Hello,

I wish to look-up the by-laws and articles of incorporation of a few
nonprofit organizations. Are these documents accessible to the general
public?? If so, where exactly?

I have accessed Guidestar at www.guidestar.org but couldn't find this
information.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 12 Apr 2003 15:14 PDT

Do you want them for specific non-profit groups, or would a few
examples from randomly chosen groups be OK?

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Clarification of Question by skt1479-ga on 13 Apr 2003 10:55 PDT

Thanks for the comments. I am particularly interested in such
information about nonprofits serving the educational, scientific and
research markets. For instance, RLG (www.rlg.org); OCLC
(www.oclc.org); SWRI (www.swri.org); Battelle (www.battelle.org).

In the absence on information on these specific entities, examples
from five randomly chosen organizations in these fields
(educational/research/scientific) would be acceptable.

Thanks!

Hello skt1479-ga.

Documents like these used to be hard to come by, but the trend in
recent years towards greater corporate and non-profit accountability
has led to many postings of incorporation documents.  I've listed a
few below (but not for the organizations you mentioned...they don't
seem to be available on-line).

In addition, a Google search on:

"articles of incorporation" "non profit"

(with the quotation marks) will result in hundreds of additional
examples, for the choosing.

I hope this is the information you needed, but please post a Request
for Clarification if I can assist you any further.

pafalafa-ga

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Sample Articles of Incorporation for Nonprofit Organization
www.mapnp.org/library/legal/articles.htm 


ICANN 
www.icann.org/general/articles.htm 


Sierra Club
www.sierraclub.org/policy/articles_current.asp 


MINNESOTA ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS
www.mnasa.org/General%20Info/articlesinc.html



Sea Grant Association
www.sga.seagrant.org/docs/articles.htm 


International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society
www.ilads.org/incorp.htm 


University of Chicago, Board of Trustees
http://trustees.uchicago.edu/articles/


Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cmu.edu/policies/documents/ArticlesOfInc.html

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Request for Answer Clarification by skt1479-ga on 14 Apr 2003 12:49 PDT

Hello  pafalafa-ga :

Thanks for the info. Could you also list a few (at least a couple of)
links to bylaws of organizations .. specifically in the technical
research area (such as Battelle or SWRI) rather than educational
related ones (such as Univ's or associations)

Thanks!

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Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 14 Apr 2003 17:07 PDT

I'll be glad to add more information here BUT, I'm on the road all
this week and don't have the tools to do it until I'm back at my desk.
 If memory serves, some of the links I already provided do have
by-laws, but I'll add more next week.  Thanks for understanding.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 18 Apr 2003 17:35 PDT

Hello again.

Now that I'm back home, I can add to my earlier answer.  I've listed
below some direct links to the bylaws (and in many cases, to articles
of incorporation too) of organizations involved in technical research.
 I hope these are the types of groups you are interested in, but if
I'm off the mark, just let me know through a follow-up request for
clarification:

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http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/sowen/isgg.html

International Society of Grid Generation Bylaws

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http://www.aisti.org/inside/bylaws.php

Alliance for Innovation in Science and Technology Information bylaws

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http://www.universityresearchpark.org/bylaws.htm

Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation of the University Research Park
Inc.

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http://www.ucgis.org/fByLaws.html

BYLAWS of the UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE

[page includes links to Articles of Incorporation as well]

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http://www.mid-air.org/laws.html

Mid-America Association for Institutional Research

Site contains links to MIDAIR's Constitution, Articles of
Incorporation, and Bylaws.

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http://www.aserl.org/articles/bylaws.htm

BYLAWS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEASTERN RESEARCH LIBRARIES, INC. 

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http://www.nprra.org/bylaws.htm

BYLAWS OF NATIONAL PUBLIC RECORDS RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

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I'm not a lawyer; a lawyer could give you a better answer than I can.

Any US corporation is incorporated in a specific state, and laws and
procedures vary from state to state.

For example, one can obtain some information about any corporation
incorporated in California from that state's Secretary of State. The
following page is informative:
  http://www.ss.ca.gov/business/corp/corp_irc.htm

A corporation's bylaws are less "official" (but more interesting!)
than its articles and less likely to be kept on file or disclosed by
the state. The articles are pretty much dry boilerplate. But you may
not be able to get the bylaws from the state, and as far as I know
(writing as a former director and CFO of a non-profit corporation)
neither the IRS nor the corporation itself is under any obligation to
provide a copy of them upon request. But that may differ in states
other than California.

I have examined by laws for one homeowners association (16 pages) and
for three local  branches of the reform party here in Florida. 
Personally I thought some of the rules were undesirable, they were
excessively detailed, overly legalistic and contained analysis of very
improbable events. I attemped to produce simpler versions that were
mostly guide lines rather than rules but I was largely ignored by the
other leaders. I suspect the problem is the wording is more or less
mandated by the State of Florida. I suspect each state is different in
some respects so you need to find examples of similar organizations in
your State or Country. So called by laws seem to be divided into three
or more, sometimes contradictory documents called Articals of
Incorporation, Constitution, Covenents and by laws.   Neil