Vote to Approve Amended Bylaw Document, After Approving Amendment Language?

[Guest Niki Lynn]

After an approved vote to amend a section of the bylaws of an organization, do the bylaws then get voted on again as a whole once the document has been amended? This would be redundant, and is not required, right?

I would assume that so long as the membership has the original approved document, and the approved bylaw amendment language in hand, that–while it would be a courtesy to provide a copy of the new version–the Board would not be necessarily obligated to provide this amended version in hard copy, nor would a secondary vote to approve these newly-amended bylaws be applicable either.

If I am wrong, set me straight, please!

Thanks!

Niki

[Joshua Katz]

I'm assuming you amended your bylaws, as opposed to a bylaw revision. In that case, no, no vote is needed on the document as a whole, as you say. The bylaws were already adopted, and the amendment is just a special version of amend something previously adopted. The only change is the amendment, so once that is made, you are done.

On a side note, the board has nothing to do with it, at least in most organizations where the membership amends the bylaws.

But the members certainly have a right to know what's in the bylaws! How to do so is something you can sort out in your own rules, but they must be distributed to the members in some form.

[Guest Niki Lynn]

On 10/12/2021 at 6:13 PM, Joshua Katz said:

I'm assuming you amended your bylaws, as opposed to a bylaw revision. In that case, no, no vote is needed on the document as a whole, as you say. The bylaws were already adopted, and the amendment is just a special version of amend something previously adopted. The only change is the amendment, so once that is made, you are done.

On a side note, the board has nothing to do with it, at least in most organizations where the membership amends the bylaws.

But the members certainly have a right to know what's in the bylaws! How to do so is something you can sort out in your own rules, but they must be distributed to the members in some form.

Yes–amendment, not revision–thank you for confirming! We definitely want to be as transparent as possible re: what the bylaws state, but the doc is only 18mos old and only one round of amendments has occurred since we have been mostly shut down since COVID. Someone (not sure who) amended an incorrect version that pre-dated the adopted bylaws and that got passed around and we now have members clinging to the wrong version and claiming it is indeed the correct one when it is not. It's complicating things!