[OSGeo-UK] IMPORTANT: announcement about OSGeo:UK

[Jo Cook]

Dear List,

I have an important announcement to make!

OSGeo:UK has previously muddled along happily as an informal group of
like-minded people but with no formal definition. For reasons that I will
outline below, we find it necessary to become a legal unincorporated
organisation, with an officially elected committee, and a constitution
outlining our aims and objectives.

Our main reason for doing this is to allow us to set up a business bank
account, and this needs to happen extremely quickly in order to allow us to
process payments/accept sponsorship for the FOSS4GUK 2016 event in June.
Our previous banking arrangement is no longer available to us, due to
circumstances beyond our control.

Due to the need to get the constitution adopted and a committee in place
before we start the business of opening a bank account, we're not holding
elections at this stage for the committee positions. I (Jo Cook) will be
the initial Chair, Steven Feldman will be the Treasurer, and Antony Scott
has kindly agreed to act as Secretary. These positions will be put up for
election at our first official AGM, which will be within 12 calendar months
of the adoption of the constitution.

We have put together a constitution (attached as a pdf) that we feel sets
out the aims and powers of OSGeo:UK. It's based on a standard legal
template so there should be no concerns about wording. The aims are taken
from our initial aims that the group was recognised under by OSGeo. The
powers are worded to be as light touch as possible- these can be amended at
some later date by calling a Special General Meeting. The guidance we used
putting this together can be found here:
http://www.netlawman.co.uk/ia/unincorporated-associations and see also
https://www.gov.uk/business-legal-structures/unincorporated-association and
http://www.valonline.org.uk/setting-community-group/write-your-constitution,
which contains a link to the template we used, and others.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that, amongst the powers listed in
the constitution, we reserve the right to charge membership fees for both
individuals and organisations to join the local chapter. Don't be alarmed
by this- we are not proposing to turn this into a closed group, we will
maintain this mailing list as our informal list of members, and most
importantly the method by which every day decisions about what we do are
made. However, becoming an organisation and having a bank account brings
some running costs and responsibilities, and as such we will have a second
category of member called a Voting Member, for which a small membership fee
will be applied. The job of Voting Members will be to vote on
constitutional matters, and only Voting Members will have the power to call
General Meetings. The additional benefits of becoming a Voting Member, and
the fee structure, will be announced in due course- but I emphasise it will
be a small fee.

Since there is an urgent need to get this constitution adopted so we can
get the bank account in place, we're setting a deadline for
comments/objections of close of play on Friday. Please do comment if you
have any concerns, and feel free to contact me on or off list to discuss.

If you're happy with everything set out here, then there's no need to
respond. Silence will be considered acceptance.

All the best

Jo

-- 
*Jo Cook*
t:+44 7930 524 155/twitter:@archaeogeek

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