Bishakha's point is well made. The jury is still out on questions of effectiveness. In the long run it is important for each national non-profit to be skilled in all aspects fundraising, and supported by many sources of revenue.
I wonder that fundraising discussions still bring up "automatic assignment of a fixed percentage of the funds raised to the local entity". This was a practice designed by the Foundation a few years ago for simplicity, which is no longer used.
In are a few countries a non-profit can gift (no strings attached) at most 50% of its revenue to another entity, before losing its status as an independent non-profit. That is a context in which the figure still comes up. Yet even then, this limitation does not mean that 50% they control must stay within the country. The chapter's annual plan can include major line items to cover global expenses such as servers and bandwidth costs. See for instance the first line of WM-France's last annual plan. – SJ +03:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The German chapter's Jürgen Fenn said… – Thanks for quoting my statement on Stu West's blog post. For the record, I just would like to say that I am indeed an ordinary member of the German local chapter Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), and I take part in WMDE's education programme as a course instructor and advisor, but I do not belong to WMDE's permanent staff nor am I a member of the WMDE's board. So I did not make this statement on behalf of the German chapter. – Regards, Jürgen Fenn.--Aschmidt (talk) 13:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation staff has published a detailed memo on the "local vs. global donation processing" issue (complementing Sue's recommendations) here.--Eloquence*19:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Erik, you should be ashamed of that memo, published with so many errors (data and logic) and the spin is so transparent that it makes the errors seem intentional. John Vandenberg(chat)07:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we not simply give our donors the option of who they give to? They can donate to the WMF and outside of the USA not receive a tax receipt or they can donate to the local chapter and receive a tax receipt with the latter amount split based on what the laws allow. This would maximize the funds raised by the movement as a whole. There are definitely some people who will not donate 20$ without a tax receipt.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:44, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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