Members Area

Part of this site was open to members only. The members area sat behind a login: a page asking for a username and password, a line explaining that the credentials were the ones issued to the member, and a link for anyone who had forgotten theirs. A visitor without an account saw nothing else.

That is how an association of this kind handles its own paperwork. A general assembly is a decision-making meeting: it receives the accounts, approves a programme and a budget, elects a board and votes on changes to the statutes. The papers that support those decisions go to the people entitled to vote before the meeting rather than to the world, because they are the members' business until the assembly has taken its decisions.

Four kinds of material belong behind a members' login. The papers for the general assembly: the notice and agenda, the accounts and the budget, the resolutions to be put to the meeting and the nominations for the board. The working documents behind the association's programme, which circulate in draft while they are still being revised. The reports that members are entitled to see before a question reaches the assembly. And the administrative record that belongs to members rather than to visitors.

The reason for the restriction is not secrecy for its own sake. An association that negotiates on behalf of its members needs room to discuss a position before it publishes one, and a document that names individuals or sets out a commercial arrangement cannot be put on the open web. The record of the decisions themselves is another matter: the association published its news, its press releases and its reports, and the outcomes of its general assemblies belong to the news archive rather than to the members area.

There was a limit on the other side of the same argument. An association that asks its members to vote on a programme, a budget or a change to the statutes has to put the papers in front of them early enough for them to be read and for a position to be taken. The login was what made that circulation possible: a member could be given an agenda, a set of accounts and the resolutions in confidence, and the association could do it without publishing its own draft material to everyone.

The login itself is on the members login page. The categories of membership, the subscriptions attached to them and what membership entitled an organisation to are set out under membership. The rights of members at the general assembly - how it is convened, how votes are taken and which decisions need a special majority - are in the statutes, and the way the assembly, the board and the secretariat fitted together is described under EHFA structure.

Where the members area ended, the association's output was open. Its standards were published, its accreditation criteria and documents could be read by anyone, and its news and press releases were not restricted. What sat behind the login was working material, and in most cases the restriction lasted only as long as the work it belonged to.