----- Original Message ----- From: "rupert.thurner" <rupert.thur...@gmail.com> To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, 10 May, 2009 20:12:30 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Minutes of yesterday's Board meeting
>> would it be possible to slightly adjust your "bylaws" and add >> education as most other wikimedia chapters do? When the by-laws were written we talked about "educational content". This was our attempt to marry the charitable aim of "promoting education" with the Mission of the Wikimedia Foundation stated at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission. Our correspondence made clear and repeated reference to "promoting education" so they were in no doubt how our Object links into the law on charitable activities. Adjusting the bylaws would be a long process. We would need to call a general meeting of members, and get 75% approval for the change. We would also need the Foundation to approve the change which could take months. The tax authorities' objection was not based on the wording of our Articles - their interpretation of the law was that producing an encyclopedia did not count as "promoting education" under UK law. We're contesting that interpretation - see http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submission_to_HMRC for the draft of the response we are writing. If we fail in this appeal one route we could go down is to revise the objects but our immediate response is to ask the matter to be referred to the Charity Commission who are more familiar with the law in this area. Regards, Andrew
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