There will be a meeting of FoLLI on Thursday, July 29, at 18:00 CEST,
on Zoom. To join, follow links from https://esslli2021.unibz.it/page/daily_schedule/.
The meeting passcode is sent to the folli.info mailing list.
The meeting is open to all ESSLLI participants and FoLLI members.
The President of FoLLI, Larry Moss, will give a brief overview of what FoLLI
is, and announce the Annual General Meeting which will be held on
Thursday, September 9 18:00-19:00 CEST.
FoLLI Statutes and Bylaws have been unchanged for many years and need to
be updated to confirm with the Dutch legislation (FoLLI is registered in
the Netherlands). In the meeting on the 29th July, new versions of the
Statutes and Bylaws (attached) will be presented by Benedikt Löwe. The
summary of changes written by Benedikt Löwe is below.
At the AGM on the 9th of September, members of FoLLI will vote on whether to
accept the new versions.
S T A T U T E S
Article 1. No changes.
Article 2. Old statutes had a paragraph that listed concrete projects some of which were obsolete (such as the book series). We removed that paragraph since it is not wise to have a specific list of concrete projects in the statutes.
Article 3. No changes.
Article 4. The 2007 statutes had removed the Vice President. The new version has restored the office of Vice President (as has been the practice of FoLLI for the last ten years).
Article 5. The 2007 had a structure of the Board that did not correspond to the current practice and also included an office called “manager of the bureau” which had not been used. The new version describes the structure of the Board precisely as it has been the practice of FoLLI in the last decade.
The 2007 allowed for postal vote for Board members, but that is not in line with Dutch law and had to be removed. (The formulation is mandatory.)
Items 5 & 6 had to be added due to Dutch legal regulations.
(Former Article 6 about the “Scientific council” was deleted since FoLLI never had such a body in practice.)
(Former Article 7 about “Working groups” was deleted since there has never been a formal working group structure.)
Article 6 (former Article 8) was adapted to current practice allowing for members to participate by video-conference with a mandatory formulation. Since Dutch law required the removal of postal votes (cf. comment on Article 5), item 6 was added which allows the Board to allow members to submit proxy votes, giving maximal flexibility tp arrange the elections within the constraints of the Dutch law.
Article 7 (former Article 9). This article was modernised and a requirement to have a proposal supported by at least five members was added.
Article 8. No changes.
Article 9. No changes.
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B Y – L A W S
Article I. Sentence about the Dutch version of the Statutes added. Item about the “principal office of FoLLI” deleted since this does not exist.
Article II. Wording modified to replace the (obsolete) role of the “Manager of the Bureau” with the Secretary. A few items whose intention was unclear (about reinstatement and transferral of membership) were deleted.
The 2007 By-Laws stated that the membership list would be made available to the members; this is not in line with current privacy regulations and was deleted.
Article III. Some changes to remove inconsistencies and clarify wording. No substantial changes. An item about the quorum was removed at the request of the Notary (properly announced General Meetings are always quorate).
Article IV. A large part of this article in the 2007 By-Laws was repeating the Statutes. This text was removed and the text was adapted to be consistent with the Statutes. The “Election Committee” is a new addition.
Text relating to physical meetings of the Board was removed.
Article V. Again, text and entire items that were repeating the Statutes were deleted. The rest of the text was adapted to be consistent with the Statutes. The 2007 By-Laws had an item that allowed the Board to create new offices and appoint officers: this was removed. Instead, the new item 5. that allows the Board to delegate duties was added.
Article VI. The 2007 statutes gave “working groups” a formal statutory status; this was removed and replaced with a general statement about forming committees and working groups. Working groups still have ex officio Board members and the central role of the ESSLLI Standing Committee is now fixed in the By-Laws by item 3.
An item that referred to the Council was removed since this never existed.
Article VII. Mostly unchanged, though an item dealing with checks was deleted as obsolete.
Article VIII. No changes.
Article IX. The period of making announcements about planned changes was changed from 60 days to 15 days (to be in line with the same period for the statutes).