[plug] PLUG Constitution Change: Proposal for membership review
Onno Benschop
onno at itmaze.com.au
Sun Nov 20 14:41:34 WST 2011
I'm the president of an Incorporated club which is subject to the same
(similar) rules and we're going through this process right now. (Our rules
were last updated in 1995 :| We're going down the same route, percentages
rather than strict numbers.
May I suggest that you spend a little time considering if your new rules
has processes to deal with disruptive members. You might all be friends
right now, but that may change - in our club the founders didn't even
consider that a member might resign - and we're having to deal with that
right now.
The only other comment I can make is that we're also making the minimal
amount of changes possible. We're in the process of discussing something
which we're currently calling our S.O.P. which discusses the make up of the
committee, the roles and responsibilities, where stuff is stored, how we
introduce new members etc. What this means is that a simple meeting can
change that without needing to re-register the Rules of Association all
over again.
My 2 bits worth.
O
On 20 November 2011 12:47, James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to> wrote:
> Dear PLUG,
>
> It came to PLUG Committee's attention at the end of last year that the
> PLUG constitution (available on the PLUG web site, see below) doesn't quite
> fit us these days. In particular, last January at our AGM when we had 22
> members, and we required a quorum of 30; this triggered the clause to hold
> a follow up meeting the next week (at the same time and place) to carry the
> motions of the previous week.
>
> We've also grown to like having some extra people on the Committee in the
> form of Ordinary Committee Members (without specific office such as the
> four *executive* office bearers), but our current constitution doesn't
> mention this; these people have effectively been co-opted in thus far.
>
> Lastly, we've never had a definition for what a regular Committee Meeting
> Quorum is. All of this adds up to show that our current constitution from
> the late 1990's no longer really fits us.
>
> Associations in WA must register their constitution with the Ministry of
> Fair trading, who issue a "model" constitution containing their recommended
> defaults. Our current constitution deviates from this significantly, so the
> Committee had two choices:
>
> - small amendments to our current constitution (and risk having it
> rejected by Fair Trading for differing from current accepted wordings)
> - applying our required changes to the current model
>
> We've opted for the second choice, and in doing so, we're trying to
> produce the *minimal *number of changes from the model constitution that
> permit us to continue to operate in the way we feel is what PLUG does (or
> had documented that it does) in practice.
>
> Any changes to the constitution need to be given formal notice to you, the
> membership (this is not it; it will come from our Secretary), and needs to
> be approved by a General Meeting (in this case, we're aiming for this to
> happen at the Annual General Meeting this January). After this, it is
> submitted to Fair Trading for their review and acceptance (or rejection).
>
> In order to increase our chances of Fair Trading accepting our changes,
> we're keeping the differences from the model constitution relatively low in
> the draft the Committee has devised. While we would like to one day include
> Virtual Attendance, we're aware that other bodies (such as Linux Australia)
> have tried this in the past and had to remove it. This does not mean Proxy
> votes (we have that), but actually counting virtual attendees as part of a
> quorum count - proxy votes do not count in this sense.
>
> The most important part of changing a Constitution is having the support
> of the membership in order to do so, and this is why we are giving several
> weeks advance notice of this proposed change for the PLUG membership to
> discuss now; the deadline for this is 12 December 2011, as formal notice of
> the final changes needs to then be given.
>
> We have published the proposed constitution on the PLUG web site at
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Proposed2012, and put some notes at
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Proposed2012Notes to help you
> understand what the changes are from the current model constitution (
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/ModelRules2011), and the main changes
> imported from the current PLUG constitution (
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Current). Let me bullet point the
> issues in the proposed 2012 here:
>
>
> - A General Meeting (including AGM) Quorum was *thirty* (30) members;
> this is now proposed as *twenty-five percent* (25%) or five, whichever
> is greater.
> - Committee consisted of 4 (Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Treasurer,
> Secretary); this *now includes between one and three other members* (*Ordinary
> Committee Members*)
> - Committee meetings required *100% attendance for quorum*; it now
> requires *50%*.
> - Membership in the model constitution required being *nominated by a
> current member*; this is is removed. However, Committee must *accept/reject
> membership applications.
> *
> - Our *financial year was previously not defined*; in the model is was
> July-June AND the accounts needed to be presented at a GM within 4 months.
> As we have our AGM in January we moved to have our *financial year
> follow the *(Western/Gregorian)* calendar year* (*1 Jan - 31 Dec*).
> - The model constitution has everyone's *membership expiring
> simultaneously* (I know WAIA moved to this last year); we've opted to
> keep *individual anniversary* as we operate now.
>
>
> As I mentioned above, there are more changes that would be nice to do, but
> the focus is to change the General Meeting Quorum from 30 to 25% and
> recognise our OCMs. For our current membership of 74, this means we'd
> require 19 people to turn up in person; 30 may still be a little difficult.
> The other changes can wait until some time next year for a new Committee to
> work through. Note that we will still require 30 people at this coming AGM
> in January for us to be able to adopt this proposed Constitution and hold
> our elections; otherwise we trigger the same emergency rule again.
>
> I'd like to thank Alastair Irving and Peter Lyons for their work in
> getting this together, and the rest of Committee who have reviewed these
> changes. PLUG has had to obtain the current constitution from Fair Trading
> to validate that what we have on record is what they had, and then work
> through a three way merge of old, model and proposed changes.
>
> * At this stage we'd like to solicit feedback from the PLUG membership*.
> Changes that come forward now will go to the Committee to review, and may
> be incorporate into a possible future draft before our deadline of formal
> notice for the 2012 AGM. If you have major changes then please understand
> that these may need to be postponed until next year; we're looking to have
> minimal changes to give us an updated version to work from in future. If
> you're in favour of these changes and have no concerns, then an indication
> of your support is also most welcome!
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
> James & Committee 2011
>
> Set of Links for your convenience (thanks to Nick for tidying up):
>
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution
> http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Currenthttp://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/ModelRules2011http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Proposed2012http://www.plug.org.au/Constitution/Proposed2012Notes
>
>
> --
> *Mobile:* +61 422 166 708, *Email:* james_AT_rcpt.to
> PLUG President 2011: http://www.plug.org.au <http://http/www.plug.org.au>
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>
--
Onno Benschop
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|>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno..
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ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 -
onno at itmaze.com.au
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