Whose Money Is It Anyway? Options

[dogbiscuit]

From the minutes:

Second tranche of WMF grant (AT)
AT would like the authority to pay a second tranche to the WMF. CK expressed the view that the sooner we give the WMF the grant, the better: however, MP expressed an opposing viewpoint, that we wait until certain key agreements are signed before finalising the payment.
JD wants to know if they have formally applied for a grant from us: AT said that we do have an official letter from the WMF asking for a grant. The third tranche will wait until the accounts are finalised.
DECISION: To pay the remaining £200k grant to the WMF and follow up with Barry Newstead re: the fundraising agreement. AT also has authority to transfer a third tranche once the accounts are finalised, as long as that amount is less than £45k.
ACTION: RB and AT to pay the second tranche and contact Barry Newstead.

So having been gifted a large chunk of money by virtue of a website diversion to their own fundraising page, Wikimedia UK contemplate playing hardball over lack of finalising agreements.

Intriguing that Wikimedia UK think in terms of it being their money to grant to the WMF. I wonder what WMF think about such debates.

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me. I wonder what HM Customs and Revenue think about these schemes. Just to be clear, WMF do fund-raising on their website. They divert UK clicks to a UK based company who nominally are in receipt of the moneys and are able to get tax back based on the UK based company being a charity but in practice have to hand the money back to the WMF. So the UK based company has not actually sought the donations, it has not provided any significant labour or effort to garner these donations. It has simply processed them, with a bit of paperwork to claim the tax back on behalf of a US company. Probably worth a chat with a friendly tax accountant or two that I know.

Thinks, it should also be fun to nitpick and worry through all the minutes so they get so paranoid that they hold everything in secret. Then they might learn why information does not like being free after all.

[Silenteditor]

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me.

It wouldn't surprise me if this very concern isn't what's making the WMUK folks think twice about signing cheques/sending funds to WMF. I would imagine they want to make sure they are (individually) covered if anyone investigates. But I could be wrong.

[Rufus]

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me.

So I was thinking about why they would do this. It doesn't really seem like writing it into the contract as a programmatic expense for the UK foundation saves either WMF or WMUK any actual money. The WMF wouldn't be taxed on receipt of the money anyway (they can almost certainly classify this as inside the scope of their mission, and so not a source of outside business income). I don't know UK law on this, but I doubt WMUK would lose any money by calling it a direct payment instead of a grant. They wouldn't under US law.

WMUK would, however, have to call it a fundraising expense if they made the money transfer a direct payment (again, under US law; I suspect it applies over there but I'm not sure). So WMUK would have a significantly higher fundraising expenses when various charity rating people looked at their fundraising efficiency ratio.

Wonder if that's what's up here. WMF wants to ensure payment, but doesn't want to mess with the chapter's fundraising efficiency ratio, so they end up putting an obligation to dispense programmatic funds in a fundraising contract.

This post has been edited by Rufus:

[lilburne]

WMUK would, however, have to call it a fundraising expense if they made the money transfer a direct payment (again, under US law; I suspect it applies over there but I'm not sure). So WMUK would have a significantly higher fundraising expenses when various charity rating people looked at their fundraising efficiency ratio.

The tax issues may come into play. If they are claiming back tax on the donations via the UK gift aid scheme and then passing that money to the US there is likely to be a problem, as I don't think that the Gift Aid scheme is meant to apply to UK tax payer donations to foreign charities.