voting requirements and quorum

[Guest Vicki Corliss]

Our pto does not have any bylaw's and after the last meeting, there was no talk on voting for the executive board. The agenda then get sent out for our meeting 3 days ahead of time stating we are going to be voting on the board. Should there be a sufficient amount of time to notify the members off the vote? If there are no bylaws, can absentee voting occur? How do you consider the number to make a quorum?

[David A Foulkes]

My instinct here is to say that if you don't have any bylaws, then you don't have any members, you don't have an executive board, you definitely don't have absentee voting, and you don't have (or have need of) a quorum number, because you won't be having meetings, because you have no organization ----- yet.  Generally, it's the bylaws that establish all of that stuff.  Once you adopt bylaws (which is where membership is defined, along with what if any executive board and officers exist), then we can discuss the rest.  However, let's move on and not get hung up on the minor details, like having bylaws, which I'll assume you'll either adopt very soon, or you have some other document that might satisfactorily substitute for it, and address your questions anyway.

 

So.... where RONR discusses the requirement of notice (as it refers to it for things such as meetings, motions, elections, etc), no specific time frame is assigned.  The reference is to "a reasonable number of days in advance" (or something approximate to that), so that all members have a chance to receive it and act accordingly, such as making arrangements to attend the meetings.  Per RONR, absentee voting is frowned upon (meaning it's not allowed), and is only allowed if the bylaws say so. It can get messy, as any search here on the topic will reveal.  Finally, if the bylaws do not specify another number, the quorum for any meeting is a majority (more than half) of the membership.  In some cases, it might be best to set that number higher or lower, but that would need to be established in the bylaws.

[Bruce Lages]

The default quorum of a majority of the membership, or any other quorum number for that matter, is contingent on having a clearly defined membership roster. In your case, if the absence of bylaws means that there is no criteria to determine specifcally who are the members of the organization, your quorum might just be whoever shows up for the meeting (RONR, 11th ed. p. 345, l.14 - p.346, l.5).

[Gary Novosielski]

Our pto does not have any bylaws

 

Then you don't have a PTO. 

 

You may have some P's and some T's, but until you adopt bylaws you have no O.

 

Under these conditions, what you have is in the nature of a mass meeting: 

 

• Your quorum is whoever is interested in showing up.
• You don't have an executive board or any officers, and therefore can't elect any.
• You don't have a presiding officer, and would need to elect a chairman pro-tem at each mass meeting.
• You don't have any actual members, just people who showed up.
• Your group has no name or any other formal (or even informal) status as an organization

 

What you need to do before you do anything else is to write and adopt bylaws.  You can appoint a committee to write a draft, and bring it back for perfection and adoption. 

 

There are suggestions on how to do this, and a list of other things that can be done at a mass meeting, in RONR.