Mailing List Archive

Walter Vermeir <walter@...> writes:

>
> Since the start of the donations I have find it a waste for using a system
like
[oeps]

Sorry. I have forgotten to remove draft version of that email.

[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]

--- Walter Vermeir <walter@wikipedia.be> wrote:
> I suggest to give much more attension to this donation channel. For the
> English version of the fundraising page put it where there is now "Donate
> via postal mail". Include the information that a transfer inside de
> euro-zone is the same price like a normal national payment and that this is
> the cheapst way for you and Wikimedia.

But that begs the question about what the German association *does* with the
money donated to it. IIRC about 4000 Euro was donated directly to that
organization and yet have not seen nor heard about any of that being
transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation for any purpose (such as buying servers
or pay for bandwidth). If this is not correct, then please tell me (I'm still
missing some bank statements, so could have missed it).

> Many Wikipedias do not have a translation of the donation page. The is not
> helpful to get mony.
>
> If there not translation yet you can make one. You need a account for the
> foundation wiki;

That is not absolutely necessary. All you minimally need to do is translate it
and post it on meta. Somebody else could then post it to the foundation wiki.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/Fundraising

-- mav



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Daniel Mayer wrote:
> But that begs the question about what the German association *does* with the
> money donated to it. IIRC about 4000 Euro was donated directly to that
> organization and yet have not seen nor heard about any of that being
> transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation for any purpose (such as buying servers
> or pay for bandwidth). If this is not correct, then please tell me (I'm still
> missing some bank statements, so could have missed it).

We are finding out how to best transfer the donations (i.e. buying
servers directly or sending the money to the foundation) without getting
in trouble with german association law. Henriette, our treasurer, was
busy with organizing the 21C3 lately, so I hope there is some progress
soon. The decision to buy servers has been taken already, the open
question is now how to do this.

Other things we did with the donations:
* Wikimedia Deutschland pays half of the plane tickets for Brion and Tim
to Berlin
* the second big sum is the legal expertise we ordered
(see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Urheberrechtsfragen/Sammlung)
* some promotion material...

My proposal would be that you contact henriette (Henriette.Fiebig (at)
snafu.de) directly and establish ways to transfer the money, maybe
involve also one of the developers to tell us which hardware is needed.

greetings,
elian

Leaving aside Daniel's concerns over how Wikimedia Deutschland
currently uses the dough (somebody from Wikimedia Deutschland should
answer that), Walter's email is an important reminder that we really
should get going about offering the EU standard bank transfer to EU
donors.

What we need to provide so people can do these transactions:

* our BIC (Bank Identification Code)
* our IBAN (International Bank Account Number)
* the full international postal address of our bank (because some banks
want this data as a fallback mechanism, in case there's probs w/ the
BIC/IBAN data.

Note that the full postal address is currently missing from
http://www.wikimedia.de/spenden.html.

EU donors (even if they are totally unfamiliar w/ EU standard
transactions) can then take that info to their bank and get going
sending the money.

The donation page should explain a bit about EU standard bank transfers
-- because EU standard transactions are still fairly new and not even
all EU citizens know about them. (I think I was one of the first people
to do them at my bank, but I now do one every one or two months -- easy
peasy.) It should be made clear that these transactions CANNOT, by EU
law, cost more than national transactions and that every EU bank has to
offer them. In other words, for anyone with an EU current account, an
an EU transaction is probably the cheapest way. (Admittedly, in terms
of convenience credit cards still have an edge, because EU standard
transactions require the user to do the transaction through their bank
(instead of punching in a few numbers on our site) and not all banks
let their customers do EU standard transactions online yet.

Pretty redundant info, just in case:
EU standard transactions are bank transfers between two EU banks. The
donor needs an EU bank account and we need one. They're cheap, they're
''relatively'' fast (still can take up to a few days till funds fully
register in the recipient's account) and once you've got the above
data, EU transactions are quite painless (as opposed to any other
international transaction).
It really, truly does not matter what EU bank account we use for
accepting EU standard transactions. It could be a current account in
any EU country and we DON'T need an account in each EU country from
that perspective. The only advantage to having multiple EU current
accounts would be that donors from a respective country could then also
use their "old" national bank transfer mechanism to donate, and they
might be more familiar with that. So maybe to offer separate accounts
for the bigger countries would be good -- and, yes, it's especially
good to have/offer a bank account with Germany, because German's mostly
just don't get^W, sorry, do credit cards and the country's the most
populous of the EU.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
www.ropersonline.com

Elisabeth Bauer (elian@djini.de) [050110 05:57]:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:

> >But that begs the question about what the German association *does* with
> >the
> >money donated to it. IIRC about 4000 Euro was donated directly to that

> We are finding out how to best transfer the donations (i.e. buying
> servers directly or sending the money to the foundation) without getting
> in trouble with german association law. Henriette, our treasurer, was
> busy with organizing the 21C3 lately, so I hope there is some progress
> soon. The decision to buy servers has been taken already, the open
> question is now how to do this.


