Talk:Membership fees/Archive 2

How much should membership cost ?

Perhaps nothing at all ... but then keep in mind that ...

• How much do you think it should cost ?
• Do you think we should make a difference among countries ? If so, how do you suggest we evaluate fees in the different countries ?
• Should we distinguish various types of membership fees, such as retiree, student, firm... which categories ?

We could define 3-5 categories. Each country will belong to one category. Each category will have a minimum fee amount (for example 1 equivalent-dollar for most african countries, or 20 eq-dollars for US) per year. The amount may be paid in one time, or a monthly automatic amount be taken on the member bank account. We could suggest members to give more.

Perhaps the additional amount could be given for specific issues (such as support for scholarship, support for wikireader, support to board member :-))

I suggest

• Regular membership
• Reduced price for retired, students, unemployed

A geographic proposal

I hope the institution of fees will be seen as a tool for giving community members free reign to express their connection to the community (and many will express it by giving more than any required fee!), rather than as a way to force people who want to feel a certain connection to the community to pay a suitable premium. I also think fees should be on the low side for the first year, to see how they work.

To that end, the real question is : what processing fees are involved in accepting donations? What are the costs of any newsletters or other mailings that will go out to members? What is a reasonable fee compared to the time and cost of sending in an application for membership?

• International mail from various parts of the world, for those who can't complete the transaction online: $0.40 - $2.00 (letter, air mail)
• Fee for obtaining a postal money order / Paypal charges : ~$0.50 for a $5-$10 order
• Email: free; bulk-mail of a 2-pg newsletter to var. parts of the world : $0.40 - $1.50 each. ($1.50 - $6 for a quarterly letter)

So the low-end of the spectrum should be >> $1, and the high-end (assuming it comes with a bumper sticker or two and a quarterly newsletter) should be >> $5.

My proposal: $25 and $5.

(1) Two yearly membership fees: $25 (standard; online reg) and $5 (for reasons of hardship, cost-of-living disparity, &c).

Allow people to pay for up to 2 years of membership at once.

(2) Anyone can submit a request to have the fee waived; in rare circumstances, requests from known contributors may be granted.

1A -- unauthenticated online reg's (for users with no info beyond a username), and regs from users living in (among others) Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the US, the UK.

1B -- regs (by mail) from users living in any 3d-world country, any country whose primary lang has fewer than 20 active WPans, ...

+sj+

On separating nations by average income

If we divide the nations with regards to average income, does anyone has an idea on which data we could rely ? For exemple

• group one : USA, Europe : 30 dollars
• group two : Algeria, Mexico : 10 dollars
• group three : Haiti : 1 dollar

Hi I am Chella from India. I kindly request you to lower the fees because for an American $10 is nothing but a parking charge and for an Indian student that is his one month Hostel fees! So kindly consider or leave this to the local chapter. The international foundation can charge in percentages 203.101.33.92

Fees = Satan! --Node

Generally I agree with the proposals here. Some points to consider: in the German Verein, the members have to decide on the membership fees and can change the fees at the annual meeting. As Akl already said, we can send money only for specific purposes to the foundation, but I think it should be possible to agree on the relations of how much of the money should go to the foundation directly (in form of hardware, flight tickets or whatever).

Different fees per country: There are rich people in Africa and poor people in the US. If someone can afford a computer and an internet connection to contribute to wikipedia in a developing country he usually doesn't belong to the poor. I think two tariffs, one normal and one reduced, for the global foundation should be enough. Don't make it too complicated. If African wikipedians found a local chapter, they can decide on lower fees according to the average income there. For special hard cases we can grant scholarships, as Danny proposed. --Elian 00:57, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How do we manage the existence of local chapters ?

Local chapters might also have membership, and fees. Please note that the Foundation is not the same as a local chapter in the US. The physical location of Wikimedia is in Florida, but it will not be serving as a local point of contact for Wikimedians in that area. Any US chapters will be separate from the Foundation to the same degree that local chapters in other countries are.

1. Should we ask local members to pay twice to be members both locally or globally?
2. Should fees be paid locally with membership of the Foundation given free in these cases?
3. Should a percentage of local fees be given to the Foundation?
4. Should members of local chapters automatically be members of the foundation?
5. Should members of local chapters be forced to be members of the foundation? (To decrease the likelihood of forking)
6. Could they choose to gain membership to both at the same time?
7. Should the cost be the same amount if you join both a local chapter and the Foundation?
8. How should money be transferred from the local chapters to the Foundation?
9. How should corporate membership be handled?
10. How will membership data be shared between the Foundation and the local chapters?
11. What will be the financial relationship between local chapters and the Foundation?
12. Should some of the fees from local chapters be given to help small projects/languages with no chapter?

See also: FAQ

Anthere

One thing I do strongly believe is that membership in the international foundation should be required. For legal and/or tax purposes I am not opposed to this being sold in a "package", where someone buys membership in a particular national foundation that comes with automatic international membership. But this should result in exactly the same dues being paid to the international foundation, as that's the one that pays to run the servers and so on. This could be done by having the national foundation transfer the funds to the international foundation, rather than requiring the actual user to register twice, so long as, if the international dues are $X, the international foundation gets $X for each member. If national foundations would like to charge more ($X+$Y) and keep the extra for local dues, that's their prerogative, or they may choose to run on a purely volunteer basis and charge no dues themselves. In either case, people should not be permitted to only pay dues to a national foundation, when it is the international foundation that is actually paying the bills.

Note that this isn't a US vs. non-US issue either. I envision a US national foundation being set up eventually, once Wikimedia is large enough, to deal with local US issues, just as other countries would have local foundations. But the international Wikimedia Foundation would still be the one holding the trademarks, running the servers, coordinating policy, and soon—national foundations would be responsible only for national issues. --Delirium 20:43, 17 Jun 200 4 (UTC)

One reason I am able to contribute as much as I do as a writer and editor is that I am unemployed. If a general fee were levied, it might be possible that I would not be able to participate in Wikipedia.. Denni 22:08, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please see my comment on the content page. Also double-membership (chapter and foundation) seems not feasable to me. Local chapters should give as much money to the foundation as they can and each member of a local chapter should have the right to vote on foundation issues. -- Akl 21:07, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Denni, you will never have to pay to be an editor. Anthere

I don't see the point in having local chapters in the first place. I certainly would be opposed to giving members of local chapters full privileges in the global foundation without paying their fair share to the global foundation. If a local chapter wants to charge a fee, that should be an additional fee (unless the fee is passed on directly to the global foundation, of course). User:angela this comment was made by an anonymous user who was defintely NOT Angela. Angela is, and always has been, highly supportive of the existence of local chapters

• Member benefit : depending on the country, for those paying in *their* country, it may decrease income taxes. This is one of the way wealthy people decrease their taxes. Even for me, I hesitate less to offer charitable money when I know that I will in reality only pay 50% of what I give.
• Good for CV : for many people, it can be a help in a career to belong to an association, especially if they are part of those running it. Even if not, that is something they can be proud of publicly.
• For public donations, they are much more likely to be done in the country for a local country. For example, I am quite certain that the french wikipedia will get money from la Francophonie, for supporting french language. This might be even more true for minority languages, such as basque, breton and co. But government, local associations, local firms, will only give to a local chapter, not to the global/american one, if only because that would not be legal. In short, by opening legal entities, we greatly improve our chance to receive good amounts of money.
• For any local action, such as a little meeting, or flyer printing, or just reimboursement of costs, organisation will be much easier at a local level than at the local level.
• Opening local chapter is a clear *sign* that the organisation is international. This is good for wikimedia image.
• Another benefit is to make it clear for people that they are not "governed" by a central entity, but rather to empower them, to tell them "you can do it". It is good for people, it makes them very proud. Wikimedia is also about making people happy. Anthere 06:45, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It isn't possible to force users who pay to join their local chapter to also pay to join Wikimedia, as Wikimedia allows non-paying membership. Is there any reason to say members of local chapters can not be volunteer active members rather than contributing active members? I don't feel there should be. Angela 15:33, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

