1. Purpose of the document
These Internal Rules explain how the Boavizta Association (from now on referred to as "the Association") is organised and run. They are created under the Association’s Articles and cannot override them. All members must follow these rules when they join or accept membership. For more information about the Association, please see the Charter, Manifesto and Vision.
These rules were prepared by the Association’s Board of Directors and adopted on December 13, 2024. They replace all previous versions.
2. Membership and commitments
To join and participate in the Association, new members are encouraged to follow these steps over time:
Watch the Association’s welcome video.
Fill out the individual introduction form.
Read and agree to the Charter, Manifesto, and Vision.
Join and pay the membership fee.
Make sure you can access the Association’s tools (such as instant messaging and the wiki).
Introduce yourself to other members in the “Bienvenue / Welcome” chat.
Attend regular meetings, as your schedule allows.
Get involved in one or more working groups.
When joining, the individual can choose to become a member as one of the following:
Individual Member – With Fee
Individual Member – Without Fee (for students and jobseekers)
Legal Entity – Organisation with fewer than 50 employees
Legal Entity – Organisation with 50 or more employees
Legal Entity – Fee Already Paid (for employees of organisations that have already paid the fee)
Membership fees must be renewed every year.
Corporate membership includes recognition of the organisation’s commitment on the Association’s website and materials. For corporate members, all employees of the organisation are welcome to participate in the Association’s activities.
Members are individuals or organisations officially admitted to the Association in accordance with its Articles and these Internal Rules.
For corporate groups, membership applies to both the parent company and its subsidiaries (as defined in Articles L 233-16 II and III of the French Commercial Code). Subsidiaries are not listed as separate members but are linked to their parent company. If a subsidiary wants to be listed as an independent member, it must join under the terms of the Articles of Association and these Internal Rules.
Members are encouraged to actively participate in the life and work of the Association. This can include sharing knowledge, contributing time for reflection or projects, providing visibility or networking opportunities, or offering resources.
The Association’s activities are primarily organised around meetings and working groups. Bi-monthly meetings bring all members together to discuss the Association’s progress and presentations. The Association’s projects are carried out through working groups, each of which holds dedicated meetings as needed.
3. Expulsion procedures
A member may be expelled for serious misconduct. Serious misconduct includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Actions that harm the Association’s interests;
Defamation or behaviour that contradicts the Association’s values;
Threats to the safety of the Association’s staff or members during Association activities (including moral or sexual harassment, sexist or sexual violence, physical violence, or verbal abuse that violates republican values);
Discrimination against the Association’s staff or members during Association activities (including sexism, racism, antisemitism, ableism, LGBTQIA+ phobia, psychophobia, ageism, or discrimination based on physical appearance);
Repeated violations of these Internal Rules.
At the request of the Association’s President, an administrative investigation will be launched following this recommended procedure:
Depending on the nature of the incident, all relevant parties will be heard by an investigation committee, appointed by the Board of Directors;
The President or Secretary-General will send a registered letter (or electronic registered letter) outlining the alleged misconduct or breach of the Articles of Association;
The member in question must fulfil their obligations as per the Articles of Association or provide an explanation for their actions. The letter must inform them of the potential sanctions;
The investigation committee will interview the member in person or remotely (via videoconference) within a reasonable timeframe;
If the member does not respond, the Association will send a registered letter (or electronic registered letter) notifying them of the sanction, up to and including expulsion, along with the reasons for it;
The investigation committee will submit its report to the Board of Directors;
The Board of Directors will vote by majority on the sanction, which may include expulsion from the Association.
This process does not prevent the Association from pursuing legal action if necessary.
4. Members’ personal data
As part of its activities, the Association collects the following personal data with the member’s consent:
Full name
Preferred first name
Email address
Phone number
LinkedIn profile link
Photo
Postcode
City
Country
Time zone
Preferred language for communication
Type of membership (individual or organisational)
Reasons for joining
Expectations of the Association
Planned contributions
Skills and expertise
Areas where support is needed
Projects to share with other members
Preferred method for sharing work
How they heard about the Association
Any additional comments
The data is processed to understand why members join the Association, help members get to know each other, facilitate collaboration on projects, identify relevant skills for tasks, and guide new members to the most suitable working groups.
