[talk-au] Being a local chapter...

[John Smith]

2010/1/7 Henk Hoff <henk.hoff at osmfoundation.org>:
> Membership
> The Foundation prefers that members of a LC are automatically member of the
> Foundation. This results in no extra work with membership registration of
> the LC. A LC can opt for a different scheme (e.g. where you have LC-members
> and LC+OSMF-members), however that would mean you would need to make the
> membership registration a little more complex. But then that is the choice
> of the LC.

I don't want to be forced to automatically join and pay a second
membership to a second organisation, I would like my money to help
further things in Australia as much as possible. Regardless of how
much you or anyone else on OSM-F would like to force me into joining
both I would like to make the choice myself.

> Membership fee
> The current idea is that an LC should pay a fee based on the amount of
> members they have on the Jan 1st each year (or another date based on the
> fiscal year of the LC). This way, every individual does NOT have to hassle
> with international money transfers for their individual OSMF membership, and
> the LC does only have ONE international transaction a year.
> So yes, also the Foundation wants to keep the administrative stuff as
> minimal as possible for the LC and the individual members.

While minimising it for others, it transfers the burden of this to the
LC, something I'm not willing to do and so far we have a lack of
volunteers for even board positions, so while it might seem trivial to
you, it isn't.

> About the taxation issues
> I wonder how organisations like the Red Cross, Rotary, Round Table, etc are
> dealing with this. They also transfer money to (mother-)organisations
> abroad.

They also suffer horrible over heads and waste funds on administrative
stuff just like that which doesn't seem to be a critical issue at this
point in time.

It's going to cause enough time and headaches just applying for tax
deductible status and so at this point in time I'd vote against
anything that is likely to complicate the process further.

> Privacy issues
> The membership list of the Foundation is not public. The Foundation is also
> bound to privacy law and there are also members who prefer that their
> membership is not known to the public.

Do you know of any Australian lawyers that can help clarify the
privacy implications, and/or fund one for us?