In November 2025 I reported my intentions of turning Rogue Scholar into a German non-profit organization, and the steps needed for that. The first step (needed by German law) is at least seven founding members and I am asking for your support.
In the November 2025 post I listed the following main steps to formally register a German non-profit:
- at least seven founding members,
- drafting bylaws (Satzung),
- founding general assembly with members approving the bylaws and electing a founding board,
- registration at a local court,
- registration for charitable status with the tax authorities.
This boils down to the following: meet in person with at least seven people, discuss and approve the bylaws, elect a founding board, and sign the bylaws in front of a notary. This will happen in Berlin with the tentative date of December 9. Three months are needed to draft the statutes, coordinate with a notary and tax authorities, and organize venue, travel and other logistics.
German law no longer requires the General Assembly to be held in person, but seven people signing the bylaws is still required, so meeting in person simplifies the process. German is the official language of the bylaws, but the General Assembly will be held in English and remote participation will be possible. I don't forsee any controversial discussions, and promotion of science and research is one of the legally recognized charitable purposes for a German non-profit.
Every natural person or organization can become a member. The membership fees will be set in fee regulations, but importantly membership is about governance of the non-profit organization, and will not be required for a science blog to be archived by Rogue Scholar.
The Rogue Scholar science blog archive has reached two important milestones this week, so the timing is right to do the next step and launch a non-profit organization:
- with the integration of blog post parsing, all of the core Rogue Scholar infrastructure now runs on the open source InvenioRDM repository platform,
- the 200th science blog joined Rogue Scholar with 54,694 blog posts archived as of today.
The feature image of this post is the famous photograph of the 29 attendees of the fifth Solvay Conference of Physics in October 2027. The conference contributed extraordinarily to the clarification of the physical foundations of the quantum theory (Heisenberg). Diversity was still a huge problem, and Marie Curie was the only woman attending.
Please reach out via Slack, email, Mastodon, or Bluesky if you want to become a founding Rogue Scholar member, or have any questions or comments.
References
- Fenner, M. (2025, November 3). Rogue Scholar is becoming a German Non-Profit Organization. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/rftfk-qv692
- Fenner, M. (2026, August 25). Rogue Scholar blog post archiving becomes an InvenioRDM module. Front Matter. https://doi.org/10.53731/kv08z-vhj21
- Ross, N. (2025, May 20). Over 700 and $1.7 billion in previously undisclosed grant terminations published by NIH. Grant Witness. https://doi.org/10.59350/grf7r-jft23
