Hi, I did state one con, that there's a bit of work involved ;) but other than that I don't see there being any con's to this (I stand open to correction).
> What's the benefit of having our own entity as opposed to proxying behind the general "OpenStreetMap world" entity ? I possibly didn't explain it very well. To "proxy" as you put it, we have to be a formal entity in the first place. The Local Chapter Agreement was kicked back into gear and recently finalised. You can view the completed agreement here [1] This agreement, which would be signed by both our group and the OSMF and lends a weight of support behind us when we go to various govt. agencies looking for data and/or maps. > What exactly is required to get the legal organisation going ? A treasurer and a president ? A bank account ? Recurring paperwork ? A postal address ? Do we want to set up board elections ? Membership fees ? Essentially, all of the above and more. It breaks into a few phases, first to get the organisation going, then later the legal status, but I wouldn't see us getting to the legal recognition for at least the first 2 years if not more as there are a number of other things to be completed first. Personally, this is how I would see things going..... We would start out as an Unincorporated Association, the same as most sports clubs basically. The bare minimum we would need is a constitution and a membership. More info here [2] At this point we would have the structure in place to go further. By going further, I mean drafting and agreeing Memorandum & Articles of Association. These would qualify us to put in a formal application to become an OSMF chapter. There are a few other bits needed (accounts etc.), but those are the 2 big ones and the ones hardest to put together. I spoke with Simon Poole this evening just to clarify this point and in his opinion once we're at this point in the process we would qualify to apply for local chapter status. As we have the work done (MoA & AoA) the next step would be to apply for charitable status under the definition of "other purposes beneficial to the community". There are a number of additional documents to be drawn up in addition to complete this, but the bulk will have been done at this stage from earlier activities. This would allow us to accept sponsorship for events (e.g. a company sponsoring the food at a hackathon), hardware donations (servers), donations in general etc. I hope this answers everything. If anyone else has any queries, feel free to share also. It would be good to hear more opinions on this, even if its just something as simple as "yeah this sound good" or "hate this idea" or etc. :) Thanks, Dave 1 - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Agreement 2 - http://www.wheel.ie/content/unincorporated-bodies On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 1:05 PM, moltonel 3x Combo <[email protected]> wrote: > On 01/10/2014, Dave Corley <[email protected]> wrote: > > Something I've been thinking about for a while now, is that we should > look > > to forming into a proper entity i.e. an official OpenStreetMap Ireland > > chapter of OSM. > > [...] > > You've only given a list of pros, so it's hard to disagree :p In > general it sounds like a good idea. Some questions and potential > concerns below: > > What's the benefit of having our own entity as opposed to proxying > behind the general "OpenStreetMap world" entity ? > > What exactly is required to get the legal organisation going ? A > treasurer and a president ? A bank account ? Recurring paperwork ? A > postal address ? Do we want to set up board elections ? Membership > fees ? I have a fair idea of what is needed for such an association in > France, but I don't know about Ireland. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ie mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie > _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
