[Eg-oversight-board] Fwd: new evergreen bylawys ( was Re: Mobius transition and press)

Wed May 2 09:10:24 EDT 2018

Here are comments on the bylaws from Karen at the SFC.

<http://www.cwmars.org>

Tim Spindler | Executive Director | CW MARS

tspindler at cwmars.org | 508-755-3323 x120

http://www.cwmars.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Karen M. Sandler <karen at sfconservancy.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 10:35 PM
Subject: new evergreen bylawys ( was Re: Mobius transition and press)
To: Timothy Spindler <tspindler at cwmars.org>
Cc: Mike Rylander <miker at equinoxinitiative.org>, Amy Terlaga <
terlaga at biblio.org>, evergreen at sfconservancy.org

As promised, here are my comments on the draft bylaws. As you know I'm a
lawyer but I am only admitted to practice in NY, so this would all be
subject to legal advice in Missouri. I hope you're all having a great
conference!

Section 3:15 Actions By Board Without A Meeting

Under the draft bylaws all decisions must be taken in a meeting, or
otherwise the only mechanism is by unanimous written consent. The bylaws
are silent as to whether email constitutes proper written consent. You may
want to make this looser so that a majority of the board can vote by email
without a meeting. This has been a major pain point for other orgs I've
worked with.

Section 4:1  The Executive Committee.

The executive committee section is very strong, which is ok if you're
careful (the board can appoint a committee of only 2 people to do almost
everything the board does). So I wanted to flag that.

Section 4:2 The Finance Committee.

This says that any major change in the budget must be approved by the
Board. This is vague and is silent as to materiality. It may be better to
give the committee a little bit of clear flexibility in case you do form a
finance committee.

Section 4:5 Meetings of Committees.

You may want to amend this to permit the use email for notice.

Section 5:1 Officers.

The bylaws don't permit the President and Vice Chairman to be the same
person, which is I'm sure consistent with state law, but some states
require that the president and treasurer not be the same person, so that
there is some level of fiscal controls. You might want to consider adding
that in this case.

Section 5:2  Appointment and Term of Office

There's a 1 year term limit on officership. You might want to leave those
limits up to the board if Missouri law permits. While you do one year terms
now, that might not be convenient in the future for some reason, and then
you'd have to amend the bylaws.

Section 6:2 Fiscal Year

I would let the board fix the fiscal year, with it initially as the
calendar year.

Section 6:9 Executive Director

I would beef up this section to anticipate the possibility of other
employees.

Section 6:11 Books and Records
D. Inspection  Procedure

I would consider deleting "(c) demonstrate a direct connection between the
purpose for
inspection and the requested records." I don't understand why a Director
should have to explain why they want to see the records. It seems like an
unnecessary bar - I think Directors should be engaged with the org.

Section 6:12  Indemnification and Liability of Directors and Officers
D.
A majority of the board determines whether a Director was acting in good
faith, etc. in order for the indemnity kicks in. If we're at the point
where this section is invoked, something has gone very wrong. Does it make
sense that the majority of the board are the ones to decide if the standard
is met? I could imagine situations that are very muddy. At least consider
putting in a limit on the discretion of the board in that case.

Throughout, consider making the bylaws gender neutral (rather than his or
hers, he or she etc)

karen

On 2018-04-26 2:54 pm, Timothy Spindler wrote:

> Karen,
>
> Attached are the latest version of the by-laws for the new
> organization.  We have been going back and forth a little bit to get
> some things clarified.  We can use our conference number for a call at
> 4:15 tomorrow if that works for Amy and Mike.
>
> 1-877-445-0942 (access code 5452514)
>
>  [2]
>
> Tim Spindler | Executive Director | CW MARS
>
> tspindler at cwmars.org | 508-755-3323 x120
>
> http://www.cwmars.org [3]
>
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 2:35 PM, Karen M. Sandler
> <karen at sfconservancy.org> wrote:
>
> Great, and thanks for filling us in!
>>
>> It looks like 4:15pm tomorrow afternoon would be ideal for us,
>> though we can make other times if you prefer.
>>
>> If you'd like to send me the organizational docs in advance I'd be
>> happy to look at them - I've organized many free and open source
>> software related foundations over the years, and also reworked
>> multiple org's bylaws. We've got good insight into the IRS review
>> process for orgs that are involved in this field, which is very
>> exacting (and unlike other subject areas) and are happy to lend that
>> expertise to you now!
>>
>> karen
>>
>> On 2018-04-26 8:35 am, Timothy Spindler wrote:
>> Karen,
>>
>> I apologize for not keeping you in the loop on where we are.  We
>> have
>> had a few hiccups but Amy and I were talking and thought a
>> conference
>> call might be good.  I believe we are all on the east coast so would
>> everyone be available this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon?
>>
>> Mike Rylander will be the new chair of the EOB so I am including
>> him.
>>
>> We decided to form our own non-profit which would own the assets and
>> then contract with MOBIUS for services.  The MOBIUS attorney had
>> some
>> issues setting up an agreement with something that was not a formal
>> legal entity (Evergreen Project) and we had considered this as one
>> of
>> our options anyway.  In any case, we are in the process of firming
>> up
>> the by-laws for the Evergreen Corporation to create the corporation
>> and then apply to the IRS for non-profit status.   I would expect us
>> to have the corporation created in the next few weeks but of course
>> the non-profit status would take longer.  We will still have a
>> formal
>> contract between the Evergreen Corporation and MOBIUS.
>>
>> Thanks for you help and support of this.
>>
>> Tim Spindler | EOB Chair
>> 508-755-3721 x120
>>
>> [2]
>>
>> Tim Spindler | Executive Director | CW MARS
>>
>> tspindler at cwmars.org | 508-755-3323 x120
>>
>> http://www.cwmars.org [3]
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 9:24 PM, Karen M. Sandler
>> <karen at sfconservancy.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi EOB,
>>
>> We've been busy supporting Amy, Kathy and Mobius with conference
>> organizing. (Amy can fill you in on all of the stuff we've been
>> doing over the past few months.) But, as we approach the conference
>> next week, I wanted to check in with you about the proposal to
>> transition the project out of Conservancy and to Mobius.
>>
>> As you may recall from where we left it, Conservancy is waiting to
>> hear that you've signed an agreement with them.  Also, as far as we
>> know, you haven't formally terminated the relationship with
>> Conservancy and named Mobius (or anyone else) as a successor.  And
>> as a result we haven't presented a grant agreement to Mobius and
>> made sure they can accept those terms. Until all of that is done,
>> the transition details cannot begin.
>>
>> I know we agreed that all press around the transition would be joint
>> and handled carefully, so I wanted to see if you needed anything
>> from us to help the process.  As we offered when last discussed it,
>> we're happy to help negotiate an agreement for Evergreen with
>> Mobius, and bring our expertise to help make sure that the next
>> phase of the Evergreen project has the best chance to succeed.
>> We've not received follow-up on that, so we're unsure of the status
>> of everything.
>>
>> Are there any thoughts on timing for publicly talking about the
>> transition?
>>
>> If you are just planning to deal with all of this in a few months
>> after the conference, there's no need to discuss this now, of
>> course.  However, it's important that we continue as we agreed to
>> carefully coordinate press together between Conservancy, the EOB,
>> and Mobius.  As we said the during the call some months ago with Amy
>> and Tim, we're prepared to put in all of the work on the agreements
>> and other paperwork in time for the conference (and can still do it
>> even now) if you so desire. But unless you instruct us to do that
>> work immediately over the next few days and are ready to put in the
>> time to have a few go-arounds with Mobius, it won't be feasible to
>> announce the transition at the conference.
>>
>> In any case, hope you all have a great conference! (As always, I so
>> wish I could see first person all of the details that we helped put
>> in place!)
>>
>> karen
>>
>> Karen M. Sandler
>> Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy
>> __________
>> Become a Supporter today! http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ [1]
>> [1]
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ [1]
>> [2] http://www.cwmars.org
>> [3] http://www.cwmars.org/
>>
>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
> [2] http://www.cwmars.org
> [3] http://www.cwmars.org/
>
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