Agenda 2Nov10/Treasurer's Report

Activities to report

I am aware that I have been doing a terrible job recently and apologise for that. If there were anyone to replace me, I'd offer my resignation, but there isn't and I think I'm still better than nothing. I am, once again, unable to attend the meeting, although can join by phone if the board wishes to consult me on anything.

I phoned a company (shortsmscodes.co.uk) that handles donations by SMS yesterday and got the following information. The fees from them for one keyword (probably for £5 donations, which is the maximum you can do) would be either £350/yr or £100 set-up and £35/month. It could be set up within a day, although we would need to show them the "call to action" we're going to use so they can check with have the right small print. The donation would cost donors £5+normal network rate. The donor's network will deduct a portion of the donation. How much that is varies from network to network. If we go on a commercial deal (which we have to since we're not yet a registered charity) it's likely to be about 40% (the network has to pay VAT on it, which is why it is so high). For charities, it's more like 10% and even as low as 3% for some networks (02 and Vodafone, I think he said).

The fees per donation are obviously very high, but I think most donations we get from SMS will be donations we wouldn't have received otherwise, so that doesn't really matter (60% is better than nothing). The fixed fees are very small and I'm confident they would be covered (we would only need about 70 donations to break even). One downside is that we don't get donor information to use in future (although I think we can keep their mobile numbers and send mass texts if we wanted to, but that would be expensive and is unlikely to be well received). My recommendation is to go for this. Please make a decision on this in the meeting if at all possible.

Outstanding actions

• TD to contact Pavel to ask for a report on how our money was spent; what the overall cost breakdown for the event was; and what plans exist at the moment for the next chapters meeting. Done a/w response - Pavel assured me at Wikimania that he would reply ages ago. I'll chase him up again.
• AT and TD prepare a report for the WMF chapters grant, for email approval, and to approach the Foundation to extend the grant.
• TD to send around renewal notices when he has access to the bank account. - CM has done this
• AT and TD to revisit the annual report, updating actions and setting things going to produce this.
• TD to provide a table of current spending on the 2010 Budget items - Not had time, sorry. My estimate of our position in my previous report is still the best I have.
• TD to work on and commission the new donation website prior to the start of the fundraiser in November I'll try and do it this weekend, failing that we'll use last year's.
• MP, AT, TD to (facilitate) work on the 2011 budget / wishlist (also anyone else that wants to get involved). Done a bit
• TD to email the wikimediauk-l mailing list inviting people to help with the budget / wishlist. Done
• TD to modify/update the fundraising website prior to the start of November. - Duplicate of above