[Policy-Wonks] Hackerspace bylaws

[Katharine Whisler]

The trouble is dealing with banks and other outside entities.  E.g. when
we had to take out a loan for a laser cutter, the bank wouldn't do it
until we changed our bylaws to explicitly authorize the president of
PS:One to sign financial instruments...  So member driven organizations
need actual bylaws that say various people are able to express the will of
the group, however that is arrived at.  Our bylaws were written to give
our board very little power and then specific things were added over time
to solve particular problems.  I see you guys have what looks like a very
"corporate" looking set of bylaws.  If I didn't know what sort of
organization you are I'd think it was an alumni association or something
that gets very little input from its members.  But obviously it works fine
in practice even though it probably doesn't closely reflect how
Noisebridge actually works.

Anyway, it might be useful to compare notes about what is useful to have
in one's bylaws in terms of dealing with third parties.    Also, I'm
curious about your consensus process.  Our group is smaller (I think) and
younger than yours.  What kind of decisions do you guys put to the group?
We explicitly vote on most things that involve spending any money (unless
it is something like "oh gee we need a new fire extinguisher here"), but
pretty much everything else folks just informally ask others about and go
do unless it really affects everyone.  In terms of your consensus process,
do the items presented for consensus get altered to make more people happy
during the week it is discussed or is it more do/not do?  That is, if the
question is "shall we paint the bike shed blue" would it be possible to
come out of the consensus process a week later with a decision to cover it
with aluminum siding and mount a Styrofoam dinosaur on top?  Or would that
take two weeks?   Do you have budgets for specific things allocated so you
don't have to reach consensus on stuff like "shall we buy a case of paper
towels for the kitchen" all the time?

--Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From: Kelly [mailto:hurtstotouchfire at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2012 3:15 AM
To: Katharine Whisler
Cc: policy at lists.noisebridge.net
Subject: Re: [Policy-Wonks] Hackerspace bylaws

Oh my. Well, we're not *actually* governed as such. We want our bylaws to
be minimal.

Have you looked at this?
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge_Vision

That is, for reals, how we roll.

-K

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Katharine Whisler <kwhisler at phocid.net>
wrote:
> Hi, I'm a member of Pumping Station: One in Chicago.  We are embarking
> on revising our bylaws just as you are, and I'd like to compare notes
> about that and how your organization is actually governed.  Would any
> of you there be interested in some email correspondence on the subject?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kathy
>
>
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