Non-voting members as directors

[Guest Newbie]

I’m a member of an organization with two levels of membership - voting and non-voting (called Regular Member and Associate Member. Associate Members pay less in dues and cannot vote for directors. However, the bylaws say only that directors must be members in good standing and does not exclude Associate Members from being directors. Is there anything in Roberts Rules about whether a non-voting member can or cannot be a director of the organization? 

[Guest Newbie]

Also, to add context: this is a non-profit social club incorporated in New York. 

[Joshua Katz]

1 hour ago, Guest Newbie said:

Is there anything in Roberts Rules about whether a non-voting member can or cannot be a director of the organization? 

No, because RONR does not have a concept of a non-voting member. In RONR, to be a member is to have the rights of membership, including voting. Since your bylaws create this category, any rules about them must come from there.

In my opinion, though, membership is a bundle of rights. If a particular category of members has lost some of those rights, that does not, to my mind, imply that it has lost others. So a non-voting-member, in my opinion, seemingly has all the rights of other members, except voting. But I can't say more than these generalities because this is a question of interpreting bylaws, and only your organization can do so. The precise wording used may matter.

In fact, so far as RONR is concerned, directors, and officers in general, need not be members of the organization at all, except as your own rules provide. 

[Shmuel Gerber]

Actually, this question is discussed in RONR (12th ed.) 56:68(8).