[committee] Membership 2008

[Grahame Bowland]

2008/5/19 Davyd Madeley <davyd at madeley.id.au>:
> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 02:16:00PM +0800, Scott Young wrote:
>>
>> Is there anything /requiring/ us to use Guild banking? As far as I can
>> tell, the main advantage of using a Guild bank account is that there
>> are no fees -- but the complete lack of netbanking is a bit crap.
>> Maybe we could open a supplementary account with Westpac -- they might
>> have cheap accounts for non-profits, and even if they don't, interest
>> $1000 or so in the account for a year will make more than enough to
>> cover the fees. We often have a lot more than that much money, too, so
>> it would more than likely generate us a hundred dollars or so every
>> year.
>>
>
> The thing to be aware of is that the UCC is not a legal entity. This
> means that it cannot hold a bank account.
>
> For the UCC to hold a bank account it would need to incorporate
> which would open it up to a lot of liability that is currently
> deflected at the Guild. It think it would require us to submit to
> yearly audits to maintain not-for-profit status and a whole bunch of
> dicking around for very little appreciable gain.

We had a bank account circa 1999, with Unicredit. We closed it because
the Guild demanded we exclusively bank with Guild banking. AFAIK
except for Guild rules, nothing is stopping the UCC opening another
bank account.

> Additionally, having our money held in trust by the Guild allows the
> Guild to generate revenue off club funds while we're not spending
> them, thus enabling grants and handouts to a greater value than we'd
> create in interest off a $3000 bank balance. It's a win-win
> situation.

Not really, we'd get a better win with real amounts of interest on our
$3000 that could then be reinvested back into the club.