipedia so that it was not easily open to abuse.â€
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/1102747/ (Third Sector)
.....
A thing that already puzzles me is that if WMUK must 'control and monitor' the content, the following statement from its website seems inconsistent with that.
QUOTE
Please note that we are a separate organization from the Wikimedia Foundation, and
have no control over Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia Foundation projects.â€
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Indeed, the whole principle on which Wikipedia was founded was that there should be no editorial oversight in the traditional sense, and that all content would be the result of a ruthless Darwinian fight for survival. That in itself makes it impossible for WMUK to 'control and monitor' content.
I'm afraid you appear to have made insufficient allowance for the amount of spin in the Stone-King press release. In all Burchfield's self-promotional boasting of having got the Charities Commission to "update" UK charities law, he has failed to mention one crucial detail which might make the Charity Commission's decision seem a little less revolutionary. On October 16th, 2011, an
extraordinary general meeting of Wikipedia UK voted to alter its memorandum and articles of association by replacing its original objects (which HM Customs and Revenue—and presumably also the Charities Commission—had rejected as inadequate to establish that its purposes were entirely charitable) with
their current ones. The amendments were lodged with Companies House 4 days later.
According to
Wiki UK's page on the Charity Commission's website, Companies House registered the amended memorandum and articles on October 26th, and the Charities Commission registered Wiki UK as a charity on November 3rd. According to
van Haeften's account the whole process of getting themselves registered took a total of 12 weeks. It would appear that the first 10 of those weeks were spent "negotiating" (or arguing) with the Charities Commission, and formulating a statement of objects which they could be confident of being accepted as establishing a charitable purpose. And, hey presto! Within two weeks of amending their objects they were registered as a charity.
There is still one aspect of all this which I don't understand. On their website, Wiki UK
are now claiming to be eligible for gift aid tax refunds from HM Revenue and Customs. But, as I pointed out above, registration as a charity with the Charities Commission is
not sufficient
by itself to achieve this status.
A page on HM Customs and Revenue's website seems to indicate that once an organisation had been registered as a charity by the Charities Commission it is pretty much a formality for them to get recognised as a charity for tax purposes by HM Customs and Revenue. But, as I pointed out above, the website also seems to make it clear that
this formality must still be completed before the charity can claim gift aid tax relief. I can find no indication anywhere that Wiki UK
has actually completed this formality. If they have, HM Customs and Revenue should have issued them a reference number which UK donors need to quote in their tax returns for the tax on their gifts to be refunded to Wiki UK. But the only numbers Wiki UK quotes on its gift aid form are its company and charity registration numbers. On my reading of HM Customs and Revenue's website, there seems no reason to believe that the reference number it issues would be the same as either of those two numbers.
This post has been edited by lonza leggiera: