Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS

[Adam Bower]

On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 11:19:19AM +0000, John¹ wrote:
> 
> That surely would have to be a decision of the current paid up members 
> which brings the matter back to that of the quorum, does it not? Or were 
> you suggesting that with a bank account containing money that belongs to 
> the Association, that others who are not members of it, wind it up and 
> dispose of the money. 

No, but I am asking how this works practically given that we (currently) 
only know of one member which is (apparently) you and that have the 
other memberships ceased and therefore terminated or are they just in 
arrears to be reinstated when dues are received? I am certainly not
suggesting that the association is wound up by people who are 
non-members. Can the current members make this decision without quorum
and the association being in breach of its own rules?

I am asking a question about how you can wind up the association in this
manner given it would be breaching its own constitution to do so. Hence 
why asking if we need 20 paid up members and if allowing former members 
to pay up and join again is the correct (and possible) thing to do. 

As I gather you have some experience in this kind of matter some 
answers backed up with some research would be helpful.

> over its own monies. I keep coming back to the question of the money, as 
> it seems to me that someone has isolated it, from the members and former 
> members, and we as yet have no statement of how much there is, or should 
> be! 

Nobody has isolated the money the account still exists and will be 
turned over to the association when a few problems have been resolved.
One of the problems being that the current question is who are these 
members to turn the account over to.

> I am afraid that this brings us back to the question of who it was that 
> decided to remove the members from the Association,and leave it and its 
> bank account and its contents in place. And what was the intention of that 
> action?

I think you are trying to read too much into it. No decision was ever
taken to remove the members, the majority of members have neither been 
asked for fees or offered them hence are they now no longer current 
paid up members, I would like to know if they are still open to 
membership if they bring their dues up to date? 

There is a very small amount of people in your situation (paid up to
date members), the current situation is that we can't tell you how much 
is in the bank account or verify current membership due to a problem
with the account which is yet another thing that needs fixing. 

The situation is that a few years ago we tried to resolve an issue with
signatories on the account as some people needed to be removed and some
added. As it stands for whatever reason these requests were never 
completed. Anyhow, I have been informed that the bank statements for 
AFFS are still addressed to MJ Ray, just they are no longer going to any
address under his control so they can't be opened by Alex hence why we 
can't tell you how much is in the account right now and who the current
members are, we also have checked and noted that internet access to the
account is not possible. There is also a problem that who we believe to 
be the current signatories on the account are also no longer members of
the association (is this a problem?).

You seem to be pushing this very hard very quickly and this has come 
out of the blue. In my opinion we have arrived at this situation due
to having some very inflexible rules and I'm not sure how we should be 
proceeding to make sure things get done properly. If we can answer some
of these questions then we should be able to proceed to either having 
the members relaunch AFFS or wind it up.

Thanks
Adam
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