Manchester and District Beekeepers’ Association are a charity and governed by the Charity Commission. We are registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organization (CIO). This protects both the Members and Trustees for any financial liability’s the Association might incur.
The terms of membership are laid out below and are from our constitution. A full down loadable copy of the constitution can be found at the end of this web page.
Membership of the CIO is open to anyone who is interested in furthering its purposes, and who, by applying for membership, has indicated his, her or its agreement to become a member and acceptance of the duty of members set out in sub-clause (3) of this clause. A member may be an individual, a corporate body, or an individual or corporate body representing an organisation which is not incorporated.
The charity trustees:
Membership of the CIO cannot be transferred to anyone else [except in the case of an individual or corporate body representing an organisation which is not incorporated, whose membership may be transferred by the unincorporated organisation to a new representative. Such transfer of membership does not take effect until the CIO has received written notification of the transfer].
It is the duty of each member of the CIO to exercise his or her powers as a member of the CIO in the way he or she decides in good faith would be most likely to further the purposes of the CIO.
(a) Membership of the CIO comes to an end if:
(b) Before the charity trustees take any decision to remove someone from membership of the CIO they must:
(a) The CIO annual subscription shall become payable on the first of January. No member shall be entitled to participate in the privileges of the CIO until such subscriptions have been paid in full. Subscriptions paid by new Members after the first of July shall cover the period of the following full subscription year. Each fully subscribed Member/Partner Member shall be entitled to one vote at an Annual General Meeting.
(b) The Trustees shall determine, prior to the AGM and subject to ratification at the AGM, the subscription for the ensuing year. In determining the subscription, the Trustees shall take into account, in particular, any increase notification to the CIO in the fees payable by the CIO to other Associations or Organisations and which shall become payable by the CIO during the year for which the annual membership fee is being determined.
(a) The charity trustees may create associate or other classes of non-voting membership, and may determine the rights and obligations of any such members (including payment of membership fees), and the conditions for admission to, and termination of membership of any such class of members.
(b) Other references in this constitution to “members” and “membership” do not apply to non-voting members, and non-voting members do not qualify as members for any purpose under the Charities Acts, General Regulations or Dissolution Regulations.