Bylaws Update

Bylaws Update

By Nancy Gibbs

Vice President

Board of Directors

As many of you may be aware, we have been slowly updating our bylaws over the last five years, removing operational things (such as office hours) to the new Policy & Procedures Manual and of course updating key things such as the membership categories in 2009 and the board changes in 2007 & 2008. This is the last revision that is proposed. It is more of a “final cleaning up” than anything else because it tidies up miscellaneous items noted below. It was not intended for substantial change.

For instance, all of the paragraphs will now have the same font and formatting; we’re recommending a few grammatical changes (including to our mission statement), some redundancies are eliminated, and we are removing to the P&P Manual the final round of operational activities (mostly timetables for dues payments, etc).  No changes are proposed to any of those passages; they are relocated with their full meaning (although the sentence structures are now more ‘reader-friendly’). Here are the currently proposed Bylaws with notes and P&P documents.

There are 3 very minor updates proposed:

  1. Article 4, Section 2ii: Increase from 30 to 90 days the time a Chapter would have to respond to a warning letter. This timeline is already reflected in the new chapter formation guide.
  2. Article 5, Section 2A: In the case of a self-nominee, increase the number of signatures required from 5 to 10 prior to being placed on the ballot. This corresponds to the number the Board would use in endorsing a candidate (nominating committee plus board majority) and also equals the number needed to start or maintain a chapter.
  3. Article 6, Section 7F: Introduce the option of an annual report, which we believe should be published regularly. To avoid repetition, we recommend a report OR a meeting rather than mandating both.

We welcome your comments. Please review the bylaws and let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. Members have 30 days, until May 5, to comment:  nancygibbs.1@gmail.com or call me at 215-968-3414.  You may also leave a message or make a comment to Sherrie Boyer: sherrie@pacrafts.org or 267-884-5370.