Re: [Fsfe-uk] What the treasurer did... (early Feb 2003)

[Alex Hudson]

On Sat, 2003-03-08 at 10:44, Martin Keegan wrote:
> > If AFFS is not intending to apply for charitable status I suspect that the 
> > overhead of registering as a Ltd company (even by Guarantee) might be more 
> > than is necessary.
> 
> For the foreseeable future I'd agree.

I think we've actually had this discussion before; certainly I don't
think the status of the AFFS will change any time soon - trying to keep
the admin overheads the minimum is certainly the watchword (hmm, is that
a new colemanball?).

> I am very surprised that the idea of
> being a charity had such legs; it's incompatible with what many people
> thought AFFS was supposed to be

There was never an idea to form a charity out of AFFS (except maybe in
the very early stages), I think (from memory) a lot of that wordage was
to do with any sister charity/charitable trust that we might have setup
as a means of tax-efficient money funnelling. Of course, this might be
my terrible memory... Mark would be the person to ask, really..

> > What liabilities do you envision AFFS incurring that could be limited 
> > under company law anyway?
> 
> Civil liability for defamation, that sort of thing. Again, only likely to
> be an issue in a much larger AFFS.

Indeed. I think, though, at the moment it would be quite hard for us to
tread on those sorts of toes - we just don't speak about people in that
matter. In fact, any negative "AFFS official comments" (if there is such
a thing) are almost exclusively reserved to legislation, unless I'm
mistaken.

We spend a lot more time actually talking to people on a local level and
promoting things positively than we do jumping up and down about things
on a national level at the moment.

Cheers,

Alex.

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