Nominations are now open for the Cyberspace Communications, Inc. Second Special Election for the Board of Directors, in accordance with Article 4, Sections a and b of the Bylaws. Nominations will close on March 31, 2014 and an online election will be held April 15 through April 29, 2014. Terms of office will still begin on January 1, 2014, and are two years in length. One seat is up for election. Grex membership is a requirement for serving on the Board. Any current member of Grex who has paid at least 3 months' membership dues and meets state of Michigan eligibility requirements may run for and serve on the Board. Candidates who are not members will be disqualified. This special election is for one seat left open by a candidate who was not a member, and was disqualified in the regular Board election in December 2013. To appear on the ballot, a person must be nominated in this item by March 31, 2014 and affirmatively accept the nomination in this item before the start of voting on April 15, 2014. Seconds of nominations are not required. Self-nominations are permitted.102 responses total.
I nominate walkman.
I second walkman's nomination
Thank you gentlemen!
Oh, BTW I accept.
(Nominations do not get seconded, per RRofO.)
They don't hurt. They are just not required. Grex doesn't follow RRofO to the letter and don't expect it to.
walkman for board of directors. Are there further nominations for the board?
Nominations end March 31, so you have time yet, if you are thinking about it.
resp:5 Grex doesn't use RR.
Yeah, I know. That is why discussions go nowhere.
RRofO would not help the discussions one bit.
resp:10 Your constant efforts to force your way of doing things on others is tiresome.
I third walkman's nomination. :D
I'm not forcing anything. Do you feel forced? You don't seem to be reacting like you have been forced to do anything. I just have an opinion. Lots of people here have opinions. Your's is one of them. You are welcome to your opinion. Why not likewise welcome me to mine?
You are not helping.
Thanks for the reference about no seconds in RRoO (for nominations.) re #13 :)
Are there any other nominations? This nominating period will end March 31. Also a reminder to all candidates that they need to be members of Grex in order to run (you have up to the start of the election to make sure of this).
Nominations end at midnight March 31. You still have time to nominate yourself or others for this position.
Nominations end at midnight tonight. No nominations will be accepted for this election after then.
Looks like walkman is running unopposed. Is there a need to hold an election, then?
The bylaws say we have to run the election, but it would be a formality. I don't see anything in the bylaws about "if candidates are running unopposed, the election does not need to be held" or anything similar.
This special election will be held online April 15 thorugh April 29, 2014. Now is the time to get your membership in good shape so your vote will count.
How does one check their status?
I'd like to have my membership in good status. Please tell me what it is now.
Your membership ran out over a year ago.
One checks their status by contacting the treasurer and asking. Or, if you want to do it yourself, recollect the last time you donated for a membership and if it has been longer than you donated for, then, no, you aren't a member.
Actually, I think Rane's membership expired a few months ago (December of 2013, as the last time he appears to have paid was for a year's membership in December 2012). But the point stands: the way to ascertain your membership status is not to ask in this item.
Yup, that is probably correct. From this point on if you ask me you are going to hear 'not a member' as that is the most conservative answer I can give (and most likely to be correct). Exact answers are not likely to be found by asking on Grex, unless the treasurer happens to log in (which is not impossible, but not likely to be a frequent occurrence). And the best course of action if you want to ensure you are valid voting member is to re-up your membership now for a year and you'll know for sure.
Hmm.. https://www.nonprofitissues.com/public/features/point/59.html
resp:29 Talk to TS. Oh, wait....
We follow State of Michigan law. If the State ever asks for a list of members, we would be required to give it to them. Board members also need to give real names, addresses, and phone numbers. This information is filed with the State each year in order to keep our corporation active. That Board information is a public record. The treasurer maintains the list of members. I don't think it would be a good thing to publicly give out names and addresses if it is not a requirement. But we do list members by userid occasionally. Other organizations (for example, university alumni associations) often do list names, but not addresses or phone numbers. Since we don't have a maintained list on Grex of current members, it's difficult to provide information for requests in the conferences. Again, talk to TS. As difficult as it may be to contact him, that is your method of finding what you seek right now. If you want the membership process to run better, then the Board needs to do something. However, anything for improving the membership list will require the cooperation and timeliness of the treasure even if the function of maintaining that membership roll is given to someone else (or a group of someone elses--Grex has in the past had a membership committee, for example). Perhaps a membership chair could be elected or appointed by the Board? Ultimately, it comes down to people doing things. This is a volunteer organization. If people won't or can't do things, it is difficult to motivate them. But we can look for people who are willing to do what needs to be done. Right now it's Hobson's Choice for treasurer unless someone else wants to step up and do the job. Every time the treasurer position has come up for Board officers, no one wants it if they need to do the day to day work.
