Bob,
I believe your report said there were only a few members so far this year. 22 to be exact, of which 12 are Board Members that are free.
To change dues, here is the bylaw:
c. Membership is for one (1) fiscal year (Jan 1-Dec. 31). Dues for the next year shall be set each year at the annual meeting by a simple vote, quorum as described below. If quorum is not met, dues shall remain the same as the prior year.
If so, it would appear that we need a quorum (11 votes and here is the article: b. Quorum: Shall consist of at least 50 percent of paid membership including absentee ballots and proxy votes
) to change the dues. And now it would seem we have a very small number and it would be fairly easy to change the dues structures.
And other parts that we may need to change. Guess now would be the time.
We need to make changes in the Chapter thing as well. Looks as if we will never get organizations such as CRAM, etc to simply join as a group, so we need to charge ahead on a basis of individual memberships.
However, I think we should allow organizations to join as well as a Chapter. How much do we charge them for dues?
And lastly, I think there are some Board Members no longer on the job. We need to know who those are and get some new folks elected that will be highly contributive.
Rick
Well, if a quorum is of the paid members, I guess we should contact them, eh?
Can you have an "online quorum"?
Right!
We can reword the items we need to and have Bob send them letters or better via email, or whatever is required,
RIck
I still have the mass emailing program that Rick gave me that can email a list of people without anyone elses email address in each email (bbbbblalalah)...i.e. you get an email only addressed to you (some folks get sensative when their email address is shown with everyone else - AND that could be used against us should anyone want to communicate with our entire membership). I am pretty sure it also has voting options where a reply to an email (and only one) is counted yeigh or neigh based on the subject line.
Bob - can you send me the list of email addresses?
I also think we should look at what it takes to get a quorum - 50% may be a bit much on expected replies.
50% of the membership is required under the bylaws to change the dues.
If we change the bylaws we still need the quorum and it takes 2/3 vote to change it.
As for officers. I know we have some that are no longer doing their duties and probably do not want to serve any longer.
The bylaws say that the President can appoint someone until the next elections.
We have a few people that are strongly interested in helping out and I think we ought to get some of our deadwood out and some hot folks in.
Your thoughts?
Also, we can have a special meeting with a 15 day notice.
I think we ought to do that today and before the meeting time we should rewrite the parts of the Constitution that we think needs revamped, and then call for a vote.
Your thoughts?
Rick
Jake,
I'm away on a business trip, but will be home later tonight. I'll get you the email addresses then. Also, could you add the Regatta Certification discussion items in my post to your discussion list?
Thanks!
Bob
Rick,
Your ideas sound good. I can't make a meeting today or tomorrow, but anytime after that is OK.
Bob
Does it have to be in one location, or would a video conference or online meeting suffice?
A phone meeting would be plenty...Although taking a vote would mean each person would have to identify themselves followed by their vote. I've got video conference capabilities here too - but that might be hard to pull off elsewhere.
Heck, I am not even sure I could arrange a phone meeting. Hope someone else has the expertise. NAMSA would cover the costs I am sure, once we start getting some income.
Again, I think we have to give 15 days notice for a special meeting. If I am correct in my reading of the Constitution, then we ought to get that notice out and have our phone conversation 15 days later.
I really don't think we should hack this up -- we should keep good records so we don't come off running this thing like Hobie has.
Rick
Rick, suggest you run a "virtual meeting" via Email.
Caleb
That might be pretty clumsy and slow going. I used to have a live chat room that worked pretty good. We used it to conduct two National Meetings for the Multihull Council. Not many folks showed up and it was expensive, so I dropped it in the basket. Probably still have the software somewhere, but it has to run on NT instead of Linux.
The only way email would work is after we decide what changes would be good, write up changes and then have email votes to all the members. And I think that is what we are trying to do.
It is just that we all have to concur on the changes and the wording of them.., and still do it legally and within the confines of our Constitution.
If anyone knows of a site that offer live meetings, that would probably be the best bet.
Rick
I'm not an expert, but I think someone said you could develop a form similar to a "ballot" in Adobe, with the wording of the new amendments, and a vote area
This could then be returned to you via email (so you have the sender's address to verify against the member list)
I'll try to find out more.
Jay
Two things:
-Yahoo groups allows you to have live chat sessions. All we have to do is set up a Yahoo group for NAMSA (I did that at one time). We can do a bulk conference call but the costs will be something like $0.12/min per line....10 people is $1.20 / minute; pricy. I'll be glad to set up the Yahoo thing again if we like.
Voting - the email software that Rick gave me has some interesting features. I can send an email out to a list of people and they reply with a Yes or No in the subject line. It registers their vote if their email was on the original list and will not accept more than one vote from any single email address. I think this should be our offical constituency voting system.
Jake,
I sent you and Bob an email on the subject.
Today I am going to announce a special meeting in 15 days. Meanwhile, please look over the proposed changes to the bylaws and let me know what you think.
I think we should go ahead and set up the Yahoo meeting.
I think the Mailloop thing would be good, if all the members have email addresses. If not, I think we will be back to USPS.
However, I think that email will definitely work this time.
Rick
Bob emailed me the list of members and it shouldn't be hard to get a quorum from it. I will do a test email in the next two days asking for a response and verification of email because we have a vote pending. The ones that I don't get a response from over three days, I will mail a letter (or call) asking them to update us with their email address.