----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Andrew Turvey raturvey@yahoo.co.uk To: chaptercommittee-l@wikimedia.org Cc: WMUK board@wikimedia.org.uk Sent: Thursday, 16 October, 2008 2:00:57 Subject: Wikimedia UK v2 (proposed) - Constitution
Dear Chapters Committee,
I am writing on behalf of the UK Wikimedian community which is currently working to establish a new chapter for the United Kingdom.
Over the past two months, we have been working through the steps to establish this new chapter. Starting in late August, we publicised our initiative throughout the UK wikimedian community and invited other wikimedians to get involved. We held an election of an interim Board in September, and their first task was to draw up a constitution.
After extensive consultation with the community and discussion among the Board members, we approved our draft constitution on Monday and would like to submit it to you now for your comments and approval in accordance with the "Step by step chapter creation guide".
We have decided that the most appropriate legal structure for our chapter would be a "Company Limited by Guarantee". We have based our constitution (termed the "Memorandum of Association" and the "Articles of Association") on the Model documents issued by the UK Charity Commission. The main revisions we have made to these is to shift the general balance of powers between the Directors and the members towards the members and to allow for electronic communications and meetings.
Our draft constitution can be found here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/MoA&oldid=... and http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/AoA&oldid=...
The text of the constitution is shown in Bold text with additional explanatory notes in Italic. Note that the Italic notes do not form part of the constitution. Revisions to the Model documents are highlighted by underlining additional text and striking through the deleted text.
Please let us know if you have any queries regarding these and otherwise we look forward to hearing from you once you have had a chance to consider these.
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Turvey Secretary Wikimedia UK v2 (proposed)
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