[Swansea Hackspace] Articles of association, or the constitution of our hackspace

[Gerrit Niezen]

Hi all,

At the last meeting we were discussing registering the hackspace as a non-profit organisation (also known as a company limited by guarantee).  Why? So that we can apply for grants/funding, get a bank account and rent a physical space.

However, we realised that the model articles of association (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2008/3229/schedule/2/made) are not really suitable for the formation of a hackspace. For example, we would like to limit the power of the directors and not pay them any remuneration. I've had a look at London Hackspace - they have open sourced their articles of association (also known as a constitution) and I think it will be the easiest to adopt and modify theirs for our own purposes.

Things that need attention:
- 13(b) they require a quorum of 10 members at a general meeting - we may need to reduce this for the time being
- 24(b) "the number of directors shall not be less than three, nor more than nine" - I think we could change this to a minimum of two, but then we need to modify (26) as well
- 35(d) London Hackspace uses a web based system for the decision making process - if we're not going to do the same, we should remove this clause

I forked the documentation from London Hackspace's Github account into our own Swansea Hackspace account. There you can view the changes I've made so far:
https://github.com/swanseahackspace/documentation/tree/master/constitution

You can download the latest version of the .PDF document at the bottom of the page. Please comment and/or make suggestions, so that we can get it sorted out before the next meeting.

Kind regards,
Gerrit Niezen
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