The Association’s President is responsible for data processing, and a Data Protection Officer (DPO) has been appointed to oversee compliance.
Every member must strictly respect confidentiality regarding their employer and refrain from sharing information that is not clearly public.
Members can exercise their rights to access, correct, delete, or object to the use of their personal data at any time.
Personal data is stored for the entire duration of a member’s affiliation with the Association and is not transferred outside the European Union unless the transfer complies with Article 45 of the GDPR.
5. Creating a positive community
The Association aims to be a welcoming, respectful, and supportive environment that encourages collaboration and friendship. This is essential for an association where all members are volunteers and participate freely. To maintain this atmosphere, the Association encourages members to follow these guidelines:
Listen actively to others
Embrace diversity, stand against discrimination, and avoid judgment
Respect others when they speak, keep contributions concise, and avoid interrupting
Build trust
Feel free to express yourself without fear of censorship, and ensure others feel the same
Remain courteous
Ask for help when needed and offer help when you can
Prioritise the collective and shared goals over individual interests
Contribute to the shared resources and community
Help remind others of these practices and uphold them
6. Open and free deliverables as standard
The Association’s members are motivated by environmental urgency and the need for reliability in the articles, studies, methodologies, data, and tools they produce. They believe that addressing these challenges requires knowledge and tools to be developed, standardised, and widely shared, while also undergoing peer review. Open, transparent, and collaborative approaches are considered the best way to achieve these goals. As a result, the Association default to creating all deliverables as open source, open data, or open science. Licences used by the Association:
Articles, studies, and methodologies: CC BY-SA
Data: CC BY-SA
Software: AGPL-3.0 (preferred), though other licences may be selected when necessary.
For software, if a licence other than AGPL-3.0 is used, it must at least:
Permit commercial use of the source code/software
Require any modified versions to be shared under equivalent terms (copyleft)
Require users to credit the original source code to the Association
7. Publishing articles on behalf of the Association
Members of the Association are encouraged to document their thoughts and work, and publish them on the Association’s website or other relevant platforms.
To ensure thorough reflection and editorial consistency, substantive articles must be approved by 4 members, including 2 from the Board of Directors, within a 1-month period (this does not apply to short articles or social media posts). If no objections are raised by the end of this period, the article is considered approved.
Review process and tracking table: Link to Wiki, internal tool
8. Speaking on behalf of the Association
Just as with publishing articles, speaking publicly on behalf of the Association requires defining the context and content of the speech. This must be approved by 4 members, including 2 from the Board of Directors, within 1 month. If no objections are raised by the deadline, the speech is considered approved.
Speech proposal process and tracking table: Link to Wiki, internal tool
Members may speak in their personal capacity, but they cannot represent or commit the Association in such cases.
9. Decision-making and voting
Members have full freedom to make decisions about the working groups they participate in and are encouraged to ask for feedback from the community or the Board of Directors when they believe it is needed.
Decisions concerning the life and organisation of the Association are the responsibility of the Board of Directors. Members will be informed, consulted for their opinions, or invited to vote at a General Assembly, depending on the topic, as indicated in the Articles of Association, or, if not specified, as determined by the Board of Directors.
10. Expenses
The Board of Directors is responsible to the members for all expenses made and, as required by the Articles of Association, provides an annual report during the Ordinary General Assembly. A dedicated policy for funding and reimbursing expenses on behalf of the Association has been established and is available here.
11. Prohibition of commercial promotion or commercial appropriation
Since 2020, the Association has brought together ober 200 individuals from a wide range of organisations, including some that compete with one another, yet deeply aware of environmental urgencies.
The Association aims to:
Maintain a peaceful and protected environment over time
Keep enabling smooth, effective, and dynamic collaboration among members and their organisations, even when they compete outside the Association
Ensure fairness and neutrality toward all members
To achieve this, within the Association’s activities (whether in meetings, internal or external events, materials, methodologies, data, tools, discussions, or other contexts) members are expected to:
Respect the Association’s values (including advancing the state of the art, serving the public interest, sharing knowledge, building trust, and cooperating) and honor the community’s work since its founding.
