A Hunter

Thank you so very much! This is exactly what I needed.

Hi all, I've been doing some research on how officer and committee reports are actually supposed to be structured and presented, and I have a few questions. I am gathering that as Chair I can require the reports to be written, but I'm not sure on the extent of it or if I can require it in advance. We just recently switched to having all reports written up (which I'm now gathering should have been the case all along), and I'm hitting a lot of resistance to it from some. For example, I requested well in advance and with a reminder early this morning that all reports be submitted by noon today but only one of the officers or committees have submitted anything. The goal was to have them in advance so that it could be sent ahead of the meeting with the minutes for people to review and hopefully speed up meetings. We've previously used agendas (improperly I've learned, but in the format with an Order of Business), but I'm going with a written out Order of Business instead since we've never approved the agendas during the meeting. I've seen references to the Chair knowing in advance if there is a report and being able to skip over those with none. If I've called for reports and received none, can I just mark those as no report? If so and using the situation as above, can I then "skip over" their report slot in the order of business even if they want to report something at that time during the meeting? Essentially I'm looking for ways of enforcing the rules, and unfortunately it's not happening with constant reminders. I need some advice on how to handle this without going out of bounds. Also, if there is no action being recommended and no committee meeting was held what should be permissible in a "committee report"? I have a Chair who will not call the committee for a meeting and is not a member of our Executive Board (just reports to it), but she likes to use that report slot as a platform to just put forward her own ideas as if it were from the committee. I've had several issues with this person and is a big reason why I am switching to full enforcement of RONR even though we are below the size threshold for formal rules. Again, I want to make sure I'm doing as much as I can to reign things in without crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed. So in short: Can I require reports be submitted in writing prior to the meeting? If yes, can I prevent people from bypassing that and simply bringing it to the meeting itself? What exactly should be in a committee or officer report if no action/recommendations are present or needed? Thanks in advance!