Jump to content
The Official RONR Q & A Forums

R.W.

Members
  • Posts

    18
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About R.W.

  • Birthday 10/05/1969

Profile Information

  • Location:
    Montreal
  • Interests
    cake decorating, reading, I.T.

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

R.W.'s Achievements

  1. I'm trying to wrap my head around something and want to do things in a proper way. Our annual congregational meeting is on sunday afternoon. Last night I had a couple of bizarre requests dropped into my lap by council. The one I want to write about here is postponing part of the meeting to allow folks to study the financials, which will only be ready at the very last minute. My qns are about how to handle the postponed part of the meeting. Our bylaws state that: -- two of the purposes of the annual meeting is "considering and making a decision on the draft annual budget" and to elect new officers -- elected officials hold office "from the moment immediately following the adjournment of the meeting at which he or she was elected .... until the next Congregational Meeting at which [title is] appointed or elected. " In particular the Secretary of the Congregation "holds office until the next annual meeting." -- there is no provision in the bylaws for breaking the annual meeting into two parts -- notice of a cong meeting requires a minimum of two full Sundays prior to the meeting. Council wants to have the financial discussion the following Sunday. Some feel that announcing from the pulpit is sufficient, I prefer a more thorough approach with a packet (cover letter, agenda, supporting documents, etc.) by email or postal mail. In the agenda I have already sent out, financials are about 2/3 of the way in (estimated: 30 minutes), followed by a motion re auditors, then elections, then a second motion suggested earlier, then motions from the floor. (My time estimate not including a break is 3 hours 42 minutes and there is now another meeting booked into the space at 3 hours 30 minutes. There are required elements that need to take place, and I encourage folks to speak up and interact. Time estimates are not circulated to the masses.) Here are my questions: -- There is currently no date/time for the postponed part of the meeting. I anticipate squabbles about who can and cannot attend on a proposed date. Can I ask a select few (e.g. finance, tech, social events, etc.) to put their heads together for 5 minutes (either immediately before the meeting or at the financial section) and agree on a date for all of us? -- Can changes be made the the agenda of the postponed section? If this postponement goes ahead I want to postpone just the financial discussion and [attempt to] finish the rest of the meeting. I object to breaking up the meeting into two parts simply because "it's too long". -- Do I need to read minutes when we reconvene? For the entire meeting or just for the financial section? -- Do last year's elected officials still hold office till the end of the postponed period? In particular for two roles: Director of finance (no one nominated for next year) and secretary of the congregation (new person acclaimed at the moment). Currently I seem to be continuing as chair of cong. -- If the motion to postpone is lost, does that mean we must move to approve the budget then and there? I am anticipating several meltdowns especially by the current secretary of the cong, who apparently had never taken minutes until 3 weeks ago and has been trying to redefine her responsibilities on the fly. (example: insisting that taking attendance is not part of minutes) Your kind thoughts are much appreciated. I feel manipulated.
  2. As requested by multiple folks. Here, committees are officially called Ministries: Nominations Ministry. Responsibility. The Nominations Ministry shall have the responsibility to recommend people who are eligible, suitable, and willing to serve in positions in the Congregation. [...] Freedom to Nominate from the Floor. While the Nominations Ministry can recommend one or more congregants to any position, the Congregation retains the right to nominate suitable candidates from the floor at the Congregational Meeting when elections will be held. Each person nominated from the floor must be present at the meeting, be eligible to hold the office in question, and accept the nomination for the position. Duties and responsibilities for all the various positions are described elsewhere in the bylaws. The Nominations Ministry was established in December 2021 and first used to gather candidates for the 2022 ACM. Mr. Unsuitable nominated himself for 3 roles. For 2 of the 3 roles, he was up against well-established candidates and soundly defeated. For the 3rd role that was uncontested, Mr. Unsuitable was deemed such because he does not attend church (physically or virtually) , and he has been a no-show at volunteering in the past (e.g. day camp). I don't know his story, those that know him (or of him) do not have nice things to say. Yes our bylaws (we call them the Handbook) are flawed and in need of a(nother) overhaul. A project for the coming year. One thing we need to look at is that directors and ministry leaders cannot serve more than 5 consecutive terms -- which means unless something changes a large chunk of the governing body must step down next year. p.s. We use Bourinot's Rules, not Robert's Rules, but AFAIK there is no forum to discuss Bourinot's Rules so I have been following along with you folks.
