special meetings

[Guest rema]

Our bylaws allow for a 10 day notice for special meetings to be called. Can the notice be given by email? We have a large association and the costs to mail can be hundreds of dollars.

[Chris Harrison]

Your bylaws should specify how notice is to be given.

[Edgar Guest]

Can the notice be given by email?

 

The default is postal mail so if you want to use some other method (e.g. e-mail) I'd say your members would have to "opt in" to that method. After all, not everyone has an e-mail address.

 

Further, most rules requiring previous notice require that the notice be sent, not that it be received. Registered (Certified?) mail is one of the few ways of verifying that notice was sent.

[Richard Brown]

Our bylaws allow for a 10 day notice for special meetings to be called. Can the notice be given by email? We have a large association and the costs to mail can be hundreds of dollars.

 

As Chris Harrison said, your bylaws should address the method of sending notices and whether notice by mail is required and whether email is authorized. 

 

In the absence of a bylaw  provision, RONR says on page 89: 

"When notice is required to be sent, unless a different standard is specified that requirement is met if written notice is sent to each member either:

    a)    by postal mail to the member's last known address; or  by a form of electronic communication, such as e-mail or fax, by which the member has agreed to receive notice."  (Emphasis added).

[Richard Brown]

Further, most rules requiring previous notice require that the notice be sent, not that it be received. Registered (Certified?) mail is one of the few ways of verifying that notice was sent.

 

I agree that most rules require that notice be sent a certain number of days in advance, but check your bylaws to see what yours say.  I recently saw a judge rule that a large dues increase with a major organization was improperly adopted because the bylaws required that the notice be received a certain number of days in advance and that the mailing missed that requirement by one day.  As I recall, the notices were mailed on the day they should have been received....an impossibility.

 

Using certified mail would probably be prohibitively expensive and registered mail would almost certainly be too expensive.  It has been my experience that either a "certificate of mailing" from the Post Office or a certification or testimony by the secretary as to the date of mailing suffices, especially when the notices are actually postmarked on the date the secretary says he or she mailed them.

 

As Mr. Guest pointed out, pay particularly close attention as to whether your bylaws require the mailing (or giving) of notice a certain number of days in advance or if the bylaws speak to the members receiving notice.

[Edgar Guest]

I recently saw a judge rule that a large dues increase with a major organization was improperly adopted because the bylaws required that the notice be received a certain number of days in advance and that the mailing missed that requirement by one day.  As I recall, the notices were mailed on the day they should have been received....an impossibility.

 

An improbability perhaps but, in a small town, not an impossibility. In any event, it's much easier to prove that notice was mailed to one hundred members than it is to prove that notice was received by all one hundred members.