Charity Commission application

For an overview of the process, see Charity status application

This page summarises the proposed contents of the chapter's application to the charity commission (from 2009).

A blank copy of the original form is here. These Guidance notes must be considered when completing the form.

Items surrounded by [ brackets ] are explanatory notes that will not be included in the final application.

A About the organisation seeking registration

A1 What is your organisation’s name?

Main Name: Wiki UK Limited

Working name/acronym: Wikimedia UK

A2 Contact for the purpose of this application

Full name: Andrew Turvey

Address: Wikimedia UK, 23 Cartwright Way, Beeston, Nottingham

Postcode: NG9 1RL

Email address: secretarywikimedia.org.uk

Telephone number: 07754 881 562

Alternative: 07988 013 646 [from Contact us ]

A3 Assessing eligibility for registration

Please confirm your organisation is required to register for all of the following reasons:

(a) it has a gross annual income of more than £5000 a year: YES

(b) it is not exempt or excepted from the requirement to register: YES

(c) it is governed by the laws of England and Wales: YES

A4 Operating in Scotland?

Is your organisation registered or will it be registering with the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator (OSCR) as well? NO

[ Per this OSCR guidance, we are exempt from registering with the OSCR because, although we represent ourselves as being a charity in Scotland:

1. We are applying to be a charity in England & Wales
2. We are not established under the law of Scotland
3. We are not managed or controlled wholly or mainly in Scotland
4. We do not occupy any land or premises in Scotland, and
5. We do not carry out any activities in any office, shop or similar premises in Scotland

This situation may change in the future if we end up with a Scottish majority on the Board, start a Scottish branch or open an office there. ]

Have you ever had an application rejected by the OSCR? NO

A5 Finance and funding

If your organisation has existed for more than a year and you have published accounts, please provide the gross income as recorded in the accounts: £NIL

Otherwise please enter: the estimated gross income in the first year of operation: £5,300

The amount currently received: £5,066

[ We need to enclose a bank statement and the AGM balances as evidence, also the WMF grant notification if not included in the bank statement ]

[ TO BE UPDATED; Calculated as: £418 from Figures to AGM plus $8,150 from Initiatives/Bid divided by 1.7534 (rate from post office on 10/7) = £4,648 = £5,066

Figures to the anniversary date of our incorporation (5/11/09) I've added a rough estimation of ~£200 ]

Financial year end date: 31/01/2010

[ It was decided to run the financial year to January; this gives two months to prepare the formal annual accounts in time for their approval at the spring AGM and is after the completion of the winter fundraiser]

How has your organisation raised its funds and/or how does it intend to do so in future?

Our funds will come from membership subscriptions, donations from members and supporters and grants from related organisations including the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. The current split in our income is £246 subscriptions, £172 donations and a £4,648 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Do you intend to use professional fundraising consultants? NO

A6 Special circumstances

Are there any special circumstances concerning your application that you wish to bring to our attention? (Please see the accompanying notes for the kind of information we would like to know.)

[ The guidance notes state:

We consider the following to be special circumstances that we would like you to bring to our attention:

• there is a deadline by which you need a registered charity number, such as a planned public launch of the organisation, or in connection with proposed funding;
• the organisation’s purpose is novel or innovative or may attract comment or criticism;
• there may be significant media, political, or other interest;
• the organisation has links with central or local government initiatives and/or is funded by them; or
• the organisation has links with one or more major organisations and/or is, or will be, funded by them. ]

Wikimedia UK is the local "chapter" for the Wikimedia Foundation, the US charity that operates the Wikipedia online encyclopedia and related projects. Wikipedia is the seventh most-visited site on the internet and the most popular online reference work. Local chapters are independent self-governing associations of Wikimedia supporters formed to support the aims of the Foundation. There are currently twenty four chapters established throughout the world.

Given the high profile of these projects, there is likely to be significant media interest in our application. The nature of our activities is also novel and innovative in the context of charity law in England and Wales.

We have scheduled a joint annual fundraiser with the Wikimedia Foundation to run from November 2009 to January 2010 and we would like to be a registered charity by then.

B Governing document

B1 Governing document

Please indicate which type of governing document your organisation has by ticking ONE of the following boxes:

Constitution

Will

Memorandum and articles: Y

Trust deed

Act of Parliament

Registered company number: 6741827

Other - please specify below

Date governing document became effective: 5/11/2008

B2 Complete ONLY if you have set up a company to replace an existing charity

N/A

B3 Approved governing document

Have you adopted an approved governing document? NO

C Assessing the organisation’s public benefit

Object 1 - Please enter in the box below the first (or only) object exactly as it appears in your governing document

The charity's Object 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, by means including (but not limited to):

1. promoting freely accessible online information repositories whose content is freely and collaboratively editable;
2. acting as a voice and representative for the community of UK residents and citizens who use and edit such repositories;
3. preserving world heritage, and particularly that of the UK, through such repositories;
4. supporting the charitable work of the Wikimedia Foundation;
5. 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;
6. furthering the development of electronic, printed, and other resources required to support such participation;
7. producing, publishing and developing, or causing to be produced, published and developed, information resources, whether in printed, electronic, or other forms;
8. making use of or encouraging the use of information resources for the advancement of education; and
9. encouraging the adoption of practices and policies to widen education, participation and dissemination of information worldwide.

