2009/9/14 WereSpielChequers <werespielchequ...@googlemail.com>: > I'm not a fan of merchandising as part of a charities function. But if > it is done it should have the saving grace of having a sufficient > markup to help finance the organisation.
It's not a matter of being a fan or not - merchandising is not part of our function, it can only legally be done for the purposes of raising funds. Raising funds by attracting more members is a possibility, but I'm sceptical that it would raise enough funds to be worth the risk of unsold stock. If there is significant risk (which, without a profit margin to help absorb losses, there would be) then it would have to be done through a trading subsidiary, anyway (without the risk it would fall under the small trading exemption so could be done directly), and that will incur admin costs. > Now what would be cool would be Wikipedia calenders. Flowers, sports > events historical events - we could theme quite a few and they'd make > great gifts. It would also be a good article improvement process as > the nominated articles for the calender would be liable to get good > scrutiny and input whist we discuss which should go in the calender. > OK we would need wmf agreement to do this as a fundraiser sold outside > the membership, but there is a well established charity market for > such things. I for one can think of half a dozen calenders that I > might buy as winter solstice presents for assorted friends and > relatives. Now, that is a fantastic idea! They would be very cheap to produce (in terms of money - lots of volunteer labour would be required) so could be sold cheaply while still having a decent profit margin. It would be a great way to advertise (extracts from) featured articles - showing off our best articles could do a lot of good. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
