Kelly Martin wrote:
Does Florida law require that member of nonprofits be actual persons? A nonprofit I used to work for (a national organization) had as its members the 50 state organizations of which it was comprised. Perhaps the members of Wikimedia should be the various national organizations which already exist, as corporate entities.
"Members" is a technical legal concept which should not straightjacket us too much. We can be a fully hardcore community organization without being a "membership organization" in the technical sense... as I understand it, a "membership organization" is one very special type of community-based organization, and one which for many reasons does not fit how we think of ourselves.
But as to your substantive point, I agree completely that we need a place at the board level (in the long term) for the interest of the chapters. I can really envision a case where, in the future, the chapter boards elect from among themselves a representative to the board, a fully voting representative.
I do not expect that to be an approach we take in the current contemplated board expansion, but for a future board expansion I think it would make very good sense. (In the past, we have had a very uneven distribution of chapters... but as chapters are being formed worldwide, in another year or two we will be able to think of the chapters as a whole as representing the segment of the community which is more interested in "organizational" work as well as "editing" work.)
I hope people are beginning to see the outlines of my thinking about what I mean when I say that I think we should be a community organization with a diversity of routes to board membership, because I think this better reflects who we are and what we do as a community than global voting for all board members would.
--Jimbo