Ways of carrying out Object 1. Include here details about how your organisation’s aims, as expressed in this object, are, or will be carried out for the public benefit.

Our goals have two focuses. The first focus is on making educational, cultural and historical content (both textual and multimedia) easily and freely accessible on the internet, greatly increasing its accessibility and ease of reuse in a wide variety of applications. The second focus is on educating the public at large on how to participate in the creation of, and the use of, that content. Currently, our primary means of making said content available is via the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation - including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, etc. - but also include such services as Flickr (an image hosting website). The types of activities we will likely be undertaking include:

• Presentations and workshops at schools, universities or to the public at large on how to both use and interact with free content websites such as Wikipedia
• Cooperating with museums, libraries and other content holders to organize digitization events, such as the recent "Wikipedia Loves Art" event, and also other methods of making their content freely available online
• Producing documents (both paper and digital) on how to use such content
• Assisting with the development of software to aid the creation and distribution of free content, such as the MediaWiki software that sites such as Wikipedia run on
• Organizing conferences and other such events with a focus on free content
• Acting as a UK media contact for queries about Wikipedia and the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but not formally representing them

We will also be promoting and encouraging the availability of content in minority languages used within the UK, such as Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish.

In the above, "free" is used both in terms of no financial cost to the user, and in terms of being available under open licenses e.g. the Creative Commons license

Whilst we will be working closely with the Wikimedia Foundation in our role as a chapter, we will only be supporting such activities of theirs as are deemed charitable within the UK. We also remain a completely independent legal entity, bound to the WMF only through the Chapters Agreement (a copy of which is enclosed) and other such agreements that may be signed in conjunction with them, e.g. for joint fundraising.

We hold that all of these activities are for the public benefit. The most notable benefits include:-

• Increased provision of freely accessible, reusable and improvable textual and multimedia content, and
• Engagement and education of the public both via organized events and in an ongoing manner online.

We believe that our object represents the advancement of education, rather than the "mere increase of knowledge" as, similar to libraries, the information on the projects we support is in the form of a "structured arrangement of accessible resources for broader educational activities." Such content is made verifiable both by the references it contains and by its links to related material. These links also structure the content so that it can be explored in a logical way. As such, it has educational merit and value. For more information, please see the attached appendices on "Use of Wikimedia resources in structured learning" and "The “Advancement of Education” as applied to the Wikimedia Foundation projects ".

[ Pages 3-5 of File:File-HMRC Response Letter.pdf should be included as appendices ]

D Vulnerable people

D1 Vulnerable people

Please confirm by ticking the box that you have read and understood the guidance about CRB checks. Y

D2 Working with children

If your organisation will work with children you must complete this section.

(a) Does your organisation have a child protection policy? YES [ Child protection policy ]

(b) Are you required by law to carry out CRB checks on your trustees? YES

(c) Are you allowed by law to carry out CRB checks on your trustees? YES

(d) If you have carried out CRB checks on all your trustees AND are satisfied that they are all suitable to act as trustees of a charity that works with children tick box A on the trustee declaration form. You can now move on to part D3 of the form.

(e) If you are neither required nor allowed to obtain CRB checks on all trustees then tick box B on the trustee declaration form, and explain why not in the box below.

(f) If you are required to carry out CRB checks and have not done so, please explain why.

None of our current activities require us to carry out CRB checks.

However, Wikimedia UK is currently setting up a new project that will involve working in educational establishments. Once this project has started, we will become a "childrens charity", which will require all trustees to be checked. No other projects are intended to work specifically with vulnerable people.

We are currently obtaining CRB checks for all trustees and establishing our child protection policies and procedures to comply with applicable legislation. Our new project will not commence until all these controls have been completed.

(g) If you are allowed to carry out CRB checks and have decided not to do so please tick box C on the trustee declaration form, and explain in the box below what safeguards you have implemented to ensure that no unsuitable person has access to any children with whom the charity works. N/A

D3 Vulnerable adults

If your organisation will work with vulnerable adults you must complete this section. N/A

[ We may work with vulnerable adults, but that would likely only be in individual, isolated cases e.g. if they came along to an event. ]

(a) Does your organisation have a policy for working with vulnerable adults?

(b) Are you required by law to carry out CRB checks on your trustees?

(c) Are you allowed by law to carry out CRB checks on your trustees?

(d) If you have carried out CRB checks on all your trustees ANDare satisfied that they are all suitable to act as trustee of a charity that works with vulnerable adults tick box D on the trustee declaration. You can now move on to Part E of the form.

