Release of nominees names

[Guest Renee]

I am chair of a nominating committee for a local organization and have been asked to submit the names and bios of candidates to our web master for posting after the board meets to review the nominees. The board will not receive the names of the nominees until the meeting so I have declined to release the names to the webmaster prior to releasing them to the board. The webmaster is not a member of the board or the nominating committee. Am I required to release the names (if possible please direct me to the passage in Robert's Rules that applies)?

[hmtcastle]

Am I required to release the names (if possible please direct me to the passage in Robert's Rules that applies)?

Nothing in RONR requires (or authorizes) you to release the names and I can't point to a rule in RONR that isn't there.

If someone is telling you that there is such a rule, he should direct you to it.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

I am chair of a nominating committee for a local organization and have been asked to submit the names and bios of candidates to our web master for posting after the board meets to review the nominees. The board will not receive the names of the nominees until the meeting so I have declined to release the names to the webmaster prior to releasing them to the board. The webmaster is not a member of the board or the nominating committee. Am I required to release the names (if possible please direct me to the passage in Robert's Rules that applies)?

In general:

• You (collectively) are a committee.

• A committee reports to the proper party.

• A committee is under no obligation to pre-release any data to any party other than the proper party.

For your Nominating Committee, the proper party to which your committee shall report appears to be your board.

No leaks (i.e., pre-report data) of any kind is authorized in the 700+ pages of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR 10th ed.).

[Rob Elsman]

I am chair of a nominating committee for a local organization and have been asked to submit the names and bios of candidates to our web master for posting after the board meets to review the nominees. The board will not receive the names of the nominees until the meeting so I have declined to release the names to the webmaster prior to releasing them to the board. The webmaster is not a member of the board or the nominating committee. Am I required to release the names (if possible please direct me to the passage in Robert's Rules that applies)?

Ordinarily, the nominating committee is immediately subordinate to the assembly that will hold the election. From the information provided, it sounds to me like the general membership assembly will hold the election, so the nominating committee would ordinarily be immediately subordinate to that assembly--in which case, the committee should not make a partial report to the executive board unless it had previously been ordered to do so by rule or instruction of the general membership assembly. Nor should the committee release its recommendations to a webmaster for posting before the committee's report is presented to its parent assembly unless the committee had previously been ordered to do so by rule or instruction of its parent assembly.