foundation/governance/foundation-structure.md

.NET Foundation Structure

The .NET Foundation is a non-profit 501.(c)(6) organization supporting it's members. The Board of Directors of the .NET Foundation vote on any changes to the by-laws of the organization and also get the final vote on accepting new projects. Most of the hard work is done by the projects in the .NET Foundation, and they get a lot of control over how they want to operate. However the following groups help run the general business of the .NET Foundation day-to-day as volunteers:

• Board of Directors - Made up of Member nominated individuals along with a director elected to represent the interests of the general .NET Community, the Board of Directors are responsible for the management and oversight of the business and affairs of the .NET Foundation. They have the final say about setting .NET Foundation by-laws and accepting new projects based on the recommendations of the officers, advisory council and technical steering group. The full details of the roles and responsibilities of the directors are described in the .NET Foundation Articles of Incorporation and By-laws
• Officers & Staff - The .NET Foundation has a number of officers to help run the affairs of the foundation including a President, Vice-President, Executive Director, Company Secretary and Treasurer. The responsibilities of the officers are details in the .NET Foundation Articles of Incorporation and By-laws.
• Advisory Council - The advisory council advises the Board of Directors on matters of governance related to the running of projects in the foundation and also helps provide input to the board on what the .NET Foundation should be focussing on to help the .NET open source community. The council are made up of 9 individuals drawn from across the .NET Community (where no-one company can employ a majority of council members).
• Technical Steering Group - A working group of committers working on the core .NET projects to help co-ordinate how technical decisions are made and communicated between those projects. In addition to the core contributors to the projects, the Board of Directors may also nominate representatives from corporate entities who are actively contributing to the .NET development platform ecosystem.
• Project Leaders - Each project in the .NET Foundation has a nominated leader or leaders that represent the project to the .NET Foundation and are empowered to make decisions for the project on behalf of that project's community.
• Members - Companies and organizations may be invited to join the .NET Foundation if they are actively contributing to the development of the open source .NET ecosystem and are prepared to contribute to the running of the .NET Foundation. The members of the .NET Foundation decide who the board members are that control the strategic direction of the foundation.
• You - Your contribution to both the individual projects in the .NET Foundation and also by supporting open source .NET in general is essential to the community. Please get involved in any way that you can.