At 23:05 +0100 6/9/08, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2008/9/6 Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com:
On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 10:41 PM, Ross Gardler ross.gardler@oucs.ox.ac.uk wrote:
I'm still concerned that it appears that people are expected to sign up to a legal entity that does not yet have any defined objectives. Maybe I'm misreading something, maybe this board is an interim step to the final legal entities board?
My impression is that what is currently being discussed is a committee that will work towards incorporation. At the point of corporation, there would be a board appointed.
I believe that the current discussion is about the former, not yet the latter. I presume discussion of the composition of the latter will be part of the interim committee's function.
If this is not accurate, perhaps someone would be kind enough to correct me. If it is accurate, perhaps people could refrain from calling it a "board" until that term is more technically accurate and less confusing.
You're close. What we're electing now is the initial board. They will do all the paperwork of getting incorporated and will be the initial board of the company (you have to submit the details of the initial board along with the rest of the documents when applying for corporate status). They will then get charitable status, set up a bank account, sort out the agreement with WMF and process membership applications. Once they've done that (hopefully by the end of the year or the very beginning of next year, but that's only if nothing goes wrong) they will organise an AGM (Annual General Meeting, a yearly meeting that almost all companies have which all members/shareholders are invited to and are allowed to vote at). At that AGM, all the initial board will resign and a new board will be elected by the membership (the members of the initial board can stand for re-election if they want to). That new board will then have a functioning framework which they can use to start actually doing the activities of the chapter.
There are no shareholders in a company limited by guarantee (since there are no shares issued).
The discussion of who should be the guarantor members has been going on as long as I remember! Some charities limit that membership to the trustees, and some do not, and I am a member and a trustee of both types of charity.
Gordo