Reply To: Where does the information come from?

[Rezwan]

Per Nolo again,

Formal Membership Rights in a Nonprofit Corporation

A formal (legally recognized) member of a nonprofit corporation is usually entitled, under the state’s nonprofit corporation law, to vote on the following matters:

* election and removal of directors
* Amendment of articles and bylaws
* approval of merger or consolidation with another corporation
* election to wind up or dissolve the corporation
* sale of corporate assets, and
* approval of a transaction involving an interested director or officer

It is possible to have different classes of membership, such as voting and nonvoting membership classes. One could thus have different matters be votable by different classes. For example, you could have most of the voting be restricted to the board, with options for members to propose ballots and vote on them if they wanted to bring something up that the board is not addressing, or if they disagree with what the board is doing. Also, one could have members vote on board members, and then let the board members do the rest of it.

We did not make any distinction in our articles. Neither did we address quorum and voting rules. I think that a quorum in New Jersey is the actual number of voting members that attend a meeting [Anyone with New Jersey law experience know differently?], which in our case has been very small.

An example of an organization with formal membership is the Sierra Club. Here are their policies.

As the key admin around here, and anticipating a growing organization, the difficulties of membership management are at the fore for me. I will leave it to someone else to discuss the pros of formal membership.