[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote:
Where’s the competition? In stealth mode, which eliminates public scheduling, budgeting,and resource allocation issues. Even PR will be phased if FF achieves unity in 2010 or the first half of 2011. So we’re already one of the cheering sections for aneutronic fusion. Talk-polywell.org is another. Too bad tri-alpha doesn’t have one.

I believe they prefer stealth mode. Fusion has historically been maligned in the press, and publicity has tended to hurt it, especially as things take longer to develop than desired. The projects that can get funding in stealth mode prefer it. Those that have no choice, such as LPP or Polywell, try to leverage the press.

There is a larger press issue to be addressed here.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: In principle, any over-unity fusion would be good. But the prospective implementation costs for each are part of the package, and it isn’t even really a contest. FF has by far the best costing prospects.

…if it works. So, yes, it’s very much an open contest.

[Rezwan]

These Harley ads are also cool. Help you see your self in the machine.

I’ve been wanting to break down the dpf into parts for some time now. Didn’t think to turn it into a portrait. Portrait of the future.

[Rezwan]

Tulse wrote:

success in one fusion endeavor would breed it everywhere.

I very much doubt that’s true for Big Fusion if LPP or EMC2 or Tri-Alpha or General Fusion or any of the other low-cost “alt-fusion” approaches succeed. Who is going to pay tens of billions for a huge facility to do what someone has accomplished for a few million in the equivalent of a garage?

Think big, my friend! If LPPX succeeds, we’ll have surpluses of energy galore, and anyone can take on these fantastically complex engineering challenges just for kicks : )

It’s not just about the energy – they are exploring all kinds of issues that could have applications elsewhere when we hit the “beyond” stage. Liquid walls for the reactor? Sounds like we’re headed to interesting shielding properties for the future.

We need to make a list of spinoff products envisioned from the type of research they’re doing on the Tokamak and NIF. It’s not just about the energy.

[Rezwan]

Win for all, and all for win.

[Rezwan]

Glen is a great guy. If only we could get him on our board of advisors.

It has, indeed, been a long and winding road to fusion, and it’s still not clear how much longer this road will wind. A definite message challenge.

tcg wrote: The intent of the article seems to be to present another approach to fusion power other than the NIF or Tokamak, but the article ends on a clearly pessimistic note, talking about multi decade timeframes and “miracles” they would need. They did make passing mention of two pB11 projects, but nothing about the DPF. Unfortunately, the same lugubrious tones pervade most of the writings about fusion these days.

Clearly these people need to have some good news to chew on. Perhaps soon they might get some.

Good news would be good for all groups.

Just spoke with someone at LIFE (Laser Inertial Fusion Energy) who noted that success in one fusion endeavor would breed it everywhere. A solid achievement with the lasers might open up funding all around. The problem he sees is that fusion is associated with failure, not success.

The folks at LIFE are hoping for ignition within a couple of years. And they are hoping that this will encourage the field of fusion as a whole. If it’s possible one way, it may become more worthwhile to pursue other avenues. A solid public win might ease up the constricted funding scenario.

[Rezwan]

Yes, various nuclei in various stages of fusing, along a bracelet or necklace.

Also suitable for jewelry is the coiling electric currents.

[Rezwan]

I like the suite of benefits offered by the Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

I also like the way they explain them. Good copy:

Here are just some of the benefits of being an associate member of the Free Software Foundation…

Sustaining Support of FSF (aka “warm inner glow”)

You can proudly proclaim that you are helping FSF carry out its mission to promote and preserve software freedom.

And at the bottom, they point out the tax deduction/swag cost offset issue, and also note that members are nonvoting:

Tax deduction in the USA

FSF is a 501(c)(3) charity in the USA, and therefore your membership dues are tax-deductible in the USA. The estimated value of the membership benefit items is $10. Therefore, the full amount of your dues, minus $10, is a tax-deductible contribution to the FSF.

Associate Members are non-voting members of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.

[Rezwan]

Another privilege idea:

Access to journal articles
As you know when trying to access academic journals online, there is often a fee associated with them. Most institutions provide these materials to their students, faculty, members and alumni. We could negotiate to likewise offer access.

We may have to pay for this, we may get it as a donation from them that we turn around and use to encourage people to donate to us.

Looking at About Physical Review Letters, we see

Features for Authors

* Free to Read – Authors or other parties may choose to pay a one-time fee to make chosen articles available to all readers at no cost and without a subscription.

As a society, we could approach several key publications and see if we could make articles available to our members with either a password, or what have you.

Something, again, which needs to be researched and negotiated.

There should be an app for this : )

[Rezwan]

Other benefits for members include providing access to things that might not be easily obtained. This falls under the category of access and discounts.

Museums and Credit Unions
For example, we could develop a relationship with various museums and offer our members discounts to those museums. For this, you’d get a membership card, and when you show up at those museums, you get x% off. (We’d have to negotiate for it).

As a member of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, I have that privilege. In their welcoming letter, they also sent me an invitation to join the Sandia Laboratory Federal Credit Union.

We could work to get the Focus Fusion Society to be part of this network, and offer our members these perks. It’s a good synergistic move.