  3. The nominating committee chose not to deliver a traditional report. I do not remember the reason. Instead they chose to offer some general remarks about the election process and the call for volunteers. Then I proceeded to nominations from the floor -- because my agenda and slides had been structured around a "regular" nomination report. Someone did point out they couldn't nominate from the floor without knowing who was already nominated, so we may have gone through the list anyways -- again I do not remember. The unsuitable person was not in attendance, so could not have been re-nominated from the floor. This year, I have asked (nicely) for a traditional recitation of the nominees. And the unsuitable person has already been informed that he is not suitable for any position. Let's hope we actually get some confirmed nominees -- volunteer apathy is pretty rampant these days.
  4. We had that situation last year. We have a Nominations Committee (3 people including myself) to gather nominations to elect into 22 roles. we judged one self-nominated person unsuitable for a role no one else wanted. To avoid a hole in the ballots, one of the committee nominated herself into that role -- with approval of the rest of the committee and a brief explanation to the audience.
  5. I am referencing during the ACM points that arose during the town hall. We didn't have a minister on duty that day, but the other two meetings we did, so they are official meetings.
  6. Hello a followup question for you kind wise folks. I did finally get the minutes, 3 pages. But they are, how do I put this politely, poorly organized. I had written and shared the agenda expecting to include action items from the town hall meeting, but it is not clear from these minutes what those action items were. (I am aware of two from my notes at the time.) The minutes went into the ACM meeting packet as is -- except I corrected the spelling of the name of a software. (So far only the non-email members received the packet; those who get their info by email, there's been pushback from the person who is supposed to send it out that there is "too much to read". Sorry I can't help it there are 3 sets of minutes to adopt.) If no one says anything about them, I was going to say that I didn't see any action items in the writeup, but I was aware of two, and offer my two action items to be added in as corrections -- probably by the elected secretary. But I'd like a second/third opinion if this is acceptable. If someone actually read the minutes and they get tossed back to be rewritten, is it better to give it to the elected secretary (who is a busy person herself), or the person who filled in for her? And then do we have to re-adopt the minutes at the 2024 ACM? keep in mind we are dealing with volunteers.
  7. The next "regular meeting" would be in 2024.
  8. I would like some advice about a situation. In September our church held a town hall meeting, I was co-chair. Some folks do not consider it an "official" congregational meeting ebcause there was no minister on duty. But a lot of useful content and a few action items emerged from that meeting. Our Annual Meeting is in one month and I need to send out notice in the next few days. At that meeting, we should have 3 sets of minutes to adopt: last year's ACM, the town hall meeting, and a budget meeting which will take place after this notice goes out. Plus items from the town hall meeting will be on the ACM agenda. I still do not have the minutes from the town hall meeting. The elected secretary was not in attendance and someone else (reluctantly) filled in. I've been asking for the minutes (nicely) and keep getting the brush off. Apparently she only "found" her notes in January. A video recording was also made during the meeting as a backup but that is not considered the official record. (And when I asked for a video excerpt to show during a service, the person who made it "didn't have access" to the video.) I've offered if me or someone else can help her, but that was brushed off too. The minister, several members of council, and her husband are aware. What should I do? Yes I know we are all "busy" and some of us have full time jobs etc. but it shouldn't take this long to write up minutes. Our bylaws do not have a time limit and a suggestion to include one was already shot down as being inconvenient to volunteers. But if I'm referencing the town hall meeting during the ACM, the minutes need to be available, and folks should have a chance to read them ahead of adoption. Your thoughts, kind meeting folk, are much appreciated.
  9. Hello I would like to get some advice. It has been suggested that my church hold a budget meeting, for the congregation to consider various proposed projects and which of them to add to the budget. The director of finance would like folks to rank these projects and the most popular one(s) would be added according to the pool of funds available. (For the I.T. people out there: Picture UserVoice combined with Dragon's Den.) This needs to get hived off into a separate meeting in order not to hijack the regular annual meeting (ACM). (There were more than 10 projects last time I looked, most relating to building improvements. I think 5 should be the maximum to discuss.) Voting needs to operate simultaneously in person, over Zoom, and by telephone. Secret ballots and mail-in ballots are not permitted. And yours truly is 99% probably running the meeting. What would you recommend as the least complicated, most engaging approach to the vote process? (The voters would be ordinary parishioners, many seniors, some with limited financial and computer literacy.) Something that won't scare folks off from coming to the ACM a few weeks later. Thank you in advance for your suggestions.
  10. I've just survived my first annual congregational meeting at my church as chairperson, and as a member of the nominations committee. Prior to and during the meeting, at least two nominees that declined wanted to know who nominated them. Since I don't have email on my laptop, I didn't have that information with me. But my gut feeling is: What difference does it make? Someone had confidence in your abilities, be flattered even as you decline. Our bylaws are silent on the matter. what say you?