Represent only the Association, its mission, and values, actively distancing themselves as much as necessary from their organisation’s interests.
Strictly avoid from commercially promoting their organisation’s or company's products or services and must always prioritise the community’s interests.
Strictly avoid misusing or taking ownership of the Association’s deliverables or opportunities, such as knowledge, tools, content, data, contacts, or collaborations, for the benefit of their own organisation or company.
Commercial discussions and collaborations between members or with external contacts met through the Association are permitted, but must remain separate from the Association’s activities.
Allowed (non-exhaustive examples):
During a bi-monthly or external Association meeting: Briefly introducing your organisation/role before presenting meaningful work that advances the state of the art.
In an external meeting outside the Association: Using accurate and unmodified Association content to frame a client issue or applying Association tools (while respecting licences) to address a client need.
Prohibited (non-exhaustive examples):
During a bi-monthly or external Association meeting:
Promoting your organisation, role, products, or services in a commercial or disproportionate way compared to the value of the content or work that contributes little to advancing the field (state of the art).
Including or strongly linking commercial elements to Association materials.
Using data collected for the Association (such as emails or responses from a working group survey) for commercial or marketing purposes of one's own organisation or company.
Redirecting an opportunity intended for the Association to your own organisation or company.
In an external meeting outside the Association:
Rebranding or improperly claiming ownership of the Association’s content or tools.
Distorting or misrepresenting Association’s content or tools.
Failing to credit the source or respect licences.
Hosting Association content behind a contact/data collection form or a paywall.
12. Engaging external parties for working groups, data collection, analysis, and open data publications
The Association regularly reaches out to external stakeholders as part of its working groups to collect data, conduct analyses, produce datasets, and share findings, either with respondents, the public, or the academic community.
In this context, working group leaders must:
Inform respondents that:
Individual data will only be used by Boavizta for a specific project and limited duration,
Data will remain anonymous, with an optional field for contact details if respondents wish to be recontacted.
Clarify that aggregated, anonymized data may be stored indefinitely and published as open data, provided the number of respondents ensures effective anonymization and prevents reverse engineering of results.
Store data in the Association’s databases, in compliance with GDPR requirements.
13. Terms for commercial use of deliverables
Deliverables and content produced by the Association may be used outside the Association, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes. In all cases, when using the Association’s deliverables, it is mandatory to:
Clearly attribute the origin of these deliverables to end recipients or clients,
Preserve the integrity of the deliverables, and
Comply with the applicable licence.
A member of the Association must clearly disclose which parts of their work come from Boavizta’s deliverables and emphasize their open nature.
For specific rules governing the commercial or non-commercial use of the Association’s deliverables, refer to the section: "Open and free deliverables as standard".
14. Communication by members on behalf of their organisation or company
Would you like to mention your membership in the Association? You may state that you are a "member of Boavizta" and use the dedicated logo (link to google drive).
Have you conducted assessments using Boavizta’s data or methodologies, or developed a tool that incorporates the Association’s data, methods, or tools, and wish to communicate about them? We encourage you to present your work to the community in advance. This allows for a light peer review and helps strengthen the robustness of your approach. Regardless of the level of community review, please avoid implying that Boavizta is a co-contractor in your assessment or tool development. The Association lacks the resources to provide in-depth review and cannot be held responsible for any incorrect use or results.
Just as with publishing articles on behalf of the Association, using the official logo of Boavizta Association (not the "member of Boavizta" logo) requires you to specify the context and details of its intended use and obtain validation from 4 members, including 2 from the Board of Directors, within a one-month period; if no objections are raised by the end of this period, your request is considered approved.
15. Boavizta’s position on paid project solicitations
The Association is not structured to take on paid assignments, nor does it intend to compete with its own members or participate in selecting service providers. However, external organizations sometimes reach out to Boavizta for support on methodologies, data, tools, or other resources as part of paid projects.
When faced with such requests, the Association’s procedure is to redirect the organization to the "Member Organisations" page on its website, recommend that they reach out directly to relevant members through independent channels (rather than Boavizta’s official platforms), and encourage them to share the outcomes of their collaboration back to the commons once the project is complete.