Talk:Donation and grant acceptance

CK's changes

Just a note on the rationale for my edits:

1. Specifying at what level gifts result in phone calls / letters / visitsis a bit like instruction creep - I think it's better that the staff/trustees/volunteers involved in this continue to work out processes that are fit for purpose, rather than having a board decision on the matter.
2. I think we can delegate much of the judgement about what actually needs trustee attention to the Chief Executive. I don't think it would be helpful for us to say that every donation over £1,000 needs to be reviewed by the Board - better that if there is a case where there's a significant sum and any doubt, we rely on the Chief Exec's judgement about what to refer.
3. We also need to take care that we don't have a policy that says "we only take donations from people we like". Trustees' duties are to further the charitable objects of Wikimedia UK, and we have to assess what impact accepting a donation would have on Wikimedia UK, not make a judgement about how similar a donor (particularly a company) is to us. I can certainly see scenarios where we would turn down a corporate donation, but I much prefer my form of words here.

Thanks, The Land (talk) 21:07, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with most of your changes, but would point out a few things. The 'instruction creep' wasn't intended that way - it was intended to be a description of the process, not part of a formal policy. We're still in small-number-statistics for donations over £1k, so I would like the board to be at least told when those come in as standard for a while (but won't push that since it's short- vs long-term). I do think we need something in here about gifts in kind - was there a reason you removed it? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:25, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Why shouldn't WMUK accept donations of items that are useful to it and that the donor would have to pay to dispose of? It sounds like a win-win situation to me. Of course, it is important that the item is useful to the chapter, but as long as it is going to be used the cost of disposal is irrelevant. --Tango (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

We shouldn't be accepting gifts in kind that we have no direct use for, that cost more for *us* to dispose of then they're worth, and so forth. Or particularly if they lock us into extra costs further down the line, at least without assessing what those costs would be. Perhaps a lot of this does fall under the guiding principles, and a lot can be delegated to the chief exec, but there should still be some mention of gifts in kind and when we will/won't accept them in this document/policy. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I've reinserted Gifts in Kind. I was assuming the document was intended as a formal policy (we do, after all, need a policy on this as well as whatever processes we actually follow). The Land (talk) 19:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

A gift poses the risk of adverse publicity to the charity which would hinder the charity's ability to fulfil its mission more than the gift enhances it. This does have the danger of reading a bit like we will take money from evil people as long as nobody finds out. Could we rephrase this ? Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 09:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

It says we will balance the "evilness of the donor" and the circumstances against the impact of the money. I think that is an inescapable balancing act, to be honest, and has to be left to the Board's discretion. The Land (talk) 19:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Restricted donations

• Restricted donations for less than £1,000 will not normally be accepted.
• All restricted donations equal to or in excess of £1,000 will be subject to Board approval prior to acceptance.

I think (no pun intended) this is to restricting. What is the 1k grant said 'Only to be used to support Work in Wales? Surely we have no ideological objections to that and technically we can manage it. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 09:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

We could manage it, but what would be the administrative cost in staff/accountant/auditor time? I doubt it would be as much as £1,000, but it would be a substantial proportion of it. We don't struggle to raise funds, so it doesn't seem worth it to accept such donations. It would be easier to just keep the fundraising banners up for an extra hour. --Tango (talk) 10:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Realistically as long as it takes Richard to do about ten keystrokes on the accounts package.Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 11:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The risk is that we end up being offered £20 restricted donations, which wouldn't be good, or unnecessarily restricted donations. If we did receive £800 for "work in wales", then that would be manageable - but £800 for "work in <insert random small town>" wouldn't be. It's not just the admin work recording the donation, but also the extra work that would be needed in order to spend that money effectively. Mike Peel (talk) 15:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I think it goes without saying that we'll reject donations restricted to work we don't plan to do (and that isn't sufficient to warrant a whole new initiative being started). The question is whether there should be a threshold below which we don't accept restricted donations even for work that we do plan to do, simply because of the administrative cost (which is more than just Richard's time, since it will make the job of the accountants and auditors more complicated and, therefore, more expensive, as well). I think it is right to have such a threshold, although perhaps £1,000 is unnecessarily high. However, another advantage to such a threshold is that it may encourage people that would like to make a restricted donation to just make an unrestricted one instead (restricting a small donation to something that we already plan to spend money on doesn't actually serve any purpose, anyway) - £1,000 is a good threshold for that purpose since it is around the point where we might start to consider doing something we weren't already going to do. --Tango (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

We don't particularly want to encourage restricted donations in an unplanned manner, so I think £1k is about the right threshold, but it could go higher or lower. The Land (talk) 19:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Good work Chris. Thanks for doing this. And I hope to see many donors taking the pledge! Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 09:10, 20 June 2012 (UTC)