[OSM-talk-ie] Formalising Openstreetmap Ireland into a proper body and becoming an official OSM Chapter

Dave Corley davecorley at gmail.com
Thu Oct 2 20:22:38 UTC 2014


Hi,

I did state one con, that there's a bit of work involved ;) but other than
that I don't see there being any con's to this (I stand open to
correction).

>  What's the benefit of having our own entity as opposed to proxying behind
the general "OpenStreetMap world" entity ?

I possibly didn't explain it very well. To "proxy" as you put it, we have
to be a formal entity in the first place.

The Local Chapter Agreement was kicked back into gear and recently
finalised. You can view the completed agreement here [1]

This agreement, which would be signed by both our group and the OSMF and
lends a weight of support behind us when we go to various govt. agencies
looking for data and/or maps.

> What exactly is required to get the legal organisation going ? A treasurer
and a president ? A bank account ? Recurring paperwork ? A postal address ?
Do we want to set up board elections ? Membership fees ?

Essentially, all of the above and more. It breaks into a few phases, first
to get the organisation going, then later the legal status, but I wouldn't
see us getting to the legal recognition for at least the first 2 years if
not more as there are a number of other things to be completed first.

Personally, this is how I would see things going.....

We would start out as an Unincorporated Association, the same as most
sports clubs basically. The bare minimum we would need is a constitution
and a membership. More info here [2]

At this point we would have the structure in place to go further. By going
further, I mean drafting and agreeing Memorandum & Articles of Association.
These would qualify us to put in a formal application to become an OSMF
chapter. There are a few other bits needed (accounts etc.), but those are
the 2 big ones and the ones hardest to put together. I spoke with Simon
Poole this evening just to clarify this point and in his opinion once we're
at this point in the process we would qualify to apply for local chapter
status.

As we have the work done (MoA & AoA) the next step would be to apply for
charitable status under the definition of "other purposes beneficial to the
community". There are a number of additional documents to be drawn up in
addition to complete this, but the bulk will have been done at this stage
from earlier activities.

This would allow us to accept sponsorship for events (e.g. a company
sponsoring the food at a hackathon), hardware donations (servers),
donations in general etc.

I hope this answers everything. If anyone else has any queries, feel free
to share also.

It would be good to hear more opinions on this, even if its just something
as simple as "yeah this sound good" or "hate this idea" or etc. :)

Thanks,
Dave

1 - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Agreement
2 - http://www.wheel.ie/content/unincorporated-bodies



On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 1:05 PM, moltonel 3x Combo <moltonel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 01/10/2014, Dave Corley <davecorley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Something I've been thinking about for a while now, is that we should
> look
> > to forming into a proper entity i.e. an official OpenStreetMap Ireland
> > chapter of OSM.
> > [...]
>
> You've only given a list of pros, so it's hard to disagree :p In
> general it sounds like a good idea. Some questions and potential
> concerns below:
>
> What's the benefit of having our own entity as opposed to proxying
> behind the general "OpenStreetMap world" entity ?
>
> What exactly is required to get the legal organisation going ? A
> treasurer and a president ? A bank account ? Recurring paperwork ? A
> postal address ? Do we want to set up board elections ? Membership
> fees ? I have a fair idea of what is needed for such an association in
> France, but I don't know about Ireland.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-ie mailing list
> Talk-ie at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
>


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