Advanced Notice for Amending Constitution at Annual Convention

[Guest runninwahoo]

How much notice is required for making an amendment during a convention that takes place one a year? How about for significant changes?

Is notice to the Executive Board / Constitution Committee sufficient? What about notice to chief delegates?

When would it be reasonable / latest time to have the organization distribute the amendment to members?

[Alexis Hunt]

Your bylaws should specify the method of notice for a convention. In absence of that, the notice would have to go out in the call for the meeting that is distributed to all members, or at least to all delegates, in advance of the convention. It is up to your organization to interpret that in your own context; ultimately it is the convention (assuming it is the highest governing body of your organization) that decides how to interpret the bylaws.

[RunninWahoo]

So if the bylaws do not specify, then distribution of the Amendments at the beginning of the "business meeting" part of the Convention may be sufficient (assuming there is no other rule / custom / interpretation, etc.)?

[Josh Martin]

14 hours ago, RunninWahoo said:

So if the bylaws do not specify, then distribution of the Amendments at the beginning of the "business meeting" part of the Convention may be sufficient (assuming there is no other rule / custom / interpretation, etc.)?

No, this would certainly not be sufficient. The purpose of notice is to help members determine whether they wish to attend the meeting. So it doesn't do much good if the notice is not distributed until the meeting begins.

[Alexis Hunt]

8 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

No, this would certainly not be sufficient. The purpose of notice is to help members determine whether they wish to attend the meeting. So it doesn't do much good if the notice is not distributed until the meeting begins.

Agreed. The call of the meeting is usually the notice which goes out to inform members that the meeting is occurring. It might be reasonable in the case of a convention to interpret the call as being an agenda distributed several weeks in advance, rather than the initial call for delegates, but certainly the amendment would have to be circulated to delegates well in advance.

(There is no requirement to send it to non-delegates since they are not voting members of the convention and therefore have no right to notice.)

[Shmuel Gerber]

12 hours ago, Alexis Hunt said:

(There is no requirement to send it to non-delegates since they are not voting members of the convention and therefore have no right to notice.)

Whether non-delegates have any rights to notice of motions is irrelevant to the definition of the call of a meeting. Merely giving notice to members without doing so in the call of the meeting (or orally at the previous meeting held within a quarterly time interval) does not meet the requirements for previous notice as stated in RONR.