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contemporary parliamentary practices


Kim Goldsworthy

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Questions on the future editions.

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How does the RONR authorship team verify what parliamentary practices are modern, prevalent, i.e., "common"?

Likewise, ". . . are obsolete, no longer prevalent -- uncommon?

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Does the authorship team poll nonprofit organizations, asking them how nonprofit organizations execute certain parliamentary behaviors?

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Where there is a choice to be made, how does the choice get made to go with one practice over the other practices out there?

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Example:

I see organizations having the Treasurers Report first, or at least earlier than what The Book prescribes.

(I assume the assembly wants to know how much money they have left, before they add more money to ongoing projects.)

So -- When will RONR publish this practice as a "common" practice?

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4 hours ago, Kim Goldsworthy said:

Questions on the future editions.

***

How does the RONR authorship team verify what parliamentary practices are modern, prevalent, i.e., "common"?

Likewise, ". . . are obsolete, no longer prevalent -- uncommon?

***

Does the authorship team poll nonprofit organizations, asking them how nonprofit organizations execute certain parliamentary behaviors?

***

Where there is a choice to be made, how does the choice get made to go with one practice over the other practices out there?

***

Example:

I see organizations having the Treasurers Report first, or at least earlier than what The Book prescribes.

(I assume the assembly wants to know how much money they have left, before they add more money to ongoing projects.)

So -- When will RONR publish this practice as a "common" practice?

Oh, fear not. I'm sure that members of the authorship team will consult with you just as soon as they deem it necessary to do so.  :)

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18 hours ago, Kim Goldsworthy said:

I see organizations having the Treasurers Report first, or at least earlier than what The Book prescribes.

(I assume the assembly wants to know how much money they have left, before they add more money to ongoing projects.)

So -- When will RONR publish this practice as a "common" practice?

You see organizations that receive the Treasurer's Report before the reading and approval of the minutes?

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So, far, the order the organizations tend to do it is:

   • First, minutes.

   • Second, Treasurer's report.

   • Third, the Executive Director's report.

(I think this is significant. I have never seen this inversion of order until Sarbanes-Oxley came into existence. Is this a coincidence? Or was the trigger to this new order the recession of 2008, when all nonprofit organizations were dropping members, and cutting budgets drastically. I did not see this inversion for the first 15 years or so of my parliamentary practice. Surely, something happened which pushed nonprofit organizations, within the span of 2 or 3 years, to start doing this.)

   • Fourth, officers reports, and committee reports, i.e., they revert to semi-"normal" Robertian order.

***

The emphasis I am picking up is that they won't know how to budget or fund any ongoing project until they know the amount of money still uncommitted.

And, not surprisingly, the Executive Director's report is the heaviest report. The Exec.Dir. report lists dozens of projects.

I have not charted the instances in a log, but in retrospect, I wish I would have logged each occurrence.

In one instance, one organization does this every meeting.

In another instance, the inversion is only for the sake of the convention, the annual meeting.

Very curious.

I am open to hear from other parliamentarians who have seen this inversion. Surely I am not unique in seeing this inversion repeat, after so many consecutive years of never seeing it, 25 years ago.

Thus my question to the Robert's Rules Association Q-and-A Forum.

Thus my observation: "The common parliamentary law is evolving, and has changed since 1876."

Computers; telephones; P.A. systems; microphones; videos; overhead projectors; etc., are all technologies which could not have influenced the original author, Henry Martyn Robert, in compiling contemporary practices. What was contemporary in 1876 is not contemporary 140 years since the First Edition of Robert's Rules of Order.

 

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