There have been several questions about the proposed by-law change concerning making the Treasurer an ex officio member of the Steering Committee. We’d like to take this opportunity to answer the questions and explain the situation in more detail. ELUNA is a 501 (C) (6) entity. That means we are considered a business league devoted to the improvement of business conditions of one or more lines of business. Examples of 501 (c) (6) entities are: National Association of Truck Stop Operators, and Home Builders Association. Where we differ from most 501 (c) (6) entities is that we do not have a permanent address.
Our bank account and our EIN (Employer Identification Number) belong to ELUNA — not to the Treasurer. The Treasurer is only authorized to sign for banking transactions on behalf of ELUNA. Our problem is with ELUNA’s lack of a permanent address. Banks require a permanent address and we have traditionally used the Treasurer’s Institutional address as ELUNA’s.
The implications are: if the current Treasurer is not re-elected to the Steering Committee, someone else will have to take over the Treasurer’s duties. At that point, we’d have to change the authorizing signature for the ELUNA bank account to the new Treasurer and ELUNA’s address to the new Treasurer’s address. The last time we made that change, because ELUNA’s address had changed to another state, the bank made us close our account and re-open a new account with the new Treasurer’s name as the authorized person and the new Treasurer’s address as the organization’s address. We also had to obtain a new EIN because of the change of address to a new state.
It has been suggested that we might mitigate this if we incorporate. However, we’d still have the same problem with not having a permanent address. Right now, we would have to incorporate under the laws and regulations of Iowa because our current permanent address is in Iowa. If a member from another state or from Canada takes over the Treasurer’s duties and our address changes, we would have to reincorporate under the rules and laws of that state or in the case of a Canadian Treasurer, that country.
By making the Treasurer position ex officio instead of having it be an elected position with voting privileges, we can maintain a permanent address, but we don’t have someone who is a permanent voting member of the Steering Committee.