Tom,
On 30 Oct 2008, at 18:11, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Further comments having actually read the page:
Membership should be open to non-residents, especially
if they have
some connection to the UK (non-resident UK citizen, for example). The
use of proxies means having non-resident members doesn't make it
harder to find a quorum. I also see no reason to restrict it to over
16s. Under 16s can't be on the board, but they can be members as far
as I'm aware (I've read the appropriate Act and didn't see anything in
there about age restrictions on members).
This was a mistake on my part: I thought
that guarantor membership
had to have the same requirements as directors of the Board. If this
is not the case, then great. I've removed both restrictions from the
page.
I also don't know of a
requirement for a parent's signature, but it probably wouldn't hurt -
the £1 liability probably wouldn't be binding without one, but that's
just a nominal amount anyway.
At the very least, it's good practice, and lets
us know that the
legal guardian of the child supports their application.
It should probably be made clear that the register of
members will be
made available to anyone with a good reason for asking (that's a legal
requirement, I don't remember the definition of "good reason").
Good
point. I don't think you even need a good reason; if you're a
member you're entitled to look, otherwise you may have to pay a fee
but you're still entitled to look, unless the company applies to the
court to get an exemption. I've put this onto the page, with a ref to
the appropriate section of the companies act.
"Guarantor" isn't a class of membership,
it's just an adjective we use
to make it clear we're talking about legal membership of the company
rather than being a "supporting member" as v1.0 called it (I think
it's been agreed that we should rename that "friend" if we have a
similar concept to avoid confusion).
I've tried to clarify this on the page.
I believe holding membership details for 10 years is,
indeed, a legal
requirement. I don't know of any requirement to keep hold of the
actual application form, though.
I viewed the application form as being the
membership details. In my
opinion, it would certainly be a good idea to keep the bit of paper
with the member's signature around, in case we ever need to prove
that they applied to be, and are, a member. It also removes the
requirement to keep all of their information in the register of
members, which as said above can be viewed by all on request.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to explicitly
restrict the reasons the
board can refuse membership. We already have an appeals process, so
just let the board use their discretion about what is in the best
interests of the charity. It may also be good to add "not disrupt the
charity" to "not bring the charity into disrepute".
I've
rephrased this to make it more permissive.
Thanks,
Mike