This Saturday we will be selecting 3 people to go on the Board of the Reef’s ASBL.
Term: 12 months.
Responsibilities:
Take care of the ASBL’s legal responsibilities. In practice this comes down to checking whether @alberto (the accountant) submits the annual tax declaration, and asking him to report on the accounts to the GA.
Make sure everybody pays their annual membership fee.
Please give some thought to whom who you would like to select. The selection itself I propose we only do after we have talked about the governance reform, which is linked to the people who are on the Board of the société simple (see Governance reform for the avant-projet stage).
Just in case you haven’t seen the meeting minutes, together with the mighty @mieke you have been selected to go on the Board of The Reef’s asbl. The role description is in the post above.
Having been selected doesn’t of course mean that you are obliged to take up the function. It’s really open, and if for some reason you don’t want to do it, that’s totally fine. There is already @manuelpueyo who is on stand-by, and we can certainly find someone else.
If you have further questions, I would propose you talk to @alberto or Manuel.
Can you please let us know whether you would be willing to take up this mandate? (no wrong answers!)
I don’t have any legal knowledge but if I can help, I will. I will just ask Manuel or/and Alberto if things are not that clear in terms of responsibilities as a member of the Board
As your mandate is running out shortly, it’s time for some questions …
Question 1: do you wish to prolong your mandate or would you like to step down?
=> In case of the former (which I personally think would make a lot of sense, but up to you of course), would it please be possible to write a very short proposal for the plenary (how long, reasoning etc) and let me know?
=> In case of the latter, can you please let me know, so that we can schedule a new selection process?
If you would opt for staying on a bit more …
Question 2: which responsibilities would you like to take on, and (if applicable) which ones would you possibly like to outsource?
Here’s the list of tasks and responsibilities that I am aware of:
Sign documents that need a signature (contracts etc)
File the tax return
File the accounts at the greffe
Organise a GA when needed
Call in the annual membership fees
Ask Teams to submit their proposals for the half-yearly budget and seek consent in the plenary
Some of these tasks (e.g. half-yearly budget) are currently taken up by the SoSim Board, because we’re in a way the successors of what used to be Team Finance. But now that we are re-launching the Coordination Group, where we are looking at which team is responsible for what, we figured it would be good to get more clarity on which tasks you would like to take up, and which ones you would like to outsource. No wrong answers of course.
Can you please have a look at these questions and let the group now how you would like to proceed?
I want to stay on board. I don’t think there is a need to outsource one of these tasks. I’d like to discuss with @Odile and @mieke on who stays on and how we see these tasks and our role division. Keep you posted!
Noted. Governance-wise though it’s not possible to one-sidedly decide to prolong your mandate without a selection process. So if that’s what you would like to do - which makes a lot of sense given all the administrative hassle - can you please bring a very short proposal to one of the next plenaries, so we can have this in order?
I’m following up on the previous exchanges. It’s great that the current board is willing to stay on! This continuity is very helpful, as it avoids the administrative hassle during this busy phase.
To be mindful of our governance methods and formalize this transition, can I encourage you to take the next steps:
Formalizing the prolongation : Since mandates officially expired in January, can you bring a short proposal to the following plenary to confirm the extension. It should simply state:
The intention to prolong the current mandate.
A brief clarification of the responsibilities you are taking on (e.g., Tax returns, 2026 Membership fees, 6-monthly budgeting). This clarification will also inform the reflection as we relaunch the Coordination Group (more context at end of messagew).
2026 Annual Membership fees : we are getting a bit late with the call for this year’s fees. To keep things simple and avoid extra debate, we suggest maintaining the fee at €125 per household.
I’ve also tagged you in the “Relaunching the Coordination Team” thread. Looking at the Board as a “team” within that framework might be the easiest way to determine which tasks you keep and which ones (if any) you’d like to outsource to others in the future.
The @reef-asbl-board met last week on 25/2 and we want to propose the following:
The current board members want to stay on Board. The ASBL statutes state that our mandate is for two years, so our mandates actually did not expire. We will follow up Board membership of the ASBL during the GA.
We agree with the proposed responsibilities: 6-monthly budgeting for the Teams; and the call for the annual membership fee. Other responsibilities are legally or according to the statutes already reponsibilities of the Board (so we will keep them): organise the GA (before the tax return; possibly back-to-back with the GA of the sosim); file the tax return; file the accounts at the greffe; sign documents for the ASBL.
We want to maintain the fee of 125 euro and call for it soon after the plenary.
I can add a document on Nextcloud with our proposal.
Hey @Hannah, Thanks a lot for this summary! Indeed, please feel free to add your proposal to the draft agenda of the plenary of the 15th
Other than that, Team Governance had a meeting on Monday and, among other things, discussed how to best integrate the @reef-asbl-board into the current structure. We came up with the following:
End of mandate of the asbl boad should be the same as the end of the mandate of the Sosim board (which is currently October 2026).
For the next term, have one member of the coordination group join the asbl board (as an unofficial ad-on) to make the link with coordination group (the idea behind this is to keep a link with the rest of the circle structure without making one of the asbl board members having to regularly attend coordination group meetings as the tasks of the asbl board are more spread out over time).
Hey @Hannah, from my understanding, this is connected to the second point of finding a board member that can be the link to the coordination group - for that, we need to know who will be on the next board. @reef-governance correct me if I’m wrong.
Hi Hannah,
One of the basic tenets of our governance model is that we use our informal governance methods (i.e. Governance Document and sociocratic principles) by default, and that (if possible) we try to never rely on the formal governance (statutes). This is set out in section 2 of our Governance Document.
For the mandate that means that it’s not the statutes that define it, but what was agreed during the selection process. The reasoning at the time for choosing one year, is to give newly incoming members the opportunity to also get selected. The reasoning for prolonging the term until the next Board selection is simply to align processes a bit: it’s easier to select people for the two Boards together.
