We hereby announce that a Special General Meeting of Linux Australia will be held on Wednesday 9 April 2025. At this meeting a special resolution will be tabled to adopt a new constitution, in response to updated requirements from the Australian Taxation Office for not-for-profit organisations.
Details of the meeting:
- When: 8pm Wednesday 9 April 2025 (AEST)
- Where: Online via Zoom. Registration is available at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/dlzE7POETyWfQ_ffTaqAag
- Nature of business: Special resolution to adopt a new constitution for Linux Australia
The special resolution to be voted on at this special general meeting is as follows:
That the complete constitution, as set out within the constitution.md file at https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/pull/47/files, be adopted.
Why is this new constitution being proposed?
As is discussed on the pull request above, the Australian Taxation Office requires us to fill out a Not-For-Profit self assessment. As part of this, Question 3 asks “Does the organisation have and follow clauses in its governing documents that prohibit the distribution of income or assets to members while it is operating and winding up?”. Our current constitution does not contain such a clause, which means we have until 30 June 2025 to update our governing documents to include such a clause, to continue being a Not-For-Profit organisation.
Linux Australia is currently classified as a Not-For-Profit organisation. We wish to retain this status, to ensure we can continue to operate as we have done since the organisation was founded. Therefore we are proposing to adopt an updated constitution which includes the necessary clauses to meet the Not-For-Profit self assessment requirements, and keep the organisation running in line with the latest regulations for New South Wales Incorporated Associations.
Please note that we are using Zoom for this meeting so we are able to verify members for voting purposes, as well as to ensure video and audio stability during the meeting. From our usage of open source video conference tooling over the past year, we unfortunately encounter instability with large numbers of attendees, which is not something we can afford to occur for a meeting of this nature.
