Officers

[Guest Debbie]

We are having trouble filing our Vice President . Can we have co Vice Presidents .. Do we need to change bylaws?

[DrEntropy]

All officers must be defined in the bylaws, including any new "co vice president" officers. In doing so you will need to precisely define the duties and responsibilities of these two (or more?) officers.  There is also one particular duty that I would find quite challenging to divide (hint, it is the primary duty of the vice president).

 

In my experience, I have found that if you cannot find one person to fill an office, it doesn't really help you to fill it with two people, neither of which was willing to do it alone. Perhaps you have too many duties (beyond the fundamental one) put on your VP, and you might want to create a new office to spread some of that around?

[Edgar Guest]

RONR strongly advises against co-anything but, yes, you'd have to amend your bylaws if you want two persons to hold the same position.

 

On the other hand, you might want to figure out why no one wants to be vice-president. As long as the president shows up, there's not much to do (as Vice-President John Nance Garner famously observed).

[Josh Martin]

We are having trouble filing our Vice President . Can we have co Vice Presidents .. Do we need to change bylaws?

You cannot have "Co-Vice Presidents" unless the bylaws so provide, so it will be necessary to amend the bylaws in order to do this. I would note, however, that this seems like an extremely bad idea. Any sort of co-position tends to lead to problems, and this seems to be especially problematic.

Which of the Vice Presidents will become President if there is a vacancy in that office or preside in the absence of the President? If the society feels that it needs more than one Vice President, it would be better to rank them, such as "1st Vice President" and "2nd Vice President," and to clearly define the duties of each position.