Annual Meeting

[Guest Alvin]

Our church is preparing for our annual meeting. Our bylaws state that only members can vote, or be part of the discussion. The bylaws do not address the question if non members can attend the meeting. We follow Robert Rules in areas that our bylaws do not cover. Are non members allowed to attend the meeting, or can it be restricted only to members, since they are the only ones who can vote anyway?  It isn’t our intent to leave non members out of things, but at this point, the majority of our congregation is made up of non members. Having an open meeting could be hard to separate the two groups.

[Joshua Katz]

If the bylaws say nothing, it is up to the meeting body to decide whether to allow guests to attend.

[Greg Goodwiller, PRP]

Expanding on what my colleague has posted, RONR says very little about nonmembers, and its assumption is that meetings are meetings of members except to the extent that members allow wider participation. Regarding voting and debate, in particular, RONR 25:9 states:

Rules which embody fundamental principles of parliamentary law, such as the rule that allows only one question to be considered at a time (5:4), cannot be suspended, even by a unanimous vote. Thus, since it is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that the right to vote is limited to the members of an organization who are actually present at the time the vote is taken in a regular or properly called meeting (45:56), the rules cannot be suspended so as to give the right to vote to a nonmember,7 or to authorize absentee voting (45:56ff.). Likewise, since it is a fundamental principle that each member of a deliberative assembly is entitled to one—and only one—vote on a question, the rules may not be suspended so as to authorize cumulative voting (46:43).

And footnote 7 above reads as follows:

In contrast, the rules may be suspended to allow a nonmember to speak in debate.

So if you have a significant number of nonmembers who your leadership believes need to have the opportunity to be present for and participate in the meeting (which is completely understandable in the current religious landscape in our country), the body can allow them to be present either by vote or simply by not barring them from being present, and it can vote to suspend the rules and allow them to participate in debate. But it cannot give them a vote. 

That said, in my denominational meetings (I am a mid council leader in the Presbyterian Church), we have several categories of "delegates" present at our national meetings who are technically "nonmembers" of the assembly, but to whom we give the right to participate in debate. And when votes are taken, each group of delegates is polled first so that voting members of the assembly can be "advised" about how they would vote prior to their actual vote being taken. 

All of that is to say that there are ways to help various constituencies feel included and valuable to the process without having the membership right to an actual vote.

 

 

[Richard Brown]

On 4/3/2024 at 8:07 PM, Guest Alvin said:

at this point, the majority of our congregation is made up of non members. Having an open meeting could be hard to separate the two groups.

Can you not just have the voting members sit in the first few rows and the non-members further back, much like is done to separate convention delegates from guests?   Or give voting cards to the members?

[Josh Martin]

On 4/3/2024 at 8:07 PM, Guest Alvin said:

Our church is preparing for our annual meeting. Our bylaws state that only members can vote, or be part of the discussion. The bylaws do not address the question if non members can attend the meeting. We follow Robert Rules in areas that our bylaws do not cover. Are non members allowed to attend the meeting, or can it be restricted only to members, since they are the only ones who can vote anyway?

It will be at the assembly's discretion whether to permit nonmembers to attend.

On 4/3/2024 at 8:07 PM, Guest Alvin said:

It isn’t our intent to leave non members out of things, but at this point, the majority of our congregation is made up of non members. Having an open meeting could be hard to separate the two groups.

Many organizations face the challenge of having a meeting where some persons present are members and others are not. There are various methods organizations use to handle this, such as using different seating areas for members and nonmembers, assigning different colored badges for members and nonmembers, assigning voting cards to members, and so forth.

If the assembly prefers to exclude nonmembers entirely, however, the assembly is free to do so.