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membership definitions


Guest Sharon

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Good morning,

Our current BOD accepted nominations for Board openings until the 19th. Seven long-term members entered their names for 4 open positions. Then, without telling them, the Board eliminated 4 names from the list on the basis of late payment of dues in the prior year. All of these people have been paying members for over 8 years. When does late payment equal a period of non-membership. Our Bylaws state that Board electees have to have been a member for a year prior to the elections. The Bylaws say nothing about late payments, or even due dates. How can we handle this?

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This is what RONR says:

"A member of a society who is in arrears in payment of his dues, but who has not been formally dropped from the membership rolls and is not under a disciplinary suspension, retains the full rights of a voting member and is legally entitled to vote except as the bylaws may otherwise provide." RONR, p. 393-394

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How can we handle this?

Amend the bylaws (as deemed necessary) to clarify such ambiguities or mis-interpretations or lapses in clarity. Educate the Board on proper parliamentary law, specifically as pertains to dropping names from nomination lists under erroneous pretenses. Try to get people onto the Board who have knowledge of RONR and your bylaws, along with some integrity and a sense of the common good.

In your circumstance, unless your bylaws say otherwise or your board is one of those dictatorial shallow-gene-pool power-hungry types we read about all too often here, anyone can be nominated and even elected to the Board. (Nominations should be allowed from the floor, and write-in votes should be allowed, assuming you use ballot voting.) Whether they are eligible to serve is something that needs to be paid attention to, and your bylaws should give you considerable guidance there.

If these four are favored by the general membership, they (the GM) should be able to elect them to the Board.

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Our current BOD accepted nominations for Board openings until the 19th.

Seven long-term members entered their names for 4 open positions.

Then, without telling them,

the Board eliminated 4 names from the list on the basis of late payment of dues in the prior year.

All of these people have been paying members for over 8 years.

When does late payment equal a period of non-membership?

Our Bylaws state that Board electees have to have been a member for a year prior to the elections.

The Bylaws say nothing about late payments, or even due dates.

How can we handle this?

When does late payment equal a period of non-membership?

The Book does not say directly.

The Book only says that nonpayment of dues does not necessarily turn a member into a nonmember.

The Book leaves the actual timing and the actual process up to the organization, regarding when and how a member is officially a non-member.

The Book does not authorize any board to do any such thing.

So, maybe your own customized rules say that late payment of dues is sufficient.

All we can tell you is, late payment of dues does nothing, as far as Robert's Rules of Order goes.

How can we handle this?

There are several issues. -- Which "this" do you want to handle?

The most egregious violation of fairness is to have the board remove names in secret, without informing anyone of their action.

That is suspicious, the way you described their secretive action.

Granted, someone must check to see if the nominees are qualified.

But you, and I, question the method by which your board operated.

So that, I think, is where you should focus.

Remember, under Robert's Rules, non-payment of dues will NOT prevent anyone from (a.) being nominated; (b.) running for office; (c.) being elected; (d.) serving a full term.

So all this messy rigamarole is due to your own unique rules and qualifications.

Maybe THAT is where you should focus. -- Take out that qualification, and simplify the whole process by one major step.

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That's going to prevent this question about being in arrears?

Oh, I'd bet a dollar twenty-five that their bylaws have neither an "arrears" provision nor a board veto on nominations, as things stand.

Most of the time, boards that start doing these sorts of dictatorial practices are just making stuff up as they go along--until someone stops them.

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