[Foundation-l] A new proposal regarding US chapters

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, the US does not need one national chapter. This has been gone over
>  time and again.  Anthony's strategy provides for a guiding body to
>  oversee the local chapters (something that takes too much time and
>  effort for the foundation to do, and also something they must be
>  separate from for liability reasons), but keeps the emphasis on the
>  local chapters, to conduct local events and local outreach, something
>  that they can do far better than any national chapter, while national
>  stuff can be reserved for the WMF to handle. The national guiding body
>  also simplifies the issue of the US local chapters candidates for the
>  2 board seats.

The existence of a "virtual" national chapter, a chapter that exists
as a hollow shell of sorts, would enable state- and locally-based
groups to qualify for 503(c) status under a group exemption. Putting
this kind of parent/child structure in place now would be helpful if
we decided to move towards a more nationally-organized structure in
the future (which might not be entirely unlikely).

I'm not necessarily advocating this, just showing it as a way in which
the existence of a US national chapter might be nice, even if it's not
strictly necessary.

--Andrew Whitworth