Many resolutions, dating back a number of years

[hollasa]

Greetings!

I belong to a regional organization, that customarily has one meeting a year. At that meeting, delegates from member organizations bring forward various resolutions, typically for the regional organization to advocate to various levels of government for some action to be taken.

I'd say that there's about 300 resolutions out there, of which some number have been achieved.  Quite a number have not been. They don't typically have time limits in them, and the bylaws make no real reference to them (other than that bylaws are amended by resolutions).

What is the recommended way in which to deal with these older resolutions? They seem to be kept around; some are sometimes reaffirmed (I know, I know...), but the thought seems to be that well, the situation they referred to hasn't changed, so we should keep them listed as being active, and maybe a committee will do some work on them some day.

thanks for any assistance.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The resolutions are in effect unless they are rescinded. Couldn't you ask someone to carry them out?

[Richard Brown]

Were all of the resolutions adopted?

 

[Kim Goldsworthy]

Here is what I did, when I was the president of a state-wide organization.

• We had resolutions passed long ago which endorse this and that; and which condemned this and that.

• I went through 10 years' worth of minutes, looking for resolutions which had an ongoing effect.

• I compiled my list of resolutions, in chronological order.

• I give each resolution a number, to tell them apart (YEAR + MONTH + serial order of that meeting), i.e., make each resolution unique.

• I added KEYWORDS to my complied document, so that when I sort the resolutions, all the keywords would be grouped together.

• I put the NUMBER of the resolution and the KEYWORDS into a spreadsheet, i.e., a software application which allowed for SORTNG on the keywords.

• I sorted by KEYWORDS.

• The resulting list was that I got all resolutions which were related by topic or by proper noun. -- like "awards"; "discipline"; "deadlines"; "endorsements"; "condemnations".

• I took that set of resolutions, and regrouped them into logical subsets.

• I distributed that master document to all sitting board members, with the instruction, "Here are adopted resolutions of an ongoing effect. Before we re-invent the wheel, let's see if we have already taken a stand."

Voila! -- Any reference to X could be found in a few seconds of reading one document.

***

My recommendation:

It does not take that long to go through 300 statements, when your goal is to NUMBER them all, and ADD KEYWORDS to them all. You can SORT them at your leisure, when research is being done on Issue X, Y, or Z.

 

[g40]

One way of addressing this would be to create and maintain a "Book of Resolutions", for approved resolutions, with reference to the date of approval and other information. Perhaps, for example, ten years ago a resolution was passed prohibiting smoking in the gazebo - and it was forgotten about. Other passed resolutions have no ongoing effects, since they were carried out once (for example a resolution to have the 2011 annual meeting in Poughkeepsie, NY). Some, perhaps, are not fully carried out because of intervening events (perhaps the clubhouse could not be painted pink because it was destroyed by a tornado before being painted).