About "crossing of membership data", I don't if this is the way to go. For example, in Belgium we have a very strong law about protection of private information contained in files or electronic database and I don't think that a local chapter in Belguim would have the right to share the member list with the global fondation (at least not with an acceptance clause in the adhesion form). Also, see in France where the local association should only be able to give 30% back to the global entity. Shouldn't be simpler to separate member fees of the global entity? Just a thought, I have not a clear view of all this. -- Looxix 13:09, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Looxix. Local chapters seem like an extra layer of bureaucracy to me. Not only that, it seems as though they will end up sapping funds from the much more important international foundation in the name of nationalistic and linguistic factionalism. --Hcheney 03:04, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

a t on une meilleure idee des consequences diverses et variées de donner une partie des revenus de l association local a la foundation ?
fiscalement c'est difficile à évaluer mais le plus probable c'est qu'à supposer mis en place un système de déductibilité fiscale pour les dons faits en France au profit de l'association française le fait de se délester au profit de l'organisation américaine risque de conduire l'administration à requalifier et de conduire à l'impossibilité de déduire la seule manière d'intégrer les flus financiers et cumulant l'avantage fiscal

c'est que WFInc. est une stature non lucrative réputée au plan international du type ONG (Croix Rouge, etc) dans ce cas, la circulation de fonds serait inattaquable type pour la France "Aide et Action" et leurs homologues américaines, suisses etc les assoc. de patronage éducatif d'enfants sont un bon support

villy, qu entend tu par action de reconnaissance ?
il faut parvenir à la signature de convention de partenariat, c'est la meilleure solution, et - à défaut - ou dans un premier temps, à des déclarations de soutien avec possibilité de mettre des liens wikimedia sur les sites webs concernés ça serait l'idéal

j'ai un bon contact à l'UNESCO, un peu vieux mais encore possible à réactiver, et un autre possible à la direction "éducation" de la commission européenne une demi-douzaine de ce genre dans le cadre d'une action simultanée et concertée pourrait être un bon début

Il faut un plan d'action qui tient la route, un argumentaire soigneusement réfléchi et un mandat de repérésentation en bonne et due forme de WFInc.

La phrase "placée sous la haut patronage de l'UNESCO", c'est magique pour notre projet

---

1. The local chapters should at least divide the money, half to the Foundation.
2. Paying twice is the worst solution.
3. No fee at all would be nice, maybe we should allow that for very active contributers. E.g. more than 500 edits each month and at least three months active, but how long would that contributers-membership last? Aren't they having a representative in the Board already?
4. at German Verein we have Active Members (paying 24 Euros a year, can vote), Supportive Memmber (paying but no vote) and honourable members (i.e. Jimbo). Maybe that should be a good solution for the Foundation too. --TomK32 WR Internet 18:42, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Only a certain amount of money can be legally sent to another country foundation. For example, in France, it is 40% max. Anthere

The German Verein is not allowed to give money to organisations without assigning it to a specified use (except German non-profit organisations). But I'm sure we'll find enough purposes to give most of our money to the foundation. -- Akl 20:35, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many federally-based membership organisations (for that is what we are effectively discussing here) review the remitted proportions each year and set payments in one direction against support payments in the other, setting the percentages by need at each end. --VampWillow 20:53, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Could a German/French/British org buy something and donate that to the US foundation, say a server? Burgundavia 12:46, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We need more fact-finding in order to make any decent decision, it seems. But here are some simple principles, as I see:

• If the local chapter and Wikimedia Foundation are sharing the goals completely, then yes, the total amount of payment made by the member should be reduced.
• If those organizations pursue different goals, then people pay two different fees.
• If the two organizations goals are only partly overlapping, then the membership fees are only partly reduced.
• There are many ways to "reduce" the fee. Which one of these will be used depends mostly on legal, accounting, and other administrative costs for the organizations and donor associated with different options.
  • Pay once to either organization, and the rest is taken care of by those two, through inter-organizational donations.
  • Pay separately, but you receive a discount if you payed to the other organization. Depending on which one you pay first, two organizations receive different amount of money. But they will figure things out later.
  • Pay to a particular organization because transaction fee is cheaper that way.

Tomos 06:50, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• option 1 : any paying member of a local association is made member of Foundation without any fee
• option 2 : people pay locally, and a certain amount of the total income of the local chapter is given to the foundation
• option 3 : during registration, they choose to join local and/or global, and pay both separately, but both to the local chapter (perhaps with a discount). Then the chapter send some money to wikimedia.
• option 4 : they need to register separately

I would go a different direction and require that a contributing member be a member of a local chapter if one is available. The foundation can then charge a small charter fee or per capita fee or something from each chapter, based on it's membership total and local conditions (ie US residents should expect to pay more than folks from Myanmar), that is used for the administration of the foundation, while each chapter can then choose to give additional support to the foundation or particular projects, programs, ect, as they choose. Gentgeen 00:11, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ultimately, I think it would be best if we can coordinate so that all dues are paid to the Foundation, rather than to any local chapters(1). I wouldn't require a contributing member to be a member of a local chapter as well, because I don't want local chapters burdened with a lot of members who aren't necessarily interested in participating at that level. However, I do think we should give all contributing members an option to join the appropriate local chapter. That would be easier if one payment of dues covers everything.

