NPO

[Nick Estes]

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On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Jim wrote:

> I just talked with David Colby, the accountant Bob Ambrose put us in touch
> with.  He said that we need very little to get the NPO started.  We need:
>
> 	a name for the umbrella organization
> 	a list of officers for the new organization
> 	a mission statement
>
> Some suggestions for a name:
>
> Arizona Open Software Information Exchange (AOSIX)
> Open Source Software of Arizona (OSAZ)
>
> Any others to throw into the name pool?

This will no doubt be the hardest part of the entire process... (-=


> Anyone want to be officers?

I would like to do this.  Also, if you go to www.nonprofits.org, they have
a large collection of information that could be useful for us, including
one section on the rights and responsibilities of the board/officers.


> Another suggestion:
>
> Mission Statement

As you stated below, this should have 3 parts, our purpose, how we achieve
that purpose, and our values (who we are, and why we are interested in
pursuing this purpose.)  I think we have all of the pieces in what you
proposed, but it would be nice to trim it down to just one or two
sentances that are easy to remember.


> ____________ is a non-profit group of volunteers from the Arizona software
> community dedicated to promoting the awareness, acceptance, and use of
> Open Source software in the state of Arizona.

Instead of promoting, how about increasing.  Our purpose is to increase
the awareness, acceptance, and use of Open Source software in Arizona.

The values portion of the mission is also here, we are a group of
volunteers from the Arizona Open Source software community dedicated to
our purpose.


>  ____________ sponsors and participates in events to expand the use of
> Open Source software.

This would be the third part, how do we serve our purpose; we sponsor and
participate in events related to our purpose.  I think saying we do it to
expand the use of Open Source software is too limiting, because we also do
it to increase awareness and acceptance of it as well.


> We believe that software users, both individuals and organizations,
> have the right to own, use, and modify, if necessary, any software
> that they find necessary to meet their own individual needs.

While this is certainly true, I'm not sure that it should be in the
mission statement.  This would be better placed in a seperate statment of
values and beliefs if we decide to make one.


> __________ receives its direction from a voluntary Board of Directors,
> which includes a President, Vice-president, and Treasurer.  None of the
> members receive monitary compensation for their efforts.

If we state that we are a 501(c)(3) (is this the right one?), it implies
that we have at least a minimal non-compensated board of directors.


If we put it all back together, we get something like:

________ is a 501(c)(3) organization of Arizona Open Source community
volunteers dedicated to increasing the awareness, acceptance, and use of
Open Source software in Arizona by sponsoring and participating in
technology related events.

This includes all three parts we need in the mission statement, and
"technology related events" would include everything we want to do from ug
meetings, all the way up to a full blown conference.

	--Nick


> The first sentence identifies the purpose of the organization.
>
> The second sentence states the identifies the types of activities that the
> organization uses to accomplish the purposes.  It covers any event that the
> organization hosts, like the proposed conference and exposition, and
> participation in existing events like ITEC.
>
> The third sentence states the open source values that inherently guide the
> organiszation.
>
> The second paragraph, while optional, does clarify the minimal structure of
> the organization and emphasizes the voluntary nature of it.  It states a
> minimum number of Board members, but does not restrict the size of the
> Board.
>
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