The Ci-Fi Organizers’ Blog

We made a mistake calling Civic Fidelity a Cooperative

Saturday November 04th 2006, 5:50 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

We made a mistake in our rush to bring Civic Fidelity into reality: we blundered in naming ourselves. Our intention was to become a not-for-profit Cooperative, because we like the idea of havening distributed democratic control for our organization. So we did a name search on â€œCivic Fidelity Cooperative,â€ and subsequently filed out incorporation papers with that name. We erred in that when we registered, it was as a not-for-profit business, not as a cooperative, as required in the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act.

After reading through the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act, and realizing we did not meet the requirements, we also realized that it is inappropriate for Civic Fidelity to call itself a Cooperative until and unless it is fully registered as a Cooperative. Consequently we have removed every mention of â€œCooperativeâ€ on our web site, and we no longer refer to ourselves to the â€œCivic Fidelity Cooperative.â€ We wish to apologize for erroneously referring to ourselves as a Cooperative too hastely.

Further, a detailed reading of the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act, has also lead us to reconsider wether or not New Brunswick’s definition of a Cooperative is the best governing structure for Civic Fidelity. We are concerned that the definitions of a Coop are two rigid for the vast array of functions that Civic Fidelity intends to provide. We are also considering becoming a democratic not-for-profit organization, modeled after organizations like the United Way. Our goal is to maximize the number of freedoms our organization has. But we have not yet come to a decision, and we are investigating our options.

In the mean time Civic Fidelity will continue providing the same services, and work on achieving the same goals. We will post any developments on this subject to this blog.