To ensure the WordPress Foundation The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org.’s compliance with IRS rules, we have been talking to our lawyers to better understand what we can and can’t do for WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. sponsors.
As a non-profit, the WordPress Foundation can, without being taxed, accept any payment — which may be money or in-kind payment of property or services — as long as there is no expectation that the sponsor will receive a “substantial return benefit,” as defined by IRS regulations.
The main “substantial return benefit” that concerns WordCamps is centered around what the IRS considers advertising for our sponsors. The IRS’s definition of advertising is broader than we previously realized. Our lawyers provided us with this “plain English” definition:
“The regulations define advertising as any message or material, regardless of how it’s published or disseminated, that promotes or markets the sponsor’s trade or business or any of its services, facilities, or products. It includes any message that contains qualitative or comparative language, price information or indications of savings or value, an endorsement, or an inducement to buy, sell, or use any company, service, facility or product. A single message that contains both advertising and a corporate sponsorship acknowledgment will be treated as advertising.”
This is where we may have been making mistakes in the past, allowing sponsors to make statements at WordCamps or on WordCamp websites – or making them ourselves – that in some way promoted or endorsed that sponsor’s products or services.
To ensure that we don’t make these mistakes in the future, the Foundation’s lawyers have helped us update our sponsorship agreement to reflect the IRS rules around how we can recognize corporate sponsors. Moving forward, we’ll ask all WordCamp sponsors to sign this agreement.
Here is the proposed revision for plan.wordcamp.org’s sponsorship page, which we hope will make clear how the IRS says we can recognize WordCamp corporate sponsors:
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