A new and improved Science Borealis: members, bylaws, and sponsorship

Sarah Boon, Editorial Manager

Last Thursday, February 26th, marked an important milestone for Science Borealis, as we held our first Members’ Meeting via conference call.

You’ll recall back in November we announced our incorporation as a non-profit organization, and introduced you to our new Board of Directors. Along with non-profit status came a whole raft of administrative changes, which also required that we define our membership and sort out some bylaws.

We’ve divided our membership into two groups: voting and non-voting. Voting members include the founding team members and the editorial team (here and here), all of whom are actively involved in the day-to-day workings of Science Borealis. Non-voting members include our bloggers, who sign up and have their feeds aggregated through the site, but are not involved in our actual operations. You can read a more technical description of our membership groups here.

We’ve also put bylaws in place to ensure that we act in an appropriate manner for a non-profit, in terms of adhering to federal laws, managing money correctly, and being accountable to our membership. For more details on our bylaws, click here.

One of those bylaws requires that we keep all of our membership (voting and non-voting) informed of our activities. So in the next few months we’ll be launching a newsletter! You can sign up for the newsletter via our homepage, and will receive updates on what’s happening at Science Borealis and with science communication and science in Canada.

We are now also able to accept donations and sponsors, and have added links to these activities on our webpage. We welcome funding to help support our ongoing activities to build the Canadian science communication community and increase the profile of science in Canadian policy, education, media, and with the public. Though we rely heavily on a large and dedicated team of volunteers, your donation or sponsorship helps fund continued maintenance and updates of our website, new activities to engage science communicators across the country, and subsidizes some of our technical and administrative costs.

Finally, we’ll be offering advertising on our website for eligible activities, such as conferences and other science or science communication-related events. You’ll notice we alreadyhave our first ad , promoting DNA Day which is supported by Genome Alberta and Let’s Talk Science. Please contact our Business Development team for rates and other information.

Don’t forget our Science Borealis t-shirts – going fast and featuring our unique logo designed by Charles Bourne.

Here’s to a bright future for Canada’s science blog aggregator!