Re: [Fsfe-uk] New Charities Bill

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 11:46 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Charlie Cattell writes:
> > 19 Bills received Royal Assets yesterday (8th November), including
> > the Companies Bill and the Charities Bill. [...] It also replaces
> > the current four “heads of charity” with 13 legally charitable purposes
> (See http://www.co-opnet.coop/viewtopic.php?p=1708#1708 )
> 
> Is it time to reform AFFS to target one or more of the new charitable
> purposes? 

I _suspect_ not; last time we asked the charities people, we were pretty
clearly "not", and the new purposes don't really seem to be radically
different. Unless they've re-interpreted the words, "community" (for
example) was always taken to mean "has a strict geographical
constraint", and aims like "advancement of science" meant "has a
specific scientific goal [eg., cure for cancer]" which would be
difficult to apply.

It's not necessarily a bad idea to re-look at things (see below), and
the (somewhat) new Community Interest Company structure would also be
worth examining.

> (By the way, how is AFFS?  I've not heard anything about it for some
> time.)

Indeed.

It is about time AFFS said something publicly, though we have had little
meetings now and then (eg at Expo) to talk to people.

The current issue - which you might be slightly aware of - is a
practical matter of getting the Co-op Bank to obey instructions to
change information on our account. This seems to be strictly a
logistical matter, though getting help out of the Co-op seems to be like
drawing blood from a stone. Their promises about free software internet
banking have also buggered us for years (though, it seems, they released
a new possibly free software friendly system a month ago?).

There is an unspoken question about whether or not we continue the AFFS
as it is now. It has resources which ought to be kept and distributed,
and gets invited to things, but it probably needs to reform in some way
(if not for practical bank-account related issues). 

Cheers,

Alex.