It certainly dosn'thelp membership, and general appreciation for Grex, if officers are unavailable or don't do their jobs in a helpful manner. It all hardly encurages anyone to donate money. And then there is a grief one gets if one talks about it. Oh well, let's see if it's possible to find out where and how much to pay........
All the griping and the lack of doing is what makes it unbearable.
It would be nice if we had more people willing to run for the board or to at least volunteer to take on some of the things that would help Grex. It seems like people are always willing to talk about the 'problems' but not willing to help. If even a few people volunteered to take on a project to make Grex more efficient and an enjoyable place to be, then even more people may be encouraged to donate time and money. And to participate in online discussions, etc.
Woulda coulda shoulda.
resp:34 I agree. That's why I feel that responses such as resp:32 are not helpful; instead of offering to help out in some fashion, Rane simply complains about the status quo. Not useful.
That also doesn't encourage anyone to donate money.
So start encouraging people, Rane.
resp:37 What Kent said. Also, consider the motivation of someone to donate money when they first come to Grex, and all they see is a bunch of grousing from the regulars.
They'll start grousing on their own, when they see how things are run.
So, you are volunteering to help with the running of things?
a bunch of bananas a flock grousing
resp:40 Yeah, ok. So let us know when you are actually interested in helping out.
We need to look at the Treasurer responsibilities and accountability with the board. There's an obvious disconnect. Plus, while a PO Box is great for taking donations/memberships - what are the present day options to make it more accessible?
I've served on the Grex board, but got static for suggesting more business-like procedures. No sense volunteering where I'm not wanted.
A PO Box is a physical location, so as far as accessibility, you need to have it close to the person or people who are going to be checking it. It is also where we receive the state form we need to fill out each year, so it needs to be checked periodically. In the past it has overflowed and went unpaid, etc. so we need to have someone available who can check it reliably. I think gelinas has a key in addition to the treasurer. Yes, we need to look at treasurer duties (as you might imagine, this has been a Board topic of discussion many times over the last several years). I think I sent the Board the list of duties that Mark put together in years past. It is a good starting place, although some items are no longer necessary. The treasurer is supposed to be doing monthly financial reports according to the bylaws. That is to be done no matter how often the Board meets. It is difficult to see how things are running if we don't have up to date information on income/expense and bank balance. I can't remember the last time we had a financial report.
resp:45 You haven't served on the board in my memory. I think you just like to complain about things that aren't run the way you think they should be run.
I don't find any record of Rane serving on the Grex board. When was that exactly?
Is the chronology of board members online somewhere?
It's available at http://grex.org/cyberspace/board.xhtml, but is out of date. rcurl is not listed, but to my knowledge, he has not served a board term since that list was last updated. So I suspect he's never actually served on Grex's board.
Rane served one term on the Board sometime in the early or mid 1990s. I remember because I was on the Board at the same time. I'm surprised it's not easy to find in the record.
We can update it if we have the right information. It has been updated through 2015, but may need a little more updating.
Apparently Rane was on the Board in 1994. See this: http://cyberspace.org/grexdoc/archives/minutes/1994-01-11
I stand corrected, though it is curious that there seems to be no record of his tenure on the board. Regardless, his experience is a twenty years old; it's rather sad that he bases his current statements about how Grex operates on such outdated knowledge.
Re #47: I do like to suggest better ways of doing things. I mostly gave up. You can see that things are not done as well as they could be by the above discussion from others.
resp:55 I have yet to see a concrete, actionable, suggestion from you. Most of what I see are snarky exclamations that may be summarized by saying that, if we just used, e.g., Roberts Rules, all of our problems would disappear. I think that's laughable. If you want to snipe from the sidelines, be my guest. Don't be surprised, however, if people ignore you.
I'll see if I can update our Board web page (assuming I can find start and stop dates). That page is mostly legacy info from whoever put it together previously. I've just been adding to it.
I was working in Randall Labs when Rane was on the board. I remember this because I used to shoulder surf when kermit read Grex and she knew the who's who of the board at the time.
I sent my dues check to the POBox given at http://www.cyberspace.org/member.xhtml It was returned as "box closed/unable to forward/return to sender". This updated knowledge of Grex seems much like me old outdated knowledge.
You can use PayPal.
Has anyone seen the treasurer or is he also closed? Perhaps the board should re-elect a treasurer with a modification of duties?
Again, and again, and again...broken record here: call TS and find out.
I think it's time to side-step TS and appoint someone new. Any volunteers? It makes sense, perhaps, to have someone who is a Michigan resident do it. Rane? Would you like to volunteer to be Grex's treasurer?
