Belgian Drupal Community

Just before the final decisive meeting about the formation of a Belgian Drupal Association we received the news that the other Drupal Association (DA, also a Belgian entity) offers its financial infrastructure to us for organizing events. This means a bank account, credit card and on line payment processing. In exchange the local community pays the accounting costs it causes.

Jacob Redding of the DA, who participated in the meeting via Skype, gave a detailed explanation about the functioning of this construction and its many advantages.

This is a proposal for an extended board, in this scenario the board of the Belgian Drupal Association would have 5-7 members each with specific responsibilities. Each of the board members would take on a long term engagement and would be responsible to organize different activities. This modus operandi is best suited to take advantage of some dedicated volunteers with a lot more free time.

The board roles in this case would be:

-a president: public face of the association
-a treasurer: manages finances
-a secretary: internal and external communication of decisions

I made up a small list with the requirements for the location:
- It must be independent, it can't be on the same address of one (Drupal) company.
- It should be easy to access by the president, treasury and secretary which can change in the future.
- It should be a long term solution, changing the registered seat will cost money. We don't want to spend money on that.

The location will be used for/as
- Registered seat
- To receive mail
- As an administrative address (legal paperwork, etc.)

The best solution is to have a "virtual office" with a basic service:

I folow Sven's motion (http://groups.drupal.org/node/96809) to have board members, permanent members and and admitted members.

Motion: How to become an admitted member?

"Natural persons can become Active Members. Active Members shall be accepted as such by the Board of Directors, only after the dues accrued, as set forth in the Association Internal Regulations, shall have been paid in full."

Motion: How to become an permanent member?

asbl/ vzw can be created with a minimum of 3 persons. Those 3 persons will be the first effective members of the association (often called founding members). From those 3 persons, 2 will be chosen to be administrators and 1 will stay member (because you always need one more person than the number of administrators).

I propose to have 3 association levels:

board members
permanent members
members (= supporting / passive members)

Board members & permanent members are part of the General Assembly and have one vote each (i.e. they are active members).

To become a supporting member of the Drupal BE association a small fee should be paid, mainly to cover the working costs of the VZW / ASBL. The fee for individual members should be kept low to give everyone an opportunity to show their support.
An organisation, company or Drupal service provider will also be able to support the association by paying an organisation membership fee.

• The proposed personal membership fee is 10 euro per year.
• The proposed organisation membership fee is 100 euro per year.
• Board / permanent members are not required to pay the annual fee.

With a couple of smaller and bigger events on the horizon members of the Belgian Drupal community voiced the need for a Belgian Drupal Association that could take financial responsibility for these events and that could be used to carry over revenues from one event to the next.