Costs to our organization
We’d have to take the time to negotiate these deals, make sure it all checks out legally, there’s probably some reporting and tax filing issues that will come up and need to be maintained. And we’d have to send out formal membership packets to members, with a card and that sort of thing. In other words, we’d need staff and money to handle this.

[Rezwan]

Until this point, the Focus Fusion Society has been a small enough organization where the simplicity of our bylaws haven’t been an issue. We do, however, plan to grow.

If we elect to continue with the membership model (we can amend this, if we want), we will need some dedicated volunteers to handle membership issues, or we might need to hire staff for membership.

A few more quotes from boardsource.org on the “cons” of Formal Membership, and then I yield the floor for discussion:

Because true members are entitled to certain procedural rights under state law, and because complying with membership notice and meeting procedures sometimes can be quite onerous, it is important to think very carefully before arbitrarily creating one or more classes of members.

If an organization does have one or more classes of voting members, those members are usually entitled to various procedural rights under state law, as well as whatever rights and privileges are stated in the bylaws. For example, members typically are entitled under state law to a certain number of days of prior written notice of member meetings, and the notice may have to contain certain details…

…an organization with hundreds of members can incur significant costs and expend significant time and effort just sending out meeting notices…

…members who cannot attend a meeting in person are generally allowed to vote by proxy, and tallying those proxies can be time consuming. If either the content or the timing of member notice is improper for any reason, disgruntled members may successfully challenge the vote taken at the meeting, which can then result in the need to call a replacement meeting with a new round of notices.

[Rezwan]

Then again, here are some pros:

Boardsource.org has this to say about why some organizations take the formal membership route:

Some nonprofit organizations, including some charities and most trade associations and professional societies, intentionally have a large category of members who play a part in organizational governance by electing the board of directors, approving amendments to the articles of incorporation and bylaws, and sometimes approving certain other key decisions. (In trade and professional associations, membership sometimes creates a contract right between the association and its members.) The purpose of this structure is to give members a role in major decisions, while at the same time allowing the board of directors to continue to be the main decision-making and policy-setting body.

The Focus Fusion Society is a mixed bag, professionals and the public. It would be interesting to come up with a clearer picture of the role of members, their rights and responsibilities – or to evolve the trade and professional dimensions…

Another thing that many nonprofits do is to give members very limited voting powers.

All of these would have to be made explicit in the bylaws.

If you’ll note, our bylaws currently give members only one right, to vote for the Executive Director. Thereafter, all decisionmaking is in the power of this one person.

[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.

[Rezwan]

Here is more information on Membership law, per the Nolo Nonprofit Corporation book:

if a nonprofit corporation establishes a formal membership structure in its articles of incorporation or bylaws, then members of the corporation will be granted basic rights to participate in the affairs and future of the nonprofit corporation. We refer to members who are give these special legal rights as formal members.

It is optional for a nonprofit corporation to have formal members with legal voting rights. To avoid the problems (including the paperwork and expense) of having to put elections of directors and other major corporate decisions to a vote of the members, most nonprofits choose not to have formal membership structures.

Not having formal members is organizationally simpler than adopting a formal membership structure because only the directors are legally entitled to participate in the operation of the corporation. People interested in a nonmembership nonprofit, although they may play fundamental advisory roles, need not be notified nor allowed to vote for directors or approve changes to the corporations’s articles or bylaws. Normally this works well – because most people become involved in nonprofit organizations out of interest in the group’s activities and purposes, or in some cases because they receive attendance privileges or discounts to nonprofit events or programs, not because they wish to participate in the legal affairs of the corporation.

In other words, the basic difference between formal and informal membership is voting rights. Both types of members would end up getting other privileges and perks of membership (to be discussed in a separate thread).

Below, Nolo sums up the “cons” of formal membership. It seems to me the cons apply to regular board membership as well, but there are just fewer people to manage. In other words, a membership just multiplies the problems of the board.

Why Not Having Members Makes Sense

Here are some reasons why most nonprofit incorporators prefer not to have members:

* Setting up a formal membership with voting rights dilutes directorship control over corporate operations.

* It isn’t always easy to expel a member. State law may require that members only be expelled for good cause following a formal hearing. [no idea if that applies in New Jersey]

* Nonmembership groups can still receive suport from subscribers, sponsors, patrons, friends, benefactors, and so on. You can offer discounts or other benefits to outsiders who participate in the activities and programs of the corporation without giving them a legal right to participate in the management and other affairs of the corporation.

In some states, you may even call these outside supporters “members” of the corporation without running the risk of entitling these persons to voting and other legal membership rights in the corporation. Nontheless, to be safe and to avoid confusion and controversy later on, we suggest you use another term for persons who will not be legal members of your corporation but who will otherwise contribute to, or participate in, corporate affairs and activities.

And, of course, with members voting, you have to set up voting procedures and quorum and voting rights.

And now, how about the pros?

[Rezwan]

Well put, Derek!

Perhaps you can turn this into a post for the website along the lines of “Towards More Cross Collaboration in Fusion” or something to that effect.

[Author]

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