2008/11/30 Paul Williams <paul(a)skenmy.com>om>:
Are there any legal implications to this? Is payment
required to be a
member? Remember, cheques can bounce, and while I do not anticipate there
being any issues with our memberbase, such things can happen. Then you get
into the tricky business of disassociating a member if they refuse to pay.
The governing documents lay out specific procedures for members that
are behind in payments (I think they have 6 months to pay and then the
board can terminate membership). The other problem is what you do if
something goes wrong and the bank account is never opened and we end
up dissolving the company again (God forbid!) - if the membership is
kept to just the board then that process would be easy, if there are
loads of other members that need to be consulted it gets much harder
(having to hold a proper EGM just to close everything down as a lost
cause would be rather regrettable). It's a very very small risk, but
there is essentially no benefit at all to accepting members earlier,
so why do so? As long as everyone that applies is a member in time for
all the official notifications about the AGM, then everything is fine.