IRS Rules for Corporate Sponsorship of WordCamps

To ensure the WordPress FoundationWordPress 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 WordCampWordCamp 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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#wordcamps

I added the Jetpack Blog Subscriptions widget to…

I added the Jetpack Blog Subscriptions widget to the sidebar of http://central.wordcamp.org/news/, since it’s useful and we have it almost everywhere else.

I noticed there were already 1,600 subscribers, so I wanted to double check if we had it enabled at one point and then decided to disable it for some reason.

#jetpack, #subscribe, #subscriptions, #wordcamp-central, #wordcamps

WordCamps Update, December 19, 2013

This update includes activities since mid-October, the last time we posted to /updates. 🙁

  • published the dates for 7 WordCamps: Dayton, Asheville, Miami, Atlanta, Norway, Prague, and St. Louis
  • added 5 WordCamps to the pre-planning list: Connecticut, Nashville, Hamburg, Netherlands, and Slovakia
  • 151 WordCampWordCamp 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. videos published to WordPress.tv
  • 1825 WordCamp tickets sold
  • 15 WordCamps were held: in Malaga, Boston, Sofia, Nepal, Cape Town, Kenya, Porto, Denver, Edmonton, Orlando, Sao Paolo, London, Raleigh, Sevilla, and Las Vegas

#updates, #wordcamps

Looks like most of the English speaking videos…

Looks like most of the English speaking videos are moderated and scheduled.

I have some marked POOR AUDIO or POOR VIDEO, if someone would take a look at those. Sometimes I get a little too critical.

Also post-production services are available if any WordCampWordCamp 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. needs the help.

#wordpress-tv

Hello I’m looking for a way to follow…

Hello, I’m looking for a way to follow this wptvmods and receive daily or weekly updates.

I have clicked follow on the WordPress admin toolbar and I have my subscriptions delivery settings set to the following:

http://cl.ly/image/2P1C0L3P1H0X

I’ve actually been following the blog for a while now using the settings above but I haven’t received anything to my email. I also did check junk / spam and ran searches through gmail.

Any thoughts?

#wordpress-tv

Meetups Update, December 17, 2013

  • 10 of the existing meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups that we invited to join the central account haven’t responded to the meetup.com opt-in email yet. Have contacted them again to make sure they got the emails, will have meetup.com re-send as needed.
  • Rolled in another 8 new groups.
  • 12 pending groups that are either complicated (competing groups) or new without enough information.
  • Billing cycle for next quarter coming up, we’ll be paying for a total of 100 groups for the Jan-Mar period.
  • Planning to send a year-end email to all organizers on the central account to get input into a plan for the meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. program in the coming year (monthly newsletters from central, speaker matchups, etc).

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Looks like all the videos from WordCamp Malaga…

Looks like all the videos from WordCampWordCamp 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. Malaga have been uploaded and are in the Pending queue, and that we also have some Portuguese content. @woobyn, are you available to moderate the Spanish language videos? Malaga would love to get their content published. 🙂

#malaga, #spanish, #wordpress-tv

@metodiew I scheduled the video you moderated I…

@metodiew,

I scheduled the video you moderated.
I changed the title to Camel Case lettering and I put the categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. “design” in the tags field.

Everything else was great. 🙂

#wordpress-tv

I was surfing through and saw https wptv…

I was surfing through and saw https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=22836&action=edit tagged with poor video. I don’t think it’s bad enough to go unpublished, considering it’s a meetup; is there something specific that made someone think this isn’t publishable?

#meetups-2, #wordpress-tv

Meetup com transfers These applications to join the…

Meetup.com transfers! These applications to join the central account have been getting done in batches each week based on their various statuses. I’ll start posting weekly updates on this program, and will tap someone else to take point on transfers/new setups in the nearish future.

Today’s update:

  • 18 existing groups: Submitted to meetup.com for immediate transfer on account owner confirmation.
  • 9 “complicated” existing groups (inactive, wanting to compete with an existing group, owner isn’t the one who applied, etc): Emailed applicants and/or owners for more info before proceeding
  • 2 new groups: Created new meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups in areas where one did not already exist, applicant seemed to know what they were doing, and they included all the necessary information in the application form.
  • 6 “pending” new groups: Emailed the organizer applicants to get more info or make sure they knew what they were signing up for, but ready to set up on response based on what we know so far.
  • 17 “complicated” new groups: Still researching the situation in the area and/or the applicant, will reply this week as situation is understood.

With this round, we’ll be hitting the 80 groups we currently have room for on the central account, so in the Jan-Mar invoicing cycle, I’ve upped the count to 100 to allow for more new meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. in the coming quarter (we only get to change the number of groups on our account once per quarter due to billing).

I’m ready to train a couple of volunteers on responding to the meetup applications to help speed up the process. Interested? Required qualifications:

  • Experience running a WordPress meetup
  • In good standing with the community
  • Available to work on this around 1-2 hours a week
  • Reliable
  • Able to communicate it English, but international folks welcome

Leave a comment if this sounds like something you’d want to help with. For that matter, these are the same qualifications that will be desired for helping with overall meetup program management (creating starter packs, etc), so if you’re interested in another area of meetups, post in the comments. Thanks!

#meetup-com, #meetups-2