Heather, Bill, Shawn and Ben: Thanks for taking time out of your busy lives to spend a couple of hours discussing GNHLUG business last night. I feel we got a lot accomplished.
Michael and maddog: sorry you were not able to make it; your contributions were missed. My informal notes follow. The board secretary, Mr. Sconce, will provide official minutes as his time allows. All were present for dinner at Martha's. We were joined by Bruce Dawson, former GNHLUG fearless leader, webmaster, sysop, wiki-master and all-round generous guy, and Carole Soule, the President of Learning Networks Foundation (http://www.learningnet.org/). Carole offered to share some of her expertise in working with non-profit organizations and engage in some further discussions on whether her organization might be able to aid GNHLUG in its pursuit of an appropriate non-profit status. Bruce and Carole left after dinner, and the remaining attendees moved upstairs for our meeting. The meeting followed the agenda as written at: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Organizational/BoardAgendaSummer2007 Draft minutes were reviewed, a few minor corrections applied (Bill: it was md who nominated and Heather who seconded) and were agreed to be adopted, formally signed and added to our corporate books upon completion. The president (me) reported on his action items: an in-person meeting is not required for us to make resolutions, so long as we have agreement amongst the directors and ensure the secretary records such decisions, so a phone call or email exchange is appropriate. Our by-laws do require two meetings a year, but other decisions can be made by the board as necessary. We also do not have any requirement to have a physical (Post Office Box) address to engage in business with the state or IRS. The secretary, Bill Sconce, reported his research into the format and the process of maintaining a Book of Resolutions, and was more comfortable with the process. Bill had drafts of last meetings minutes, which he had circulated, and a few clarifications and corrections were offered. Bill emphasized the importance of recording what we have done, and is eager to see the results published and preserved on the wiki. The treasurer, Ben Scott, was heckled, but nonetheless reported progress in his research on the non-profit status. Ben did a tremendous job in assembling a number of wiki pages, with cross-references and citations, on our alternatives and their implications. Thanks, Ben! I would _strongly_ encourage all members, especially the board, to read through Ben's research and consider his interpretations: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Organizational/LegalEntityType It was also pointed out by one of our lawyer-members that there is "regulation as written" and there is "regulation as practiced" and that one of the reasons for the existence of the legal profession is determining the latter. We have a tremendous advantage that we are not in an urgent situation to get this completed, and should press this advantage to get the most advice and wisdom and techniques on our side. Ben reported completing the IRS paperwork to obtain an EIN. We discussed establishing a bank account. We determined that we would like more than one officer needs to be a signatory, and will be researching whether it is reasonable to require more than one officer to sign checks for expenses. Bear in mind we still have no plans for actually handling significant amounts of money, but want to be prepared. The NEARfest discussion was pretty much limited to "not going - maybe spring." New business opened up a couple of interesting discussions, talks I hope we continue to have on the GNHLUG boards, both -org and -discuss. Ben had posted a message to the effect of "what do we do now?" following the decision not to be present at NEARfest. We talked a bit about some of the history of New User Nights and the Linux Business Show, and talked about some of the volunteer work group members do with The Open CD (http://theopencd.org), Software Freedom Day (http://www.softwarefreedomday.org), Moofolio (http://www.k12opensource.org/spdc/moofolio/moofolio.html), the Christa McAuliffe teacher's conference (http://www.nhcmtc.org/), and probably lots of other efforts the other members are not aware of. Agreement that we need to promote these success stories both within GNHLUG (to encourage and promote more volunteerism) and to the community at large. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ gnhlug-org mailing list gnhlug-org@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-org/
