I know we are becoming impatient with the details of setting up this
organization. I too would like to be able to invite new members to WAOE
soon, especially if California State University, Sacramento resources
are needed. However, I do not want to begin without a Constitution of
some sort. Merely explaining the organization to my colleagues has
been difficult because we are still just becoming an organization
without actually being one yet. And we have made amazing progress, but
we do have a ways to go before we will have the polish and efficiency of
a professional organization. I want to point out several matters here
that suggest we need to take a few more steps before opening wide the
door.
1) The need for legal nonprofit status and possible incorporation
should not stop us from completing our Constitution first. We need a
Constitution (at least a basic outline of one, and especially sections
covering the financial aspects, voting, and amendments) before we can
make official application for either incorporation or nonprofit
standing. We also need at least three elected officers before applying
for incorporation (at least in the US). If we decide to ignore
"nonprofit" tax law and accept no funds this year, we could avoid having
a completed Constitution--but we would miss the opportunity to establish
a general fund from new members' contributions and fees, or we would
have to postpone inviting new members.
2) Thus, I believe we do need to finish the basics of our Constitution,
and nominate and vote in officers. And to do that we need a way to
accept votes from all voting members online. This will require some
security measures, a password and possibly the ability to assure that
only one vote per issue comes from the same email address and
password. Because we are an online organization, I do not think we
should use the postal service for voting if we can avoid it. Who among
us knows how to set up a Web ballot form protected by password?
3) Finally, before inviting others, we need an interactive Web form to
accept new members: the form at first may only take names, email
addresses, and which committees or groups or listserves the new member
wishes to participate in and whether the new member wishes to contribute
volunteer services or eventually pay a membership fee-- once such a fee
is established and we are able to collect it (to collect fees or
donations means, at a minimum, that we need officers officially
empowered to open a bank account in WAOE's name and keep financial
records).
I think we are ready to do most of this, including setting up a basic
Constitution, with only a few more weeks of discussion. And I am
grateful to Steve for putting so much of the work towards a
Constitutional structure already. Except for an itch to red pencil a
word here and there, I have only a few concerns with the Articles of the
Constitution as Steve has proposed them so far. See
http://155.43.48.225:2020/cgi-bin/wao6.pl
Specifically, (from Steve's proposed Constitution)
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Article IV. Membership Principles
Section 1. WAOE consists of voting individuals and non-voting
affiliates, so long as they fulfill obligations in
proportion to their membership privileges. Those determined by
transparent WAOE decision-making
processes outlined in this document to be currently fulfilling their
conditions of membership in good standing are hereinafter referred to as
members.
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What are these "transparent WAOE decision-making processes"? What
"obligations?" If I have paid fees, do I have obligations? Many people
do join organizations just to lurk and learn. Is direct participation a
requirement? As a member, leaving the power behind all of this
undefined concerns me. I see the two major categories of membership as
follows (I'm combining ideas from several people here):
1) voting members
(Voting members are those who join individually because of personal
interest in WAOE's activities and who either volunteer services or pay a
membership fee --once we are prepared to accept such fees. I would
suggest that our Coordinating Ring (our legislature) take a vote each
year to determine whether a member who has not yet provided any services
to WAOE in the previous year still be accepted as a "volunteer"
rather than as a "fee-paying" member in the next year. I think we need
to write any such policies more directly than they are written in
Article IV. Section 3)
2) affiliated members
(Affiliated members are entire organizations or institutions or
businesses which declare an affinity with us and an interest in our
activities; members of such affiliated organizations would have limited
access to WAOE Web pages, to some journal articles, and to general
discussion lists, boards, and resources, but such members of affiliated
organizations could not serve on committees affecting WAOE policies and
would not be voting members (they would not have a "voting" password).
I would recommend, however, that if the affiliated organization is asked
to pay a fee for affiliating with us, those members of that affiliated
organization who individually wish to join as WAOE voting members, be
given a discount on the membership fee or service requirement.)
If the definitions of membership were clarified, I could agree to
Article IV.
Steve's Article V. Officers and Sub-Groups of WAOE is mostly ready to
go. However, I do not know what a Dissemination Committee is yet (we
should define it in the Constitution if we are going to mention it
there) . Section V should also contain the limits of power of the
elected officers. In particular, we need to know how long their terms
are, which issues officers may decide at Coordinating Ring level and
which must be voted upon by the general voting membership, and how to
remove officers between elections. We should also mention how officers
will report "minutes" of meetings to the general group.
Rather than having a separate section on voting, we could define
"calling for general elections" as a duty of the executive committee
(probably the Coordinating Ring) who would officially call on the
parliamentary committee (or whatever takes its place) to conduct
elections as needed (given whatever our level of technology is at the
time), in order to decide major issues not covered directly in the
Constitution or eventual Bylaws, to make amendments, or to elect new
officers. We should also empower ourselves to call an election without
the Coordinating Ring's consent, given sufficient requests from voting
members to do so (say a quarter of the voting membership could force an
election by posting a request for an election on the same issue or
candidate within 30 days to the same general WAOE listserve). This
allows a balance of power.
Other than these considerations and a preamble which we could add later,
I'm satisfied that we are approaching a workable Constitutional
governing structure that would be sufficient to guide our first year.
There is one section that is missing, however. That is the section
concerning finances. For the Constitution to meet the requirements for
nonprofit status and for incorporation, we would have to explain our
finances (the fiscal date, the annual meeting date, what fees will be
collected, where funds will be kept, where records will be kept, which
country, state, or province is home for financial law purposes, what
activities define WAOE as nonprofit (in the US being educational and
declaring nonprofit intent on the correct form is enough), what will
become of excess funds that might be considered profit (usually these go
toward awards or charities), which officers have fiduciary
responsibilities, and who is responsible for fiscal reporting. This
section could require further amendments if we decide to hire employees
rather than contracting for services. Assuming anyone wants to discuss
these matters, I'll post a proposed "Article" of financial matters to
the Bulletin Board under the Constitution section.
Can we address these matters so that we can go on to ratify a basic
Constitution?
Jenna Seehafer
California State University, Sacramento
P.S. I would like to see new vocabulary in place of
"professionalization." My objection is to the unfortunate word
"professionalization" itself, which sounds like chalk on a blackboard to
my ears; I'd be happier using "professional" as an adjective,
"professional ethics," "professional oversight," "professional advice,"
and so on according to the meaning of each reference throughout our
documents. Editing suggestions such as this one are matters we could
take up after accepting an initial Constitution. A committee charged
with editing the document for next year could recommend a finished draft
of the Constitution to us, and after discussion, we could vote to
substitute an "improved" Constitution for whatever Constitution we
come up with now. By then, we would have a better idea of what should
go into the document anyway. Yes?