X-Message-Number: 30251
Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 10:11:41 -0500
From: "Charles Platt" <>
Subject: specific examples

Instead of making hypothetical arguments (which are almost always
inconclusive) it might be more useful to consider the actual
experience of other organizations.

Almost all tax-exempt nonprofit organizations have member-elected
directors. A couple months ago I listed some very well-known examples.
The election of directors is a primary function and a right of members
in groups ranging from The Sierra Club to the NRA. The purpose is to
provide a check-and-balance, where tax-exempt nonprofits have no
shareholders to serve this purpose. Steve Van Sickle has claimed that
Alcor's self-electing board is "not unusual" but I think the opposite
is true: I think it _is_ unusual.

Steve Bridge quotes me as having been "frustrated" with the CryoCare
system. Steve, I don't remember this. As a good librarian, could you
cite source(s), so that we are not merely pitting my memory against
yours? As I recall, we were unable to get people to execute documents
to become patient care surrogates, but that was a different problem.

Of course in a very small organization you may have difficulty getting
a meaningful number of people to vote, but Alcor currently has about
10 times the number of members we had at CryoCare. In any case CI
seems quite content with its system of member-elected directors, and
since it is not suffering some of the problems that are said to be
afflicting Alcor (such as low membership growth) perhaps I might
suggest that heretical concept that Alcor could actually learn from CI
here.

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