[Ambassadors] EMEA: Preliminary Statutes

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

red_alert wrote:
> I was thinking about different types of membership as well. For 
> starters, I'd suggest to make at least two different fees: one for 
> natural and one for legal persons.
> 
> As for silver/gold/platinum/whatever memberships...I'd not do that. I'd 
> rather make basic/silver/.../whatever sponsorships.
> 
> e.g. if the membership fee is set to a maximum of 1,000:
> - up to 1,000 contribution: (basic) sponsor
> - 1,000 - 2,000: silver sponsor
> - 2,000 - 5,000: gold sponsor
> - 5'000 and over: platinum sponsor
> 
> Or maybe we should base the grades on the mandatory fee (which will 
> probably change more often than the maximum fee) and express the 
> different sponsorships in percents based on that.
> e.g. (based on the mandatory fee)
> - up to 100% of the mandatory fee: basic
> - up to 200%: silver
> - up to 500%: gold
> - over 500%: platinum
> 
> ...of course, the latter would result in smaller contributions for each 
> grade unless we state percentages like 1,000% which would look really 
> greedy in turn.
> 

I'm not sure how free we are in defining different types of memberships 
or sponsorships. Here also, Gerold may be in a better position to answer 
that.

A legal person as a member would be saying; "hey, I support you", 
whereas a legal person as a sponsor is saying "hey, I support you and 
here's what you need to continue and expand what you're doing". Being 
completely different, I'm not sure we would want to distinguish between 
different types of sponsorships at all, other then maybe "primary" and 
"secondary" sponsorships. Either way, this is kind of far-fetched 
speculation on what might happen in some future whereas we're not sure 
we even need to describe such differentiation between sponsorships in 
the Statutes -opposed to memberships, I haven't seen sponsorships being 
mentioned anywhere before.

So, at least in this discussion, let's stick to the memberships rather 
then all the relationships that might or might not be accomplished in 
the future.

You suggest we should not differentiate between different kinds of 
memberships which I think is OK as it both simplifies the Statutes, 
bookkeeping and accounting, and isn't as obscure to (potential) new 
members. If anyone thinks differently though, now is the time to tell us ;-)

> I'd say honorary members would be a good thing, but we should make sure 
> that it's really hard to award it. 1) we wouldn't want to have too many 
> of them, 2) the less such members there are and the harder it is to 
> become one, the more "worth" it is to earn that sort of membership.
> 
> ...maybe we could put something into the statutes that makes it harder. 
> 3/4 of the GMM must agree, one must be a normal member for at least 5 
> years befor he/she can become a honorary member, ...what else could we 
> do to make it harder?
> 

If we're not getting any contra's, the concept of honorary members is 
getting in the Statutes. The way someone could become an honorary member 
is to be determined at a later point when we have something drafted up. 
I'm sure there'll be something such as a 3/4 majority GMM has to agree 
and maybe something like only the board can propose such, although I'm 
not much in favor of the minimum 5 years of membership limit.

Anyone with ideas on the topic, feel free to draft something up that 
would fit right in with the Statutes and send it here.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip