The “Advancement of Education” as applied to the Wikimedia Foundation projects

The charitable head of “advancement of education” can cover “almost any form of worthwhile instruction or cultural advancement”: Hanbury and Martin, Modern Equity, 16th ed, p404. It will be noted that the following activities have been held to be charitable under the head of “advancement of education”:

• The production of a dictionary: Re Stanford [1924] 1 Ch 73 (see also [1971] Ch 626, 630);
• The publication of Law Reports: Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales v AG [1972] Ch 73, Court of Appeal;
• The establishment and maintenance of museums: British Museum Trustees v White (1826) 2 Sm & St 595; Re Pinion [1965] Ch 85

The Charity Commission has also recognised libraries and art galleries as charitable.

Re Shaw

In the case of Re Shaw's WT [1957] 1 WLR 729, Harman J's held that “... if the object be merely the increase of knowledge, that is not in itself a charitable object unless it be combined with teaching or education”. We note, first of all, that the requirement of “teaching or education” is assumed to be an additional requirement only where the primary object is the conduct of original research (“the mere increase of knowledge”) rather than the dissemination of existing knowledge and research, as in the case of Re Shaw. The main project that we support, Wikipedia, is exclusively concerned with the public dissemination of existing knowledge, rather than with the conduct of original research.

However, and in any event, in Re Hopkins [1965] Ch 669, Wilberforce J held:

“I think, therefore, that the word "education" as used by Harman J. In re Shaw, decd.; Public Trustee v. Day must be used in a wide sense, certainly extending beyond teaching, and that the requirement is that, in order to be charitable, research must either be of educational value to the researcher or must be so directed as to lead to something which will pass into the store of educational material, or so as to improve the sum of communicable knowledge in an area which education may cover...”

It is therefore not correct as a matter of law to say that only direct “teaching” or instruction will be covered under the head of education. This was disapproved in Re Hopkins. Instead, in order to be charitable, the research must lead to something that will pass into the store of educational material or improve the sum of communicable knowledge. The decision in Re Shaw that a (highly unusual) trust to 'research the advantages' of a phonetic alphabet was not charitable, was seen in Re Hopkins as having been made on the grounds that such an object would not lead to increase “the sum of communicable knowledge”, presumably because there would not be any real public or scholarly interest in the outcome of such a project.

For those reasons, the decision in Re Shaw, which concerned a highly unusual trust, has very little relevance to our company's objects and hence to its application for charitable status. Indeed, nothing in that decision serves to indicate that the publication of a widely disseminated online encyclopaedia would not constitute a charitable “advancement of education”.

Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales

The decision in Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales v AG [1972] Ch 73 would be applied in this situation. In that case, the Court of Appeal held that the publication of the Law Reports series was within the charitable head of “advancement of education”. By analogy, an online facility for the collection and dissemination of knowledge and other “educational, cultural and historic content” would be taken to fall within this head of charity.

In the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting case, Sachs LJ said:

“It would be odd indeed and contrary to the trend of judicial decisions if the institution and maintenance of a library for the study of a learned subject or of something rightly called a science did not at least prima facie fall within the phrase 'advancement of education'."

The justification for treating the publication of a free, online encyclopaedia, as within the rubric of “advancement of education” is even stronger, because the particular issue in the Incorporated Council case (of whether a resource used by professionals for the advancement of their careers could be said to be within the realm of “advancement of education”) does not apply to freely available resources aimed at the general populace, such as the Wikipedia website and the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.

You will note, finally, that in Re Stanford [1924] 1 Ch 73, it was assumed by all parties that a gift for the completion and publication of a dictionary was charitable. This case was cited at first instance in the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting case: [1971] Ch 626 at 630. This is a very close analogy to the objects of our company.