Voting Members

Churches and church-related organisations that meet ALL of the following four (1-4) criteria are eligible to apply for voting membership in the ACT Alliance

1. Churches and church-related organisations seeking membership in the ACT Alliance shall be either:

• a member church of the World Council of Churches (WCC) or The Lutheran World Federation (LWF), or
• a specialised ministry for humanitarian assistance, advocacy and/or development of a member church (if it is constituted as a separate legal entity), or
• an organisation affiliated with at least one member church of the WCC through governance; meaning as having one or more WCC member churches on their governance body; i.e. a person delegated by that member church as their representative and not an individual member of a church who is serving in a personal capacity, or
• International and national mission organisations belonging to a member church or churches of the WCC and/or LWF who are engaged in development, advocacy and/or humanitarian assistance and who do not use these programmes to further a particular religious or political partisan standpoint.

An exception may be made for:

• an organisation which was previously part of a member organisation but has become independent (such applications must come with the endorsement of the member organisation), or
• a church or an ecumenical organization that has had a long historical programmatic working relationship with the WCC and/or a regional ecumenical organisation, referring to the All Africa Conference of Churches, the Christian Conference of Asia, Consejo Latinoamericano de Iglesias (CLAI), the Conference of European Churches, the Conference of Caribbean Churches, the Middle East Council of Churches, the Pacific Conference of Churches,
  or
• an ecumenical organisation from a country where there are no member churches of either the WCC or LWF.

2. The primary mandate of church-related organisations must be to work in the area of humanitarian assistance, advocacy and/or development.
3. The church or church-related organisation must have a commitment to high quality development, advocacy and/ or humanitarian assistance activities.
4. The church or church-related organisation should be either a national, regional, international or global organisation

Current ACT Alliance voting members

Observer Members

The following types of organisations may also apply for observer status within the ACT Alliance:

1. 1. Regional ecumenical organisations and national council of churches which do not have their own development, advocacy or humanitarian assistance programmes (who therefore do not qualify to be voting members), but who wish to work closely with the alliance.
   2. Global ecumenical bodies who wish to work closely with the alliance.

ACT Alliance currently has two observer members:

World Student Christian Federation (WSCF)
Conference of European Churches (CEC)

Note for guidance

1. 1. 1. Where a church has its own department or specialised ministry for humanitarian assistance and/or development and/or advocacy, it is preferred that the department or ministry will represent the Church in the ACT Alliance.
      2. If an organisation meets the membership criteria, they must apply for membership status and cannot apply for observer status. The observer status is restricted to those organisations outlined above.

ACT Membership Strategy
ACT Membership Engagement Model
ACT Alliance Member Application Process
Membership Application Information
Membership Agreement
Observer Agreement