Business Plan 2008
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Organizational Background
Mission and Objectives
Wiki UK Limited was set up to act as the official UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, the US charitable organization behind Wikipedia.
The charity's mission is to aid and encourage people to collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify said content.
It proposes to do fulfil this mission by means including (but not limited to):
- promoting freely accessible online information repositories whose content is freely and collaboratively editable;
- acting as a voice and representative for the community of UK residents and citizens who use and edit such repositories;
- preserving world heritage, and particularly that of the UK, through such repositories;
- supporting the charitable work of the Wikimedia Foundation;
- enabling, assisting, promoting and promulgating wider participation in the creation, dissemination and expansion of information and educational resources covering the world's knowledge and languages to all persons, everywhere;
- furthering the development of electronic, printed, and other resources required to support such participation;
- producing, publishing and developing, or causing to be produced, published and developed, information resources, whether in printed, electronic, or other forms;
- making use of or encouraging the use of information resources for the advancement of education; and
- encouraging the adoption of practices and policies to widen education, participation and dissemination of information worldwide.
Current status
Wiki UK Limited is a private company, limited by guarantee, with no share capital, registered in England and Wales (registered number: 06741827). Its current registered address is:
Wiki UK Limited
23 Cartwright Way
Nottingham
Nottinghamshire
NG9 1RL
It was incorporated on 5 November 2008.
The membership
Wiki UK Limited currently has 5 members, all of whom are on the board of directors.
The board
- Chair - Kwan Ting Chan
- Secretary - Andrew Turvey
- Treasurer - Thomas Holden
- Communication Officer - Mickey Conn
- Membership Secretary - Mike Peel
Operational Plan
Status transitions
Wiki UK Limited is currently in negotiations with the Wikimedia Foundation to become its official UK chapter. Part of these negotiations are over the right to use the trademark "Wikimedia". We expect these negotiations to conclude successfully by the end of January 2009, after which we will trade as "Wikimedia UK". We are also in the process of applying to HMRC to become "a charity for tax purposes".
We are now accepting membership applications, with the aim of building a reasonable sized membership by the time of our first AGM (in the first quarter of 2009), during which a new board will be elected. Our charitable activities will begin properly after this.
It is also proposed that Wiki UK Limited switch from being a company limited by guarantee to being a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) within the next year. Being a CIO is an alternative to registering as a charity with lower reporting requirements. It was introduced in the Charities Act 2006, but is not yet available. It is not envisioned that this status transition should aversely affect the charity's operation in any significant way.
Staff
The charity currently employs no staff. Instead we rely on the volunteer effort of members of the company. In the future we may employ a developer (see the "Potential charitable activities" section for details), but the majority of our labour will continue to come from volunteers for the foreseeable future.
Capital (Premises/Equipment)
The charity currently owns no capital of any description. There is no likelihood of the charity purchasing premises in the near future, however, contingent upon the funds becoming available, the charity may be purchasing equipment (primarily technical). Further details of the equipment expenditures being considered are contained in the section "Potential charitable activities" below.
Potential charitable activities
The below are some of the things we would like to be doing in the long run. It is unlikely that we will be doing all or indeed most of these within the next few years, and different activities may be undertaken as opportunities arise.
Community relations
- Supporting the UK Wikimedian community through organising and sponsoring events, such as:
- Meet-ups;
- Coding / Wikipedia editing weekends;
- Conferences on Wikimedia's projects and the open content movement more generally.
Public relations
- Acting as a UK media contact for queries about Wikipedia and the other projects of the Wikimedia foundation.
- Promoting wiki and open content solutions in the media.
- Helping fund and organise the free distribution of the planned offline, DVD based, "Wikipedia v1.0".
- Running campaigns to encourage individuals to edit. Targeting such a campaign at students and academics may be particularly fruitful.
- Encouraging the release of new and currently copyrighted works under free licenses.
Educational links and work in schools
- Helping fund and organise the free distribution of future versions of the offline "Wikipedia Selection for schools" ( http://schools-wikipedia.org/ ).
- Giving sessions at teacher training "top-up" days on the responsible use of Wikipedia (et al.) in the classroom.
- Stimulating research into the use of Wikipedia as an educational and communication tool, through seeking academic partners and bidding for research funds.
Acquiring content to release under a "free" license
- Working with the community to increase coverage of historical sites, by, e.g. helping with costs and/or helping with organisation and the attainment of access and photographic permissions.
- Working with the community to increase Wikipedia's coverage more generally, by e.g. purchasing copies of public domain documents/books/pictures/databases/etc. not currently available for free from easily accessible sources and then digitising them.
Servers and Systems development
- Employing developers to improve MediaWiki, the software which runs the Wikimedia Foundation's wikis.
- Installing new tool servers in Kennisnet (the Amsterdam server farm in which the Wikimedia Foundation's European servers are based), subject to us holding on to some control over them.
Other possible activities
The following activities would also support our objectives, but we could only engage in them after having first obtained official legal advice which supported them:
- Donating back to WMF (subject to issues around donating to foreign charities without sufficient control).
- Hosting/funding a UK squid server (a local mirror of the Wikimedia websites; heavily subject to finding a way round the UK's libel law).
- Supporting the German Chapter owned, Amsterdam located toolserver (subject to issues around donating to foreign charities).
Financial Plan
Planned fundraising
Membership
For at least the next 6 months we expect membership fees to be the charity's primary source of income. Fees have been set at £0.50p per month for under 18s, full time students, the unemployed and OAPs and £1 per month for everyone else. Fees will be collected annually, in advance. We expect the charity's membership by the time of the AGM in February to be at least 20 based on initial surveys of interest, though in the longer term this should be comfortably in the hundreds. With an equal split between full paying and concessionary rate paying member this means we project to have received at least £180 in membership fees by the AGM.
Wikimedia donation drives
The Wikimedia Foundation runs an average world wide donation drive once per year, and allows the money flowing from these drives to go directly to its official chapters, subject to them agreeing to invest 50% of the revenue raised during the course of the fundraiser on activities agreed upon with the Wikimedia Foundation. We hope to be well enough established by October 2009 to participate in the Winter 2009 funding drive. We expect the revenues from this to dwarf those raised by membership. A conservative estimate would put revenues from this in the tens of thousands of pounds.
Other donations
Wiki UK Limited will also be actively seeking donations outside of the Wikimedia foundation donation drive. Revenue from such donations is very hard to predict, and may range from under £100 to well into the thousands.
Financial statement
Wiki UK Limited currently has no assets. Its liabilities come solely from the expenses incurred in setting up the company, which currently total £130.10. These liabilities have been covered by 0% APR loans from the current directors to the company until sufficient income has been raised to repay them.
Our next major expenditure will be the AGM, which we expect to be covered by the rest of the revenues raised from membership between now and then. Future expenditures beyond this will be delayed until we have the funds for them.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
Wiki UK Limited is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL.