Business outside of monthly meetings

[Joyce]

Can members of a board email and discuss business in-between meetings amongst themselves?  No voting, no motioning, just discussing topics of relevance for upcoming meetings?  I have been emailing the board with pertinent details of possible discussion at next meeting and I am being told that we should not be "conducting business outside of monthly meetings.

[Richard Brown]

25 minutes ago, Joyce said:

Can members of a board email and discuss business in-between meetings amongst themselves?  No voting, no motioning, just discussing topics of relevance for upcoming meetings?  I have been emailing the board with pertinent details of possible discussion at next meeting and I am being told that we should not be "conducting business outside of monthly meetings.

Sure, they can.... as long as they are not making "decisions" that they expect to be binding on the organization.  Board members are perfectly free to discuss organization business informally among themselves, to bat ideas back and forth, do "brainstorming", to draft a motion some of them want to introduce, etc.  Doing so violates no rule in RONR. 

[Atul Kapur]

Usually, Mr. Brown is the one to ask whether this organization is subject to "open meeting" laws, which may supersede the answer given, which is based on RONR.

[Richard Brown]

19 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

Usually, Mr. Brown is the one to ask whether this organization is subject to "open meeting" laws, which may supersede the answer given, which is based on RONR.

LOL!!!   Good catch! I actually spent several seconds debating whether to mention the public body and open meetings law exception but decided not to go there and answer just based on the rules in RONR. Nothing about the original post made me suspect the organization might be a public body.   But you are quite correct that if this is a public body subject to state open meetings laws, then it is possible there could be a problem with these communications outside of a meeting.