It should say "suggest members", I've updated the diagramm. I've made this up as an addition to self-nominations so that it may lead to more candidates. Suggestions can of course be made any time in either direction, while duties/tasks indeed have to be defined and assigned to members, commitees or groups. More below.

This was, sorry, bullsh*t. I've corrected above post accordingly, but for the record it should be mentioned again: all active members (~council) accept new ones basically by simple majority. KDE e.V. handles it this way and I put up for your consideration:

I think I made up my preference and suggest a modified KDE e.V. model:

This of course, is no official HiFo statement or recommendation, just my personal.
I'm sure this would put immediate relief to the issue of chronic shortage of candidates for thr relevant positions. With some dozens or so members who pay a minimal regular fee, like Joerg pointed out, we'd be able to gather at least the minimum of funds that's needed to keep things running. OTOH, I dislike the circumstance that those people who already invest their time and energy are supposed to addionally invest money. But there's flexibility for that too. Exceptions can be made, other contributions may count too and after all, our annual expenses are quite low, again thanks to IPHH.

Those who fear the loss of democracy from ground up (community) - this is a call for your engagement. Segregation at one end comes with the benefit of secured inclusion on the other end. And when I look at the number of voters for recent elections which were around ~100 at best, this can't really be seen as a serious issue. The benefits clearly outweigh the downsides, IMHO.
With this modell, all active members effectively get council rights. They can get involved in every decision if they desire so. Current tasks assigned to council may be handled together by all or by an assigned group, e.g. for sysadmins, mods, voting procedure, Dev groups, you name it. They may even assign extraordinary members to their group at their own discretion if desired. The result will hopefully be to have all the devoted people condensed in a position where their voice will be heard and achievements to the avail of community at large can be accomplished easier after all.

As mentioned earlier, I encourage the idea of a supporter membership and I'd even allow them voting rights as long as they're natural persons and their membership is not obviously conflicting because of third party interests.
And as life shows, the sh*t tends to happen at times... So I also encourage the idea to establish an arbitrating body, it's simply good practice for any Verein, just in case. For this purpose a honorary membership may be established that shall be awarded to select people that would qualify them for the arbitrating body. They may have voting rights in BoD-elections or not, but should be free of fees. If trouble between board and any other party within or without the foundation occurs, this commitee is there to step in and planish things without the need to go all the way through courts, where possible. I'm thinking of guys like former councilors, admins, mods...

This is nothing less than a revolution in regards to the bylaws we have now. But this move to new grounds provides chances for improvement and great opportunitys, we just have to make use of them. So PLEASE everybody share your thoughts on this and advise how to proceed.
(Yes, you too, Dave999, on topic please!)

This issue obviously is blocker for forming the bylaws and we want to make sure the e.V. is set up and the transition incl. handing over current assets is done by the end of march at the latest. As soon as we agree to a principal model, I will present more in-depth options and with some help in the german thread I hopefully will be able to pesent a proper english translation of the bylaws and additional regulations I'm actually drafting.

If you do care about community, please share your comments here or shoot a mail at me. If you're asking "Is this really nescessary?" or "Why Germany?"- well, since woody14619 left the board, we're simply lacking personell to handle core things like bank matters, filing tax papers and so on. Loosing him basically means loosing the US foundation as I see it. At least there's not much I could do about it - except supporting this transformation. And with some support by council and community, this probably is the best thing HiFo ever could do for community so far. Heck, this topic might even make it for #maemo-meeting one day.

Sorry for the wall of text.
And by the way - with the contract signed, we may as well oficially be maemo e.V.