1. to see if a project holds any weight in actually working
2. if they do have weight, to tweak and correct things to become better
so heres some points.
1 there does not need to be decisions made by a board
2 there does not need to be a board at all
3 there does not need to be membership fee's
so imagine this
a 'jobs website
where people/businesses can list their goals/tasks they want to achieve. and have a bounty (their costs). then anyone and everyone can put money into that listing, and when filled that person/business carries out their task
imagine this
"bitpay: hold an actual meeting with amazon and show them how to integrate bitcoin: costs=plane ticket+hotel(1BTC)"
"Userxy: get 3 merchants in my town to accept bitcoin: costs=3hours labour(0.1btc)"
"AndreasA: to speak at a government hearing about bitcoin: cost=plane ticket+hotel(1BTC)"
this way people are not paid wages for sitting on their asses, and each task can be individually funded, instead of there being losers or winners.
also it stops vote rigging as the only time these people get paid is by pople that want them to do something. thus if they put their own money in they are simply paying themselves. which is not going to work well compared to 'buying votes'
so instead of putting in large fee's to be a member, people save this money and use it to pay for actual tasks and goals to be filled. this stops the corruption of board members getting paid simply for owning a website and appearing to be an authority
That is an interesting idea. I like the fact of funding bounties, but one the problems that arises is time/delay. For example your 3rd example of speaking to the goverment most likely at a hearing of some sorta. This could take a week to fund and then event could be in 3 days. The main reason think some sort of board is needed is because if/when a goverment comes and requests someone to speak, they need someone to go to to do the request. Wheater this just means having a head of the foundation who simply talks to goverment and acts as the face of the foundation or someone who just controls the domain this is what would be needed.
As for a member ship fee, I thought about this alot and think a a expensive fee is dumb. I think just a small fee that costs 1-10$ just so that members know they paid to be members. The foundation would get most of its money via sites joining the paying a fee to join and voting. My idea of voting is that each address that contains btc greater then X prior to the announcement of voting can vote once in the election. Memebers who pay would get access to special voting and a physical forum to talk.