Constitution and governance
What the Association is
A family house, constituted as an association of makers, owned by nobody and answerable to its Associates, its keepers and, for three of its pieces, the Turing Registry.
Constitution
The Rosen Association was constituted at Seattle on 14 March 1911 as an unincorporated association of makers under the Articles signed that evening. It was incorporated in 1952 as a nonprofit mutual corporation under the laws of the State of Washington, which allowed it to keep its form, its Articles and its name, and to own the House outright. It has no shares and no shareholders. Its members are its Associates, and its surplus, when it has one, goes to the reserve.
Associates
There are forty-one Associates. Each is a maker elected for life by the Associates already living, from among those who have worked at the bench of the house, usually after twenty years or more. A maker is proposed by three Associates and submits a piece of their own to the Council, which votes in March. The house has elected 214 Associates since 1911.
The President and the Court
The Associates elect a President from among themselves every seventh March. The President is assisted by a Court of five directors: four appointed by the President with the Council’s consent, and one elected by the Associates from among themselves. Officers of the house, among them the Registrar, the General Counsel and the directors of the Penfield division, Keeper Services and the Recall Office, are appointed by the Court. Leadership
There have been seventeen presidential elections. Each has been won by a Rosen. The house is aware that this is unusual for an association, and has asked the Associates on several occasions whether they would like to consider another candidate. They have so far declined to propose one.
Keepers
A person who owns a Rosen piece is its keeper, a word the house prefers because it describes what it hopes the person will do. Registered keepers are correspondent members of the Association. They do not vote, and they receive every notice that concerns their piece, servicing for the life of the piece and an answer to every letter within the week. There are 87,316 registered keepers, every keeper of a Penfield instrument among them. Register as a keeper
The reserve and the accounts
Article VIII requires the house to keep a reserve sufficient to service every piece it has made for twenty-five years without another sale. The Treasurer tests the reserve each December, and it has met the test every year since 1946. It was drawn upon, as intended, to pay for the Nexus-6 recall, and it will pay for any refunds of the Penfield Mk IV.
| Income | $251.8 million |
|---|---|
| of which from the Penfield Mk IV | $223.4 million |
| of which from servicing and restoration | $11.4 million |
| Expenditure | $236.0 million |
| of which on the Nexus-6 recall | $61.7 million |
| Reserve at 31 December 2025 | $884.0 million |
| Reserve required under Article VIII | $612.5 million |
The Turing Registry and Frothly
The Association is the operator of record for three systems on the Turing Registry: the Nexus-6 (TR-09911, revoked), the Rosen Owl (TR-10215, active) and the Penfield Mk IV (TR-11215, suspended). Eldon Rosen is the named human contact for each.
The house supports Frothly’s work. Frothly, the independent research institute that operates the Registry, counts the Association among the institutions it works with, as a licensee of the Registry since 2021, and the house has supported its programs since. It holds no seat on Frothly’s board and asks for none; its filings are judged exactly as anyone else’s are, which is the point of a register. The Association’s filings on the register
Rachael Rosen, a director of the Association, serves on the board of Frothly in a personal capacity. Under Frothly’s rules she takes no part in its discussion of any matter concerning the Association. Frothly’s board