Automatic resignation

[Alex Meed]

We've had issues with dereliction of duty by officers before. It is generally difficult to solicit their resignations, since they go incommunicado, and the board has little appetite for initiating our removal process.

I've been thinking a solution might be to establish some rule that an officer who misses, say, three consecutive weekly board meetings, without providing an excuse to the president, automatically resigns. (The requirement would be for any excuse, not a "satisfactory" excuse, so as to avoid having to vest someone with the discretion to decide what is "satisfactory".) Can this be done by the board, or by the general membership, by any means apart from amending the bylaws?

[Richard Brown]

45 minutes ago, Alex M. said:

We've had issues with dereliction of duty by officers before. It is generally difficult to solicit their resignations, since they go incommunicado, and the board has little appetite for initiating our removal process.

I've been thinking a solution might be to establish some rule that an officer who misses, say, three consecutive weekly board meetings, without providing an excuse to the president, automatically resigns. (The requirement would be for any excuse, not a "satisfactory" excuse, so as to avoid having to vest someone with the discretion to decide what is "satisfactory".) Can this be done by the board, or by the general membership, by any means apart from amending the bylaws?

You will almost certainly have to  put such a provision in the bylaws.  The more common approach, or at least the one that seems to work most satisfactorily, is to have a provision that says a board member  who misses a certain number of meetings, or a certain number of consecutive meetings, shall  be deemed to automatically forfeit or vacate the position and it shall  create a vacancy.  Some bylaws go on to say that the member may be re-appointed to the position via the society's vacancy filling procedure.  

That language eliminates the problems  of what constitutes an adequate "excuse", makes removal automatic, but permits the board (or membership) to appoint the same person to fill the vacancy if it believes that is the prudent thing to do.   If they like him, they re-appoint him.  If they don't like him, they appoint someone else.

[J. J.]

6 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

You will almost certainly have to  put such a provision in the bylaws.  The more common approach, or at least the one that seems to work most satisfactorily, is to have a provision that says a board member  who misses a certain number of meetings, or a certain number of consecutive meetings, shall  be deemed to automatically forfeit or vacate the position and it shall  create a vacancy.  Some bylaws go on to say that the member may be re-appointed to the position via the society's vacancy filling procedure.  

 

Did you leave out a "not" in the last sentence. 

[Atul Kapur]

The way it is written, that the member who has been deemed to resign may be reappointed to the same position, is consistent with this part of the second paragraph

11 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

makes removal automatic, but permits the board (or membership) to appoint the same person to fill the vacancy if it believes that is the prudent thing to do.   If they like him, they re-appoint him.  If they don't like him, they appoint someone else.

 

[Josh Martin]

12 hours ago, Alex M. said:

We've had issues with dereliction of duty by officers before. It is generally difficult to solicit their resignations, since they go incommunicado, and the board has little appetite for initiating our removal process.

I've been thinking a solution might be to establish some rule that an officer who misses, say, three consecutive weekly board meetings, without providing an excuse to the president, automatically resigns. (The requirement would be for any excuse, not a "satisfactory" excuse, so as to avoid having to vest someone with the discretion to decide what is "satisfactory".) Can this be done by the board, or by the general membership, by any means apart from amending the bylaws?

Rather than "automatically resigns," I would say that such a person is "automatically removed." A resignation, by definition, is a voluntary act. As such, it's not really possible for someone to "automatically resign." The provision could be written such as this:

"Board members are required to attend board meetings. If a board member is unable to attend a board meeting, the member shall notify the President no later than (AMOUNT OF TIME) prior to the board meeting. If a board member fails to attend three consecutive board meetings without providing the required notification, that board member is automatically removed from office."

I concur with Mr. Brown that nothing short of a provision in the bylaws is sufficient to adopt this rule.

11 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

You will almost certainly have to  put such a provision in the bylaws.  The more common approach, or at least the one that seems to work most satisfactorily, is to have a provision that says a board member  who misses a certain number of meetings, or a certain number of consecutive meetings, shall  be deemed to automatically forfeit or vacate the position and it shall  create a vacancy.  Some bylaws go on to say that the member may be re-appointed to the position via the society's vacancy filling procedure.  

That language eliminates the problems  of what constitutes an adequate "excuse", makes removal automatic, but permits the board (or membership) to appoint the same person to fill the vacancy if it believes that is the prudent thing to do.   If they like him, they re-appoint him.  If they don't like him, they appoint someone else.

But Mr. Brown, I don't think that's what the OP is after. It appears that the desire is that if a member provides an excuse (any excuse) to the President, that this meeting is not counted in the number of consecutive meetings triggering the automatic removal.

Your way would work fine too, but it seems the OP wishes to more strictly limit the circumstances under which automatic removal applies, which seems reasonable.