Kate Turner just announced on irc that the French proxy servers are now
live for fr.wikipedia.org and fr.wiktionary.org in .fr, with plans to have
them serving all of Wikimedia for the whole EU if everything works OK.

If all does go well, local proxy servers will be a marvellous thing for
local associations to spend money on, and will form an excellent reason for
local associations to form ;-)


- d.

Walter Vermeir wrote:

>The normal way of paying something in europa is whit a bank transfer. The cost
>of a banktransfer inside the euro-zone is mostly zero or very very small.
>
>
This varies by country; the normal way of paying for things in *some*
countries in Europe, like Germany, is with a bank transfer. In others,
like Greece and France, credit cards are much more common.

>The fundraising pages in the languages that are members of the euro-zone should
>make this the first option of payment.
>
>
Languages aren't members of the euro-zone though; countries are. Is
"French" a member of the euro-zone (France) or not (Canada)? Etc.
Obviously it makes no sense for a French-speaking Canadian to donate via
a German bank account, since that would involve international
bank-transfer fees.

-Mark

> >The fundraising pages in the languages that are members of the euro-zone should
> >make this the first option of payment.
> >
> >
> Languages aren't members of the euro-zone though; countries are. Is
> "French" a member of the euro-zone (France) or not (Canada)? Etc.
> Obviously it makes no sense for a French-speaking Canadian to donate via
> a German bank account, since that would involve international
> bank-transfer fees.

Actually, any country to country transfer, even in the Euro-zone, in
euros, involves a fee (go figure ! banks could not let go such a
source of revenue). Of course, ALL donation pages in ALL the
languages, should clearly present the best way to give (ie. the
cheapest both for the donor and the receiver depending on the donor's
location and currency).

Maybe in the long run the French and German chapters should look into
having a special tick box which would allow donors to choose where
their money goes (ie. specifically the local chapter - providing the
local chapters have an idea of what to do with the money on a local
basis - or Wikimedia Foundation). This would allow for the local
chapter to transfer the money to Wikimedia Foundation (or, as elian
says, depending on laws allowing it or not, buy servers for the
Foundation etc.).

My two cents (of a euro).

Delphine

PS. The French chapter will soooon be done and have its bank. :)

On 10 Jan 2005, at 19:00, notafish wrote:

> Actually, any country to country transfer, even in the Euro-zone, in
> euros, involves a fee

Yes and no.

I refer you to:
http://www.bankofireland.ie/html/gws/business/online_banking/border/

That page is actually about a lot more than just the IBAN/BIC transfers
(it includes info on other bank transfer services with a view to
business use).
But it contains a crucial statement:

"EU Regulation 2560/2001 requires all providers of cross border payment
services to ensure that charges levied in respect of cross border
electronic payments in Euro up to €12,500*, to EU [countries], are the
same as charges for corresponding payments in Euro, within the relevant
member state"

I also refer you to:
http://tinyurl.com/53be8

Yes, because your bank ''might'' actually still charge you for those
cross-border transactions inside the EU (=IBAN/BIC transactions) -- IF
AND ONLY IF they charge you for domestic transactions as well. If they
charge you more for an IBAN/BIC transaction than for a domestic
transaction, they're breaking the law.

No, because with many banks, a certain number of domestic transactions
are included in a quarterly fee anyway, so they're "free" -- and if
domestic transactions are free to you then IBAN/BIC transactions have
to be free as well.

Admittedly, there's no such thing as a free lunch and you do actually
pay for those "free" transactions through your quarterly fee (or --if
you've got a bigger pile of dough in the bank-- through interest the
bank can earn on your money, some of which they may not pass on to
you).

But the point's made:
Cross-country bank transfers inside the EU now come at domestic prices.
If you're paying more you're being ripped off.

(NB: This regulation actually applies to ''transfers executed in euro
between EU states'' (not just inside the [[Eurozone]]). So I can do an
IBAN/BIC transfer from Germany to the UK (which is not (yet?) inside
the Eurozone), and have the dosh come into the British current account
(which is in Pounds Sterling (GBP)) and still avail of the free/low fee
transfer. That's because the ''transfer'' is done in euros, the
conversion being done by the British bank thereafter. The reverse also
works -- so the oh so euro-shy British actually have their businesses
already saving tidy wads of money when trading with EU countries,
thanks to the euro.)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
www.ropersonline.com

PS: It won't be long now, I dare say, and we'll see fierce competition
between banks right through the EU -- because with these new
regulations the advantages to having a bank account in your actual
country of residence (as opposed to, say, in Hungary, where fees might
be lower) are dwindling. That'll lead to Hungarian banks starting to
target German customers, or French banks targeting Irish customers,
etc., etc. Sometimes I just LOVE the EU. ;-)