Framework
The AUC is an unincorporated not for profit association. It has an Operating Policies document which has been adopted and modified by members over the years and which fulfils the role of a constitution or articles of association.
The Operating Policies set down the AUC’s objectives, membership rules, governance and funds management arrangements, and provide for alteration of the Operating Policies by the AUC Executive Council, subject to ratification by the next General Meeting.
Over the years, a number of subsidiary policies have been adopted by resolution of the Executive Council or of a General Meeting. The are listed below. The Operating Policies allow the Executive Council to impose further (and usually more detailed) conditions for funds management, and these are codified in the AUC Financial Operating Procedures.
Objectives and eligibility for membership
The AUC is a not-for-profit association for Apple and related technology in learning in Australia and New Zealand. The AUC’s interest in learning is a broad one, embracing a wide sense of professional and personal learning and scholarship, within or without an institutional setting.
The AUC is for people in Australia and New Zealand who lead, support, or innovate in the use of Apple technology in learning, in a broad sense. It is for developing that community, and those people.
The AUC is for a vision of personal computers and related technology as tools for learners, teachers, and researchers. The AUC is for a vision of personal computers and related technology as the ‘bicycle for the mind’.
The AUC fosters a community of people who share those interests, and who develop that community, themselves, and each other, by sharing experience, insights, and knowledge.
If you do not share those aims and interests, AUC membership is not for you. For full individual membership, a condition of eligibility is that the individual does share those aims and interests.
The Executive Council
The Executive comprises the Chair, the Secretary, the Treasurer, and four general members. Each is elected for a term of two years by full members at an Annual General Meeting of the AUC.
The Executive controls and manages the AUC and may do things as it sees fit, in accordance with the Operating Policies. It may exercise all of the powers and functions of the AUC, except those specified in the Operating Policies as reserved for General Meetings.
General Meeting approval or ratification is required for:
- Setting membership fees
- Changing the Operating Policies
- Dissolving the AUC
A person is qualified to stand for election to the Executive if they have attended at least one past General Meeting and they are either a full individual member or a staff member of an organisational member. Nominations are called for at least four weeks before the General Meeting at which the election will occur and close two weeks before that meeting.
General Meetings
There are at least two, and usually only two, AUC General Meetings each calendar year. The second is the Annual General Meeting, at which elections are held. The first meeting each year usually considers and endorses the budget for the forthcoming financial year.
Organisational members may nominate a person to attend and vote on their behalf. Individual full members may attend and vote. Associate members may attend but not vote.
At least four weeks notice is given for each General Meeting. It is the responsibility of each member to keep the Secretary informed of the email address to be used in providing that notice.
General Meetings are usually held online. The usual practice is to schedule General Meetings on working days and at a time consistent with daytime attendance by people anywhere in Australia or New Zealand.
A full member desiring to bring any business before a General Meeting may give notice in writing of that business to the Chair, who will include that business in the next notice of General Meeting.
Funds
Payments from AUC funds are usually made by the Treasurer, on the approval of the Chair and the Treasurer. Funds maybe used only in pursuance of the AUC’s objectives, in such manner as the Executive determines. However, the use of AUC funds by the Executive is subject to any resolution passed by the association in General Meeting. By custom, an annual budget is adopted by resolution of a General Meeting; the budget guides and constrains the Executive.
Subsidiary Policies
This summary added April 2022 following ratification of the updated Operating Policies at the AUC General Meeting of March 25, 2022