[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Dan Rosenthal]

The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000  
square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has  
163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only  
around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far  
fewer people.

And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural  
differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US  
national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that.  
Not to mention, the individual states in the US are so large and  
autonomous they act almost at the same level as other countries  
throughout the world.

-Dan
On May 1, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote:

> Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there
> be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get
> the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany.
> Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board
> members, one will have to be strict about that.
> Ziko
>
>
> 2008/5/1 Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org>:
>>
>> Birgitte writes:
>>
>>> The US sub-national issue is not about power but logistics.   One
>>> national chapter will never self-organize in the US.  All the
>>> incentives to do so (tax-deductabilty, legal support, press
>>> contacts) have been "stolen" by the WMF.
>>
>> So far as I know, there is no legal prohibition or hurdle that
>> prevents either a national chapter or a subnational chapter from
>> forming in the United States.  Such a chapter certainly could  
>> organize
>> itself as a nonprofit, seek tax-deductible status, and so on.
>>
>> I do wish you hadn't used the word "stolen," even if you mean for it
>> to be a metaphor.
>>
>> I agree that there are geographic hurdles with regard to a U.S.
>> national chapter, but would stop short of predicting that a national
>> chapter will "never self-organize."  Over the course of my career,
>> I've frequently been surprised at the willingness of large geographic
>> groups to self-organize.
>>
>>
>> --Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> Ziko van Dijk
> NL-Silvolde
>
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