Drupal England and Wales (Association) - legal entity options

Hi all.

I very much enjoyed taking part in the on-line meeting earlier this week where we continued the discussion about setting up a national Drupal association in England and Wales. A core part of the discussion was around the options for legal entity.

As discussed elsewhere, the main options seem to be

1) Company Limited by Guarantee
2) Company Limited by Shares
3) Industrial and Provident Society
4) Charity

From a number of discussions it sounds like the most attractive and flexible option to get started is a Company Limited by Guarantee which does not prevent us from becoming an IPS or a charity at a later date (if the members decide that is desired)

From my experience setting up various co-operative membership organisations I realised I should contact Co-operatives UK to see if we could review some model 'rules' for the articles of association of a Company Limited by Guarantee. Linda in the legal department was kind enough to spend 20 minutes talking through the options, and pointed me to the various model rules available on their site.

See http://www.uk.coop/advise/modelrules for various options.

Linda recommended reviewing the
"Consortia Co-operative Company Limited by Guarantee model rules" :
http://www.uk.coop/sites/storage/public/downloads/co-operative_consortia...

I was also interested in:
"Co-operative Community Interest Company Limited by Guarantee model rules":
http://www.uk.coop/sites/storage/public/downloads/co-operative_community...

One point to note is that a Company Limited by Guarantee can potentially become a Community Interest Company at a later date, but not the other way around.

At this point I am just posting this to make sure people are aware of the resources. We discussed choosing some base model rules and adapting them to our own specific needs before posting a proposed set of articles and inviting the community to comment. If we move swiftly in the next week, we may yet be able to get some proposed articles of association before or at the face to face meeting in London on Saturday 27th April.

Hope this helps move things onwards and upwards!

Finn.