A governing document is usually written to cover money, meetings and membership. It rarely mentions a website, a domain or a social media account by name, because most were drafted before those things existed. What it says about property, officers and records still applies to them, and a handful of clauses end up doing most of the work.

Property and assets

Most governing documents include a clause saying that the organisation's property belongs to the organisation. A domain name and the account it sits in are property in this sense, even though the clause was written with equipment or funds in mind. Where the clause exists, it is the strongest argument for treating a domain registered in someone's personal name as something that should be transferred back, whatever the registrant field (the name recorded at the registry as the domain's owner) currently shows.

Officers and their powers

The section on officers usually says who can sign cheques, enter contracts or act on the organisation's behalf. Registrars and hosting providers ask the same kind of question when someone tries to make a change: who is authorised to give this instruction? A governing document that names the officers who can act, and says so clearly, gives a committee something to point to when a registrar's support team asks for proof.

Custody of records

Older documents often require the secretary or treasurer to hold the organisation's records and hand them over at the end of their term. Login details for a domain account, a website's admin panel or a mailing list are records in every sense that matters, even where the clause was written with paper minute books in mind. A committee that reads the custody clause this way has a basis for asking a departing officer to hand over access.

Dissolution

The clause on winding up usually says what happens to funds and physical assets if the organisation closes. It rarely says anything about a domain or a website, which is why this is the clause most committees find has nothing useful to say when a digital asset is actually at stake.

A governing document sets out who can act for the organisation and how decisions get made. It was written to cover officers, meetings, money and membership. It usually says more than they think.

Who has authority to act

A domain, a hosting account or a set of social media logins is an asset the organisation controls, even though nobody wrote it down as one. The governing document already answers the question that matters when something needs changing: who has the authority to instruct a registrar (the company a domain is registered through), sign up to a new service, or approve spending on renewal fees. That is usually the same clause that lets an officer sign a cheque or authorise a payment. If the document ties spending authority to a named officer, that officer, and not whoever happens to be good with computers, is the one who should be making these decisions.

Who the assets belong to

Most governing documents describe the organisation as continuing regardless of who currently holds office, which is the whole point of having one. A domain registered in a departing volunteer's own name sits awkwardly against that principle: the organisation is meant to carry on, but the asset is recorded against a person who has left. The governing document does not fix this by itself.

What counts as a decision the committee made

Committees minute decisions about money, events and membership as a matter of habit. A decision to set up a website, choose a supplier or hand someone the login details rarely gets the same treatment, so there is often no record of who was authorised to do it or when. The governing document's rules on quorum and minuting apply to these decisions exactly as they apply to any other, whether or not the committee at the time thought of the website as that kind of decision.