Executive Board minutes

[Guest Robert]

If you haven't made a general meeting up in 9 months, but Executive Board has made up every month, can all the minutes be approved at once, if the membership makes up, without reading 9 hours plus of minutes?

[Chris Harrison]

If no one objects the minutes can be approved without having to be read (though this is usually done when copies of the minutes were distributed beforehand so the members had a chance to look them over).  However, if even one member demands them be read they must be read (RONR p. 354). 

 

Somehow I suspect you are putting WAY too much in the minutes though because even 9 months worth of minutes shouldn't take 9 hours to read.  See RONR pp. 468-473 for what should (and should not) go in the minutes and a sample of how the minutes should read.

[Josh Martin]

If you haven't made a general meeting up in 9 months, but Executive Board has made up every month, can all the minutes be approved at once, if the membership makes up, without reading 9 hours plus of minutes?

 

I'm a bit puzzled. Whose minutes are we talking about approving, and who's going to be approving them? The membership? The board? Why are minutes piling up in the first place?

[Rev Ed]

I'm a bit puzzled.... Why are minutes piling up in the first place?

 

I am wondering the same thing.  I would be asking the Secretary where the Minutes are, and possibly looking at the By-laws (and then Chapter XX of RONR, if required) to get a new Secretary if necessary.

[Guest Robert]

Secretary is not the problem. The floor has not made up in over a year, but the Executive board has every month. I'm just going to make a motion and have all Executive Board minutes approved since last general meeting.

[Richard Brown]

Secretary is not the problem. The floor has not made up in over a year, but the Executive board has every month. I'm just going to make a motion and have all Executive Board minutes approved since last general meeting.

I would suggest, then, that you give notice of such intent and that all of the still unapproved minutes be sent to the membership in advance so that they can review them and know what they are voting on. 

 

You don't have to do that.... people can just vote to approve a year's worth of minutes without having a clue what's in them if they want to.... but that isn't a very good way to conduct business.  Your minutes are your official record of what has been done at your meetings.

 

An alternative procedure would be to appoint or elect a committee to review all of the unapproved minutes.  That committee can be charged with making making a recommendation to the membership re approving the minutes or the committee can be a committee "with power", meaning it is given the power to actually approve the minutes.   That his how minutes of conventions are usually approved: by a committee appointed for that purpose.  

 

I shudder at the thought of any organization just approving a year's worth of minutes without anybody actually taking the time to read them first.  A committee might be the perfect way to do that.

[Edgar Guest]

The floor has not made up in over a year, but the Executive board has every month.

 

This is non-standard language. The general membership isn't "the floor". And meetings (and/or minutes) are not "made up".

[Josh Martin]

Secretary is not the problem. The floor has not made up in over a year, but the Executive board has every month. I'm just going to make a motion and have all Executive Board minutes approved since last general meeting.

The Executive Board is supposed to approve its own minutes, so the information you've provided still doesn't explain why there are months and months of minutes waiting to be approved.

[Gary Novosielski]

Secretary is not the problem. The floor has not made up in over a year, but the Executive board has every month. I'm just going to make a motion and have all Executive Board minutes approved since last general meeting.

The executive board should be approving its own minutes.  The membership does not approve them.