How RoseBank Foundation is run, on the public record.

Legal form

RoseBank Foundation is being incorporated as a Section 8 not-for-profit company under the Indian Companies Act, 2013. A Section 8 company is the legal form most appropriate to an organisation that promotes objects of public benefit and reinvests its surplus into its mission rather than distributing it as profit.

Until incorporation is complete, RoseBank Foundation operates as an unincorporated founding initiative convened by Darshan Mutha. Donations and formal engagements are accepted only after the Section 8 is in place.

Registration status

Section 8 incorporation: application in preparation
Registered office: Chennai (to be confirmed at incorporation)

Tax registrations

12A and 80G registrations will be applied for as soon as the Section 8 is constituted. Until granted, RoseBank Foundation does not represent itself as a tax-exempt or 80G-eligible recipient.

FCRA

FCRA readiness is being planned for after the first audit cycle, in line with the standard sequencing for new Section 8 entities. RoseBank Foundation will not solicit or accept foreign contributions until FCRA registration is in place.

Board and governance

The founding board is being convened now and will be published here in full as soon as incorporation is complete. The intended structure:

• A small founding board (intended to be three to five directors) responsible for the organisation as a whole.
• An advisory council drawn from non-profit governance, education policy, and senior Montessori practice.
• A standards body — separate from the membership-growth function — that owns the Mark, the practice rubric, and the assessor pool. Structural independence between the standards body and the network is deliberate: the people who set the bar are not the same people whose targets depend on more members.

Policies

The following policies are in preparation and will be published in full once adopted by the founding board:

• Memorandum and Articles of Association (Section 8)
• Conflict-of-interest policy — drafted, awaiting board adoption. Its substance on the founder’s own school is summarised below and will not change on adoption.
• Child protection and safeguarding policy (applies to the Foundation’s own activity and is a baseline expectation of member schools)
• Whistleblower / grievance policy
• Anti-bribery and anti-corruption policy
• Financial controls and audit policy
• Privacy and data-protection policy (see also Privacy)

Financial transparency

As an organisation in formation, RoseBank Foundation does not yet have audited financials. Once the Section 8 is incorporated and the first financial year closes, audited accounts will be published on this page each year, along with a short narrative report on programme activity and outcomes.

Accountability for the founder’s own school

Kidoz Montessori, the AMI-affiliated Children’s House run by Darshan Mutha in Chennai, intends to join The Montessori Collective as a founder member. It will be observed against the Collective’s Mark on the same terms as every later applicant, with no founder exemption. This is a deliberate decision, not a courtesy — an accreditation standard that exempts its own makers is not a standard.

That is a standing conflict of interest, and we would rather name it here than have someone find it. It is the Foundation’s most material and most permanent one. It is recorded on the register of interests from the first day the register exists, and it is managed as follows:

• Full recusal. Darshan Mutha takes no part in any board, committee, or standards decision on the accreditation, re-verification, conditions, suspension, or marketing treatment of Kidoz Montessori. He does not vote, is not counted in the quorum for that item, and leaves the discussion.
• The same assessors, the same rubric. Kidoz is observed by the same independent assessors as every later applicant, against the same published practice rubric, on an unannounced visit.
• The same consequence. If the Children’s House does not meet the standard, the outcome is the outcome. There is no informal benefit of the doubt available to it that is not available to everyone else.
• Published, not merely minuted. Each recusal is recorded here, on this page, rather than resting in a minute book nobody outside the board reads.

The same discipline applies more widely. Several people convening the Collective hold more than one role — sourcing founding schools, teaching on the incubator faculty, and sitting on the board. Nobody who recruited or taught a school may also sit in judgement of it. The chair of the accreditation panel is therefore drawn from outside the board, outside the faculty, and outside the team that sources the cohort. That appointment is open, and the first accreditation will not be issued before it is filled.