Jerry Jacobs and the Association Law Handbook

As I mentioned, I went to hear Jerry Jacobs talk about his book, the Association Law Handbook. It was actually a really good session - he's a fun, animated, friendly speaker and was able to make a very dry subject into a discussion we could all participate in. "We", being, almost exclusively people looking to undertake the CAE at some point in the near future - so to that end I'll jot down a couple of notes for anyone who might find them useful, given that it's one of the required books for the CAE.

Changes since the last edition - Jacobs said almost every paragraph in the entire book has been reworked, however there are two sections which have really changed a lot: the first, on Nonprofit Governance, the subjects of which have been greatly affected recently by Sarbanes Oxley, and the last section, on Nonprofit Taxation. Another major change has been the addition of appendices and a CD-ROM containing 25 sample forms and documents which we can all use and modify - there is no copyright on them. This can save us all A LOT of money if we use a sample form for any particular purpose which we send to our association lawyer for editing, rather than ask them to come up with something from scratch.

Jacobs answered questions about copyright law and intellectual property; conflicts of interest and other governance issues (e.g. state law ("members elect the board and hold the power to remove a board member") supersedes by-laws ("the board can remove a board member") when they differ; how to find out differences between federal law (covered by the book) and state law (it's not easy, apparently); about retention record-keeping rules, and more. I asked a question, which might interest you, about the issue of intellectual property with regards to collaborative, electronic media - such as blogs on your association website, chat discussions on your website, wikis - who owns the intellectual property there? Apparently it's all still being worked out in the legal systems and there's no clear answer.

Jacobs' last tip was, DO NOT READ THE WHOLE THING AT ONCE - break it down into sections!

So - that was pretty much that. EXCEPT....

I sat next to a lovely guy, James, and before the session started we had a great chat about blogging. I think I may have convinced him to take the plunge and start his own blog - not that it was that hard, it sounded like he's pretty ready. Yay! You can call me a "blogevangelist" from now on. I asked him to have a look at my blog, to see how easy it was to set up, so if you're reading, James - JUST DO IT. Go ahead. Feet first, hold your nose, and jump. The water's great.