  11. In no particular order: [Note these are as of summer 2021] -- The questions and voting would be confined to the Polly app and not lost among general chat messages. -- Question set could be set up in advance. [this was a feature coming shortly] -- There would be only one way to interact with the voting buttons -- no thumbs up, no waving, no clapping, no raise/lower, etc. -- Tallies are available immediately. No need to scroll through constantly-moving screens to count how many people lifted their hands to the camera. No need for comments in chat that this one voted for Joe Blow and his wife voted for Susie Smith. -- Voting results would be available after Zoom closed down, to assist with the minutes transcription. The one thing I was trying to solve was to get an accurate tally and FAST.
  12. An update following a planning meeting with the church board: Committees will submit their reports for the written annual report. At the ACM each committee will choose one highlight or challenge of their year and present for maximum 3 minutes. [The leader can delegate the presentation to any member of his/her team.] Suggestion was made to pre-record the presentations and show them during lunch [before the meeting]. I would prefer not to do that. While the shortening trimmed 24 minutes off the total, more items were added so I'm now at 183 minutes (3 hours 3 minutes) -- including one break, not including open floor time.
  13. I had looked at Polly, to be installed as a Zoom App. Context: The 2021 meeting was completely online, chaired by my predecessor. The mechanics of online voting were poorly explained. Some people were using Raise Hands, some were clicking emojis that showed hands (e.g. clapping, thumbs up), some were holding up their hands to the camera. Counting was a mess, especially for households with more than one member per connection, and a large chunk weren't voting at all. However my efforts to adopt Polly got shot down in flames. The main reason it got a thumbs down was not because of the technology itself, but because church members don't have the technological literacy to install and work with it. Apparently most members also do not log in, and Polly (any app actually) requires a Zoom login. Polly also wouldn't work for the telephone-only parishioners. [We'll set aside for now the public gaslighting I endured from the main Zoom techie.] For the special meeting in December [hybrid], we used Raise Hands in Zoom. I wrote an instruction sheet that went out with the formal notice. I insisted on one connection, one vote. I held a practice vote before the first official vote. We had ~26 people attend (combo of in person and online) and it worked very well except for one married couple who insisted on voting twice each time. Today there is suggestion for this upcoming meeting to put folks in breakout rooms to vote, a Yes room and a No room. Two people have decided Raise Hands is not acceptable -- one did not attend in December, one only came briefly in person. During the breakout demo (conducted by Mr. Gaslight, who is also in favor of eliminating Raise Hands), I not only couldn't see the tally but didn't even get an invite to a room, to see how it worked. SMH
  14. When I read that, as well as Bourinot #49, I understand that the report is presented in person. When I was planning a special meeting held in December, and offered to write up an instruction sheet for folks to install voting software in Zoom, it was noted that reading literacy (as well as tech literacy) was a challenge for a number of parishioners, and we went with Raise Hands instead which was already part of Zoom. Now I'm getting the opposite message, that folks are expected to read the annual report for the various group updates. people are soooo confusing 🤪
  15. I am preparing the agenda for my church's upcoming Annual Congregational Meeting. Our bylaws state that the meeting's purpose includes: We are supposed to have an Annual Report document (web and hopefully print) with highlights from the year. I would like each committee to present at the meeting. Some leaders are pushing back, claiming if they have submitted to the annual report, there is no need to make a presentation. or just to say "You have my report in the Annual Report document, if you have questions let me know." what IS the correct procedure to follow? Using the RR agenda format, and notes from last year's chairperson, and plugging in all the elements, I'm already at 3.5 hours (including a 15 minute break) and some time estimates are still to be calculated. If I allot each committee 5 minutes, that's over an hour. [I've been asked to shorten this to 2-3 minutes.] To elect 22 positions, I've allotted 30 minutes; for the financials I've allotted 30 minutes which was last year's estimate. And I wanted to open the floor for general Q&A, motions from the floor, and votes of thanks -- no time estimate yet. For comparison: in 2020 and 2021, there were no committee reports presented at all -- or at least they were not mentioned in the minutes. (But the Excuse for Everything sent some things sideways.) I acknowledge that some committees were less active than others, so some reports might be "We did a bunch of nothing because the building was closed part of the year." I want an interesting meeting, and to cover all the elements without rushing. I am not keen on removing agenda items just to shorten the proceedings. Folks need their chance to ask questions right? I look forward to your informative feedback on this matter.
×
×
  • Create New...