This is not to say that we should disallow things that have already happened, like the German Verein's dues. Also, I don't want local chapters to be left without funds that may be helpful to them, including startup costs. When the dues process is sufficiently organized, I think part of that money should be distributed to local chapters, and part of it used by the Foundation for general purposes. Local chapters could also raise their own funds toward appropriate objectives (just that these additional contributions would not be a requirement of membership in the chapter).

I firmly agree that any dues should vary based on the member's location. I would prefer that we calculate this based on local standards of living, rather than exchange rates(2). I'm not sure what would be the best data source to use in determining this, however. It also raises the problem of verifying location if the member would prefer not to disclose personally identifying information. I'm not sure that such disclosure is required, but I don't want to encourage people to circumvent dues by claiming to be from Cameroon instead of Canada (on the assumption that dues would be very low in poor sub-Saharan nations, if not waived altogether).(3) Perhaps we could base the dues on whatever local chapter the member wants to join. --Michael Snow 00:05, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(1)This will be irrealistic. When german people give to a german association, this is 100% deductible from their income tax. For a french, it is 40% deductible. If we are a global project, people will expect to be able to pay in their own currency (no charge, less scary) and in their own country (tax deduction). They won't pay to the global organisation if paying in another place is of no cost to them.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that people would all be paying in US dollars. The Foundation currently accepts donations in various currencies, and there's no reason this couldn't continue. But I apologize for not recognizing that tax deductions are easier to get with local chapters by country. In part, I was also thinking in terms of multiple local chapters within the US.

I think the most important thing is that we keep things simple for members, and part of that is that one payment of dues makes you a member of both the overall Foundation and any appropriate local chapter. In the US, I doubt there's much benefit in having people pay dues to separate chapters located in California, Texas, New York, etc. instead of having everyone pay to the main Foundation in Florida. However, if a German member needs to pay to a German association to get a tax deduction, then that's where all German dues should go. Same as the US, though, they should be paid to the main German branch of the foundation, not the local chapter for Berlin, Dresden, Stuttgart, or Hamburg. Though presumably Austrians and Swiss will need to pay to a separate chapter. So for this reason, chapters should be more by country and location, rather than language.

For people whose country has no separate chapter yet, they would pay to the Foundation in Florida. Also, the amount of dues needs to be determined by the Foundation overall, to make sure they are equitable for people in different countries. --Michael Snow 17:06, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

We should also keep in mind that redistribution is not something we can do freely, with no control. Be it in the Germany -> USA or in the USA -> Germany direction. There are laws which limit circulation of money I think.

(2)I agree with this. Does anyone has an idea on which data we could rely to roughly separate the nations in 3 groups in terms of average income ?

(3)But this is true for any donation, whatever the country. We should perhaps keep in mind three things. First, if donators want to receive a tax deduction sheet, they need to give their adress. Second, we should trust people, to join the association because they want to support us, not so much just for the pleasure of saying they are members. Third, even if "cheating" occur, is that a very negative consequences to us or not ? Also, there was a suggestion of scholarship for those not able to pay.

Anthere

How much should membership cost ?

We could define 3-5 categories. Each country will belong to one category. Each category will have a minimum fee amount (for example 1 equivalent-dollar for most african countries, 10 dollars for Algeria, Mexico, 30 for Europe, 50 for USA) per year. The amount may be paid in one time, or a monthly automatic amount be taken on the member bank account.

For country income categories, we could consider follow the World Bank's categorization.

We could suggest members to give more by donation.

Perhaps the additional amount could be given for specific issues (such as support for scholarship, support for wikireader, support to board member :-))

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership_fees#How_much_should_membership_cost_.3F

Americans are not 40% richer than Europeans! --Daniel Mayer 18:52, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)