Author Topic: Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues?? (Read 1832 times)

marqpdx · February 10, 2009, 12:41:35 pm

hi All,

As i understand it, there are member non-profits and non-member non-profits (both types of 501(c)3 in the U.S). The former put everything (or many organization decisions) to a vote of all members, and the latter have a traditional board of directors which makes those decisions.

One of my clients doesn't want to use the CiviMember functionality b/c they are worried that people will think they are actually joining the organization legally, and will think they can vote etc.... Has anyone else ran into this?

I'm thinking a disclaimer might be enough, but would love to hear other thoughts.

Thanks,
m

CiviTeacher.com · February 21, 2009, 04:57:06 pm

Sounds more like a legal question, and unfortunately you're asking (mostly) a bunch of programmers. Sorry.

marqpdx · February 21, 2009, 05:02:46 pm

Thanks Stoob,

i'm mostly just curious if anyone has even considered this or bumped into, like when grabbing a mountain dew from the fridge... :-)

appreciate you taking the time.
m

dharmatech · February 21, 2009, 05:28:38 pm

I would argue there is a grey area of nonprofit in between the two you list. Many non profits still have what they call "members" but they don't have any voting power. It's more of a token title for donors. Some of our clients call any donor (even $1) a member while some have defined members of $35 and up, for example, but they still don't have voting power (according to their organizational by-laws).

So I think you can tell your client that it's very common to have members without voting power and many (I would say most) people who donate to nonprofits don't think they'll get voting power by becoming a member . If they are still fearful, they can just use CiviContribute to take donations and don't call them members; just donors. In this case, they wont have to worry about or manage, "expired" memberships, membership types, etc. internally and their donors wont have any misconception about what they're doing.

Might make their lives easier.

hope this helps
tony

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Author Topic: Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues?? (Read 1832 times)

marqpdx

Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues??

CiviTeacher.com

Re: Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues??

marqpdx

Re: Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues??

dharmatech

Re: Membership in Non-Profit Group, Legal Issues??