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Grex > Coop > #340: Two-Tier Membership Model for Grex? | |
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| 11 new of 16 responses total. |
remmers
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response 6 of 16:
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Feb 23 21:00 UTC 2013 |
Sorry Dan - I scribbled the response that you're responding to since I
didn't particularly care for it myself. :-)
Anyway - problem I was trying to address was that of
distinguishing between "customers" and "members" (in the
governance-participating sense). Dan's right that we sort of do that
already with the Paypal thing. But I was wondering if it would be
possible to turn the customer base (I probably shouldn't refer to them
as "members") into some sort of significant income stream. (We have
money now, but not necessarily forever.) Obviously these
ideas aren't fully baked, and there's the issue of reconciling that with
Grex's charitable mission.
Something to keep in mind in any discussion of the membership model is
that Cyberspace Inc. is a Michigan corporation and as such has
record-keeping and reportage obligations regarding members, such that we
probably don't want to incur those obligations for everybody anywhere in
the world who sends in a few bucks via Paypal, even temporarily, much
less in perpetuity. (Rane can probably clarify whether what I'm saying
here makes any sense.)
In any case, the issue I'm trying to address here is minor compared to
the truly difficult ones.
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kentn
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response 7 of 16:
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Feb 23 22:26 UTC 2013 |
A couple things: 1. paying dues is a condition of membership in the
current by-laws and Article 6 outlines what those dues are in terms
of money. So if we were to do anything about removing a dues
requirement, the by-laws would need yet another change (one wonders
how long we can continue to gut the by-laws before the need for
new by-laws presents itself, but anyway...). 2. The justification
for collecting identification information from members is in our
membership FAQ and gives two reasons (the main one being that the
State of Michigan requires us to keep an up to date list of members
and we do it to keep people from voting more than once. There is
also the need to know who we are giving outgoing access in case they
cause issues for other sites). So no matter how we define
membership, it sounds like we'll need to identify those members.
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gelinas
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response 8 of 16:
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Feb 24 00:01 UTC 2013 |
I like the idea of sending out a newsletter to users. But then, the mice
thought it a good idea to put a bell on the cat, too. ;/
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cross
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response 9 of 16:
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Feb 24 02:29 UTC 2013 |
resp:6 I don't see how it's any harder to simply append to a list than to
keep revising that list over and over again, except that no one is doing the
latter and doing the former would be simpler. *shrug*
A steady income stream is only relevant if we have expnses, which we basically
don't. The 2003-ish computer had hardware problems that have been largely
addressed, thankfully; but that computer's configuration was a huge mistake.
We should have gotten a box that had ECC RAM and it should have run FreeBSD
from the start; our odessy through OpenBSD was a misguided misadventure.
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rcurl
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response 10 of 16:
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Feb 24 05:12 UTC 2013 |
CC is currently a member-based 501(c)3. But it isn't necessry to have members
as part of the corporation. It could be a board-based 501(C)3.
"No owners are in a 501(c)(3) organization. The founders of the 501(c)(3) may
serve on the company's board of directors or act as officers of the
organization. A 501(c)(3) may or may not have members that are actively
involved in the organization's affairs. The structure of a 501(c)(3) exists
to ensure that the organization is operating in a way that best meets the
needs of the clients and customers that use the organization's services"
In a board-based 501(c)3 governance is provided just by the board, which
chooses its own members, forms committees of at least one director, elects
its own officers, etc.
All users then are just users (or clients or customers).
Funds could still be raised by asking for donations from the users (instead
of "dues)).
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kentn
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response 11 of 16:
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Feb 24 15:27 UTC 2013 |
How are board members elected or appointed in the instance of no members?
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cross
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response 12 of 16:
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Feb 24 15:49 UTC 2013 |
resp:11 Presumably, an initial board is named and that board grants power
to the board to appoint board members and officers as appropriate.
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kentn
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response 13 of 16:
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Feb 24 16:23 UTC 2013 |
I guess we better hope the bus doesn't crash with all board members on it
in that instance :)
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richard
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response 14 of 16:
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Feb 24 23:12 UTC 2013 |
re #7 The problem is the bylaws make it too difficult to do anything.
The bylaws have outlived the original vision of the founders. Therefore
I think the easiest thing to do, before considering new membership
setups, is to dissolve the corporation. Get rid of the bylaws entirely
and start over.
Could just form a new 501(c)(3) and cyberspace communications sells it
the assets/property, and the people who use Grex now finally have a
chance for a fresh start, to write a new simpler bylaws. A bylaws that
would provide a future and give people a *reason* to want to invest in
that future.
I think any new membership structure won't work unless the corporate
structure that would govern it is dealt with.
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jep
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response 15 of 16:
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Feb 24 23:33 UTC 2013 |
Enough, Richard. We don't need to discuss dissolving the corporation in
every item in this conference. There are other things to talk about as
well. Discuss it in the item you started for that purpose. No one used
'forget'. Quit muddling every item with this garbage, or face being
excluded as people add your name to the 'ignore' list.
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rcurl
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response 16 of 16:
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Feb 25 05:03 UTC 2013 |
"How are board members elected or appointed in the instance of no members?"
Non-profit corporations are created by a meeting of "founders", who can be
stated to be the first board and officers. This has already happened with CC
so converting it to a board-based corportion would be a litle different. I
do not presently know the procedure for this, but it probably involves the
way the current board sets up the restructuring.
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