(e) If you are neither required nor allowed to obtain CRB checks on all trustees then please tick box E on the trustee declaration form and explain why not in the box below.

(f) If you are required to carry out CRB checks and have not done so, please explain why.

(g) If you are allowed to carry out CRB checks and have decided not to do so please tick box F on the trustee declaration form, and explain in the box below what safeguards you have implemented to ensure that no unsuitable person has access to any vulnerable adults with whom the charity works.

E Private benefit

E1 Conflict of interests policy

Do the trustees have a conflict of interest policy in place? YES

[ See Conflicts of interest policy ]

E2 Connected persons

Does any connected person (this could include an organisation or company) receive a benefit that has a financial value from the organisation? NO

[ see guidance notes for more info as to what is included here - I would expect reimbursement of expenses not to be included ]

E3 Private benefit details

N/A

F Information required for the Register of Charities

F1 Contact

Title: Mr

Honours:

Personal Names: Andrew

Family Name: Turvey

Prefered Name: The Secretary

F2 Organisation’s addresses

(a) Organisation’s public address to be displayed on the register and used for correspondence

Wikimedia UK

23 Cartwright Way

Beeston

Nottingham NG9 1RL

Is the address at F2(a) the address from which the charity operates? YES

If you do not want the operating address made public please explain why in the box below. (See the notes for the kind of situations where we would be willing to publish the alternative address.)

N/A

Organisation’s telephone number: 07988 013 646

Organisation’s fax number: N/A

Organisation’s website address: http://uk.wikimedia.org

Email address for public display: infowikimedia.org.uk

Email address for Commission use: secretarywikimedia.org.uk

F3 Classification

Select at least one category in each of the three sections to describe what the organisation will do. Please read the notes carefully before completing this.

What does your organisation do?

General purposes

Education/training YES

Medical/health/sickness

Disability

Accommodation/housing

Religious activities

Relief of poverty

Overseas aid/famine relief

Arts/culture

Sport/recreation

Animals

Environment/conservation/heritage YES

Economic/community/development/employment

Other or none of these

Who does your organisation help?

People with disabilities

People of a particular ethnic or racial origin

Other charities/voluntary bodies YES

Other defined groups

The general public/mankind YES

How does your organisation operate?

Makes grants to individuals

Makes grants to organisations

Provides other finance

Provides human resources

Provides buildings/facilities/open space

Provides services

Provides advocacy/advice/information YES

Sponsors or undertakes research

Acts as an umbrella or resource body

Other or none of these YES

If your organisation operates in more than ten local authority areas in England or Wales, select one of the options below. Otherwise complete part (b).

throughout London (more than ten London boroughs)

throughout England (more than ten local authority areas)

throughout Wales (more than ten local authority areas)

throughout England and Wales (more than ten local authority areas) YES

If the organisation’s funds or resources are used in any countries outside England and Wales, please list these. We only accept the country names listed in the guidance notes. Please attach a separate sheet if you operate in more than twelve countries.

Scotland

Northern Ireland

F5 Trustee details

If your organisation is administered by a corporate trustee, please complete the corporate trustee’s details.

N/A

If the organisation has individual trustees, please provide the following details for each person.

[ Details will be as per the Register of Directors ]

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names: Michael William

Family Name: Peel

Preferred Name:

Other names used now or previously: None

Date of Birth: [tbc]

Address [tbc]

Email adddress chairwikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number 07988 013 646

Trustee is chair of the organisation YES

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Andrew Rowan

Family Name Turvey

Preferred Name

Other names used now or previously Rowan Andrew Turvey

Date of Birth

Address 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL

Email adddress [email protected]

Telephone Number

Trustee is chair of the organisation

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Thomas

Family Name Holden

Preferred Name Tom

Other names used now or previously

Date of Birth 13/04/1983

Address Holywell Manor, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UH

Email adddress treasurerwikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number 07815 067305

Trustee is chair of the organisation

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Joseph

Family Name Seddon

Preferred Name

Other names used now or previously

Date of Birth [tbc]

Address [tbc]

Email adddress conferenceswikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number

Trustee is chair of the organisation

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Paul

Family Name Williams

Preferred Name

Other names used now or previously

Date of Birth [tbc]

Address [tbc]

Email adddress volunteerswikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number

Trustee is chair of the organisation

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Zeyi

Family Name He

Preferred Name

Other names used now or previously

Date of Birth [tbc]

Address [tbc]

Email adddress initiativeswikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number

Trustee is chair of the organisation

Title

Honours & Qualifications:

Personal Names Steve

Family Name Virgin

Preferred Name

Other names used now or previously

Date of Birth [tbc]

Address [tbc]

Email adddress corporatewikimedia.org.uk

Telephone Number

Trustee is chair of the organisation

If this person feels that they have good reason NOT to have their name published on the Public Register, please explain below. The Commission is not obliged to concur with a request for a waiver and will only normally do so in the interests of the safety of the individual concerned.

N/A