satan":2dw6za6i said:
Using the by laws when they suit you and ignoring them with that suits you is exactly what the people in power at MOFIB did, and it is what kills organizations, which is exactly what is happening.
You were probably more right than you knew. This fell off the back of a truck today, and wound up in my inbox. No clue who/which board members are responsible for this announcement to the "members", given that last I saw virtually all except one BOD member was basically gone anyways. I would like to point out now that there is a line-item vote being put to MEMBERS, and both voting choices lead off with the phrase:
Dissolve MOFIB the corporation.
MOFIB":2dw6za6i said:
Official Announcement to all Voting Members
posted by MOFIB » Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:20 pm
MOFIB Voting Members,
If you have been an active member of MOFIB for the past few years, you are aware of the organizational struggles that MOFIB has faced. The search to find a viable solution to these issues was started over a year ago by the Board of Directors. We now would like to present to you, as active voting members of the MOFIB organization, a ballot with two options as to how you would like to have MOFIB proceed. The Board of Directors has voted and unanimously agrees to support either of these two options, based on a majority vote of the MOFIB voting membership.
HISTORY: As a member of MOFIB, it is important that you understand that each and every Board of Director from the beginning of the organization has wanted MOFIB to survive and thrive. The concept of sharing breeding information is essential if breeders are to advanced their understanding and skills as breeders. However, there are two sides to MOFIB; MOFIB the Message Board and MOFIB the organization.
The message board is what most hobbyist are familiar with. It requires a domain, a server to store the data, and the actual message board (phpbb) where posts are created and read about breeding efforts. The legal organization is an entirely different beast. The organization requires Board of Directors, Officers, bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, submissions of annual reports, annual tax filings, accounting, and constant book keeping. The organization has nothing to do with breeding yet requires attention to detail in order to ensure proper laws are being followed. It is this organization which has struggled over the years.
Many attempts have been made to salvage the MOFIB organization, but all attempts have failed and now it is necessary to make some difficult decisions. Because of the struggles of the MOFIB organization, the Board of Directors unanimously agree that the not-for-profit organization, Marine Ornamental Fish & Invertebrate Breeders Association located in the state of Illinois, USA, should be dissolved. Before doing so its assets will be distributed, as determined by the voting members of the organization.
The organizations assets are as follows:
MOFIB message board
MOFIB domains
Monetary assets located in paypal and Bank of America, after any financial obligations have been accounted for
The following vote will take place 30 days from this notice, as outlined in the bylaws ucp.php?mode=bylaws.
Item 1) With respect to MOFIB, the message board. You will be presented with the following two options:
1. Dissolve MOFIB the corporation. Offer a zip file, available to the public, containing a clean version of the breeding forums of MOFIB. This information can be set up as a static archive on another site. It will not be possible to set it up as a viable Message Board.
2. Dissolve MOFIB the corporation. Set up a clean copy of the Message Board and establish Luis Magnasco as the Trustee (or Steward) in charge of the Board. Luis can choose several moderators to help run the site. There will not be Board of Directors or an official organization, but the site will function strictly as an internet site, with moderators to insure that posts are answered and remain on topic.
Item 2), with respect to the domains, MarineBreeder.org, MarineBreeder.com, MOFIB.org, MOFIB.com. You will be presented with the following two options:
1. Do nothing with the domains. Allow them to expire and be made available to the general public after they expire. (In approximately 8-12 months.)
2. Allow the domains to continue to be associated with the message board as long as the message board is functioning. This means that if a majority vote allows Luis Magnasco to be the Trustee of the Message Board, the domain names, marinebreeder.com, marinebreeder.org, MOFIB.com and MOFIB.org, will stay with the message board as well. Otherwise, the message board will need to find a new name and a new home.
Item 3), any money that remains, after all bills are accounted for. You will be presented with the following two options:
1. Pay forward for domain registration and hosting fees to help with future costs for the message board.
2. Donate to a nonprofit organization TBD by a majority vote by the members within the next 30 days. (Another vote will be taken after this voting process is complete.)
VOTING PROCESS:
The official date of the vote will begin 30 days from the date of this notice, which is Thursday, 24 May 2012 at approximately 10pm Eastern Standard Time. The voting will be open for a length of 7 days from the time it opens. Once the voting is complete, the results will be posted within 3 days of the close of the election.
VOTING MEMBERS:
The record date for determining Member eligibility to vote is set by this notice date, 24 May 2012. Voting members are determined by the official rules outlined in the bylaws.
