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Incorporating SoCraTes UK

Keith Maxwell edited this page Jun 7, 2019 · 3 revisions

Why?

Currently doing it as an unincorporated group of volunteers. Contracted signed through someone's company with them taking the risk.

No separate legal identity so liability uncertain

Managing finances a problem as we don’t have a bank account, everything needs to go via Wotton house and expenses are hard to manage

What do we want the entity to do?

  • Running the unconference
  • Another event(s)
  • Not-for-profit model

Geographical remit is UK (clue is in the name)

What type of community involvement do we want?

  • Community involved in a legally binding way or not?
  • Transparency (e.g. public slack, trello etc)
  • Organisining committee open to all

What structure do we envisage?

  • A board of directors/trustees
  • An organising committee

What structures are available?

  • Limited Company
  • Community Interest Company (a special form of Limited Company) aka CIC
  • All members being Directors
  • Directors are members but larger group of members - much higher overhead
  • Charity
  • etc.

Conclusions

For the purpose of running SoCraTes UK 2020 we should register a CIC limited by guarantee with a small set of Directors being members. The CIC should be registered in England and Wales as opposed to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

We anticipate a journey towards a charity but there is more work and things we need to find out first. In the future we can change the entity type, and expand the members to a wider group.

Other

Should we register a trademark? Could a charity own it and licence it to all SoCraTes (and provide other benefits e.g. charity gets free google apps, slack)

Opencollective is neat but expensive way of handling membership

Clone this wiki locally