We certainly need treasurer help. Any reliable, honest volunteers that are will to help, would be appreciated. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take consistent, regular effort to keep things up to date. I can say though, from the previous to-do getting the treasurer signed up with the bank, it takes a fair amount of effort to add or subtract people from the account. It is good if the person is local or near to Ann Arbor so they can check the PO Box, and deposit any checks that come in there (when the box is active). I think the state corporation renewal form also comes to the PO Box. Most other things can be done remotely, I think. The ability to effectively communicate is a necessary attribute as is the ability to keep accurate financial and membership records and produce monthly financial reports (these are not difficult). Above all the person needs to be above reproach when it comes to the corporation's bank account. Other duties include verifying users, sending membership renewal notices, and providing the list of valid voters for our elections in a timely manner. I'd say approx. an hour or two each month would go a long way toward getting things back on track, though at first it might take more time to get the information needed and get things set up.
Sensible words. However I doubt the job would amount to only an hour or two each month. There may be daily communications from users, reports to write, visits to the bank with checks, in addition to your list - and a lot more time "getting things back on track". Also, doesn't anyone think http://www.cyberspace.org/member.xhtml should be corrected? So, where do I send my dues check? Someone reading this board must know. I don't have time for a new responsibility.
I thought as much.
Re 65: Okay, let's waste our time speculating on how much time it takes. If we were to get 2 hours EVERY month that is way better than what we are getting now. Maybe the time investment is more like 5-6 hrs. a month. But that is just arguing details when we have much bigger issues finding someone to do ANYTHING. It may be that some time every other day, or every 3 days, would be enough, in which case, the time commitment might be more like 2-3 hrs. a month. Some months of the year would be worse than others, of course. Some months would have no activity at all other than produce a financial report (the treasurer should verify this rather than ignore the job). Bear in mind, many of the functions of the treasurer should be available at the touch of a button (or a command at the command line). We are spending WAY more time right now because the treasurer believes in pencil and paper records. Every report, every query, every update, is manually-generated by searching through paper records (and PayPal statements). This is unacceptable and a big reason why being the treasurer takes so much time. Someone who is organized can and should REDUCE the amount of time spent by the treasurer. I would rather a treasurer spend 10 min. each day than ignore our business for months on end. What is happening now is that those little bits of time are not invested. Then a month or two goes by and a simple task becomes a 10 hour mess to straighten out (and many phone calls by me--it would be good if others would help with this). Fire-fighting is not the way to manage things, if it can be easily avoided (and it can be in this case). Some days the only task would be to check that there is nothing to do. I doubt that would take 10 or 15 min. As I've already noted, initially the amount of time would be more getting set up to do things in a better way. After that, it should be a relatively easy task to stay up to date if the treasurer consistently and periodically makes the necessary updates. Whoever takes this task on should be able to count on the Board to help them get set up. It is not necessary that the treasurer be a Board member, although we will have a Board officer to oversee the treasurer function, even if that officer is not the day-to-day treasurer. There is a list of tasks that the treasurer has traditionally done in an old coop conference. Thus it's not like there are no instructions at all and no help. And, as I've noted before, it might work better to split the treasurer's jobs among 2 or 3 people to reduce the time commitment for any one person. Communication in that case becomes very important. We've allowed some tasks to remain in the treasurer function because the treasurer has or should have the information to do them. If that is not the case, or the treasurer is not doing the tasks, then moving something like membership management to another person might make sense. But handling the money (e.g. membership donations) is still the treasurer's responsibility, hence the need to communicate and cooperate with others, if we were to to make such a split of duties.
Perhaps if we used RRoO the treasurer's job would take less time. (Note for Rane: that was sarcasm.)
As to the PO Box, that is being looked into (one of those 10 hour messes I mentioned above). If we can get our previous box number working again, fine. If not, we'll get another number and update the member.xhtml web page. If things ran smoothly they would take much less time.
In regard to how to get a payment in you have two alternatives: 1. Use PayPal. 2. Broken record time again: call the treasurer and ask. I don't know why people act like they can't figure this out or that they are afraid to make a phone call.
resp:69 (It's too bad a smart and capable person like Rane isn't interested in helping out.) (Note to Rane: that is NOT sarcasm.)
I've put a note on the member.xhtml page to say that our PO Box is out of service. Hopefully that will help disuade people from trying to send checks there right now. Note: I brought up the PO Box with the treasurer weeks ago. Nothing has been done about so far.
Re 72: s/disuade/dissuade/
I've been treasurer for many non-profits. The first thing to change is the bank. Get a national bank where deposits can be done by a phone app. The board need simply sign a piece of paper at their local branch to get the ball rollings. The existing monies can simply be removed by transfer or check, yes? As for the PO Box, what is the purpose of that really? Can not the treasurer at the time use a mailing address of their choice so long as it is made available on the website?