Signed and approved by,
MOFIB Board of Directors
So we don't know what board members are responsible for this, and in fact since I have been deleted/banned/blocked by this org (despite being the founder) I couldn't even get into the generally accessible areas to even tell you who the "website software" thinks is still a board member.
That said, looks like MOFIB is truly dead. In perhaps what I can only view as a move that makes sure that virtually no one is happy, and a move that truly shows the lack of understanding of basic website 101 type stuff, what should be a package deal is instead pieced out to the Nth degree, so a handful of voting members (who knows who those people are now either) can make what is probably going to be an uninformed decision. All of this, after I spelled it out rather clearly for the "resigned" BOD member who was actively seeking to "fix" things by spearheading the move to offload MOFIB to another corporation based in Texas.
So while this will probably not be seen by anyone who has a say, here's the problems, once again. I may seem like a "know it all" but damnit, I actually DO know what I'm talking about.
Regarding Choice #1 - in either capacity you are voting to dissolve MOFIB. Your board has given you no other choice. Since I cannot see the bylaws (which are kept private these days), I can only question whether the board has the right (or not) to actually unilaterally decide to dissolve the organization. If they DON'T, I suppose it doesn't matter, because they could just unilaterally change the bylaws to give themselves that right (assuming they can just change the bylaws whenever they feel like it..like the boards have done countless times before). In the end, MOFIB is dead, because the board has pigeonholed whatever voting members they haven't run out of dodge into having only once option - any vote dissolves MOFIB.
So what ARE the secondary options of this line item? Either the board will provide a .zip file of the website to the public (no clue how they will do that), or they will give the website to a former board member who doesn't know how to run and maintain a website last time I checked. Are EITHER of these viable options?
Give the website to Luis - With Luis at the helm, now it all falls back to one man to cherry pick the team that runs the show, and the website becomes his personal property. Bottom line, I have a big problem with Luis Magnasco being the recipient of a website he is not qualified to run, and I have a problem with MOFIB becoming anyone's personal private property. And what happens when Luis doesn't want to do it (just as your board is doing now?). I'm sorry, but the entire reason for setting MOFIB up as MORE than just a personal website was that MOFIB was supposed to live on independent of any one person. A vote for this is a vote to install a "dictator"...and I have a genuine problem with Luis being the appointed leader of MOFIB going forward. Maybe you don't.
Give away a .zip file? - With the other option, I can only assume that the board has somehow figured out a way to save the website in some non-usable format? PDF file perhaps? HTML files saved page by page? I don't know, but it probably won't be a useful resource for anyone. Or more likely, the board is somewhat misrepresenting this option - I doubt that anyone involved has the skills to actually see this option through, nor the motivation if this is the option selected. I think people are going to get NOTHING out of this. Or, maybe, the people proposing this idea really don't understand what they're suggesting, and heck, maybe the entire website's files will be made available in a semi-functional form that could, quite easily, be reconstituted into a live website by anyone with the necessary skills. Since interactive development has been my profession for 15 years, to say that this option is vague is an understatement. I would postulate that if you vote for this option, you basically vote to annihilate the entire online data repository that members have created over the years.
What SHOULD be done with the website files? - I made the statement very clearly - if MOFIB as an organization was unable to function, the assets of MOFIB should be given to a non-profit organization that has the ability to take custodial possession of them. It is quite easy to "lock down" the MOFIB website forums, which should be done, because the leadership core has been dysfunctional for years now - what I started as a beacon of hope that hobbyists could do better, devolved into one of the greatest examples of hobbyist-run organization debacles that I have EVER seen.
An organization like MASNA, MBI, the Breeder's Registry, can easily take over the custodianship the DATA, with the sole responsibility being to keep it available and intact, online. That way it can be searched, reviewed, and referenced going forward. It costs nothing more than the expense of paying a hosting bill and keeping the domains renewed; very, very inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. There is ZERO administrative headache, zero administrative costs, zero ongoing labor or need to moderate, because if the website is locked down in an archival state, nothing will ever CHANGE.
Therefore, I will make two final pleas.
My first plea would be that any organization interested in and capable of accepting and maintaining the MOFIB website in such an archival state, step forward and approach MOFIB's BOD (if you can even figure out who they are).
My second plea would be to Luis Magnasco - you didn't take my advice years back when you had a fiduciary responsibility to do the right thing, and instead helped instigate a coup that forever poisoned the org by empowering those people who shouldn't have had power. You've never apologized, and probably never well, but perhaps you can at least temper your mistake in judgement then, by taking my advice now - If MOFIB's website becomes YOUR website, lock it down and donate it to MASNA, MBI, the Breeder's Registry, and walk away.
OK, regarding the SECOND line item you have to vote on...this is where the BOD once again makes a mistake; twofold.
"Do nothing with the domains?" - Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. These are domains with years of viability behind them, and that has made them VERY valuable. No doubt certain people already have backorders on them. But the LARGEST Problem is this - the domains should have never been considered separate from the website-files in the first place. Why?
Every reference to an online article or post points back to the website through these domains. And, if people vote to give Luis the website (in choice #1), the data lives on but every link to it is severed UNLESS you make the right choice for the domains then...which would be the second option:
Allow the domains to continue to be associated with the message board as long as the message board is functioning.? This again shouldn't even be a separate item - if you're going to vote to give the website to Luis, he's going to NEED the domains. But here is the alarming part - "Otherwise, the message board will need to find a new name and a new home." As worded, the domains going with the website is contingent on Luis's willingness to keep the website "functioning". Otherwise, the website has to find a new home? (if Luis does not keep it functioning?).
Now, I can concede that perhaps the person who authored this line item mean to say "vote for this item if you vote to give the website files to Luis, because if you don't, Luis will have to set up the "new private MOFIB" with some other domain names. Really, I point all this out to convey a point - the people asking the members to make these decisions are so inept as to not even know what the choices actually mean.
What should be done with the domains?
This is a no brainer in my book - they should be given to the same non-profit entity that the website should be given to. They are REQUIRED in order to keep published literary reference, as well as countless online links to MOFIB data, working. You cannot separate the website from the domains, and if you kill off the website and give it to people in some sort of .zip file, you kill off years of individual contributions to our collective wisdom.
Your last line item - MOFIB MONEY. Here's a problem, because no one knows how much money MOFIB has, nor how much money MOFIB should have. This is perhaps the most controversial part in all this, because from where I sit, this was the MEMBERS money, the SUPPORTERS money. Without a FIRM AND FINAL ACCOUNTING of the MONEY, I think it is premature to ask anyone to decide what to do with it. What "bills" are there? Where has the money gone?
Without a FINAL accounting that is credible, the membership risks permitting a board member to quite literally walk away with the money. As Andy posted above...at one point there was almost $3000...what happened to all of it? I believe I saw some very bad choices being made in terms of never-ending decisions to go with ever-increasingly expensive hosting packages, and no doubt other dubious expenditures have occurred along the way. So maybe at this point, MOFIB really doesn't have any money to speak of anyways?
So my hunch - what you vote here is irrelevant. We don't know who has the money these days, nor how much of it there is. So vote whatever you like, because according to this, there are "bills to pay" anyways...so will there even be any money left after these bills, whatever they may be? Who knows...doesn't seem like the board person who authored this release knows, because certainly the treasurer SHOULD already KNOW what bills there are, and how much money is left when it's done.
That said, what should be done with any "money" that MOFIB has? - GIVE IT to the NON PROFIT that you give the website and the domains to. Case closed. You give them the assets to manage ,and the funds to keep it going for however long those funds last. Then it is up to the NON PROFIT to figure out what next...which of course COULD be a substantial headache if MOFIB's website is stuck on an expensive hosting package (when in reality, it can be run on a $5-15/month hosting plan on a shared server...peanuts).
So here's a wrap-up. Even now, MOFIB's BOD cannot put one simple and cohesive exit strategy together. And that's all that really needed to happen here. And I already spoon fed the plan several times over to a BOD/not-Bod/BOD-Again/wait-I-did-resign MOFIB Board member. GIVE IT ALL TO A NON PROFIT who's willing to "freeze it in time" and move on. The BOD did not need to even come up with a plan B unless this plan didn't pass.
Given this latest failure on the part of the BOD, and give the choice that voting members are being forced to vote between two sets of bad choices, the answer is sad but clear. Vote to give the website to Luis. Vote to give the domains to Luis. Vote to pay up the domain registrations and hosting bill with all the remaining money. And then hold Luis very accountable, and ideally, strongly encourage that Luis then actively seek to implement the exit strategy I laid out in the first place.
OR, somehow convince the BOD to enact a plan C that outlines what I've proposed.