The corporation needs an address and usually it's better that it be a P.O. Box. As far as changing banks, we'd need to make sure that we are not going to get charged fees on our rather low account balance (relative to most banks' levels for getting free checking). If that isn't an issue, then this sounds like a reasonable idea for making the banking easier. The fees tend to become one of the biggest expenses if we get charged them because they occur every month.
Resp:75 A common technique I have heard from some SMEs here is the corp opens a POBox, but has the mail forwarded by the POBox operator (Mailboxes, Etc; UPS; & al) forward the mail to whichever officer is responsible for receiving and replying to mail. The POBox is opened in the corp's name, with multiple individual signers, so if the responsible officer becomes incapablr to discharge his duties (or her, I suppose, but women tend to keep it together better, and give more notice before dropping out or flaking out), the corp board sends orders on corp letterhead to the POBox operator to change the forwarding address to that of the incoming responsible corp officer.
Thanks, dtk. That sounds feasible. The letterhead bit might be problematic, though. :)
re #76 USPS charges $17/wk to do that. What's the best thing out there? (I supposed I should check the RV bug-out community forums for mail forwarding options.)
That's a lot of money to forward mail. Now we see why the box hasn't moved. The thing is, if we can have an agent in Ann Arbor check the box, that would help a remote person. We'd likely spend some bucks mailing important docs from Ann Arbor to the remote person from time to time, but not $17/month. The main things that come into the PO Box are donations which need to be deposited in whatever bank we use (and relatively quickly), and the state corporate renewal form. If the checks can be deposited locally, then it's just the renewal form that would need to transfer.
At a minimum, we clearly need to have more than one person who has access to the relevant things (P.O. Box, bank accounts, etc).
Grex is a corporation. Corporations must have a registered agent and a mailing address. Use that mailing address (and give the registered agent something to do - or even appoint him/her treasurer!). "(It's too bad a smart and capable person like Rane isn't interested in helping out.)" It's too bad a smart a capable person like Cross has no manners and doesn't appreciate both volunteers and those that do not have time to volunteer (especially when they have to work with someone always as cross as Cross).
Physician, heal thyself!
Here is part of the the Michigan record for CC: (http://is.gd/h2rjPJ) "Entity Name: CYBERSPACE COMMUNICATIONS Type of Entity: Domestic Nonprofit Corporation "Resident Agent: TS TAYLOR Registered Office Address: 5276 TEXTILE YPSILANTI TWP MI 48197 "Mailing Address: P.O. Box 4432 ANN ARBOR MI 48106 "Year of Most Recent Annual Report: 12 " Better get that mailing address corrected - and get in that late Annual Report for 2013. Should I send my dues check to the Resident Agent address?
resp:83 Seems to me that you've already been given the answer to that question multiple times.
I have a rerturned (for no valid address) check for dues to send somewhere. No valid address to send it to have been provided.
resp:85 Seems to me that you've already been given the answer to the question of how to find out where to send it multiple times.
Rane, you have the registered agent's address and the name of our treasurer. You can get on the phone and double check as you've been instructed multiple times. I really don't get why you can't figure this out and keep asking the same question over and over.
Okay, the P.O. Box is back in service at the same number. The treasurer should have helped Rane with his issue by now.
TS popped up at my front door, and I delivered my check to him in person. I'm glad, if surprised, that shaking the Grex tree got a result. (I ask the same question over again because I don't get the answers to the question I ask.)
re #88 & 89 Good new, thanks!
You do get answer to the questions you ask, Rane. Had you called TS, you would have gotten the issue fixed.
s/answer/answers in 91.
resp:89 "(I ask the sam question over again becasue I don't get the answers I want to hear to the question I ask.)" FTFY.
I've set up the files to begin the special election at one minute after midnight on April 15, and to end the special election at one minute before midnight on April 19. The times are local to grex: Eastern Daylight Time. There is one candidate: walkman. (I hope he is eligible of election.) The home page still needs to be updated to offer a link to the voting both.
The home page was updated last night to add the link.
Thanks Joe
BTW, I mistyped: the election closes on 29 April, not 19 April. So there is still time to vote. :)
I just looked over the votes; ten people entered the voting booth. Nine people voted for walkman. So, if walkman is a member in good standing, and any of the people who voted for him are also voters, then he is elected a Director of Cyberspace Communications, Inc, for two years beginning on 1 January 2014. May be, one day, the Treasurer will deign to read his e-mail and send the lists of voters I requested.
TS sent me an update of the voter list yesterday. Unfortunately, I've not had time yesterday or today to recount the votes. I took a quick look and can say that walkman was elected. I'll post the formal tomorrow evening.
Thanks, gelinas.
thanks
I've now formally counted the votes for the Special Election held between April 15, and April 29. Ten people voted in this Special Election, seven members and three nonmembers. Of the seven members, six voted for walkman and one submitted a blank ballot. The three non-members also voted for walkman.
You have several choices: