This topic contains 13 replies, has 8 voices, and was last updated by 
ACME_WildCachers 3 years, 8 months ago.
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The Board of Directors is proposing changes to the WGA Bylaws. Please review the current bylaws and the proposed changes below. This proposal is being posted here for review by the WGA membership for a period of at least seven days before the Board will hold a vote on whether to approve the changes. Given the proximity to the holidays, we are not likely to vote until after the first of the year, so you have plenty of time to provide feedback. If you’re not comfortable posting here, feel free to reach out to directly to me or any other board member.
Over time we have found that our approach to managing the business of the WGA has drifted a bit from what is stated in the current the bylaws. The proposed changes would bring the bylaws more in line with recent practice while removing some of the most prescriptive guidance to allow the current board to make decisions about what tools will work best for them. Other changes of note include an addition to the Secretary’s duties as well as a significant rework of Article VII on elections to streamline the portion on board and officer vacancies.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
I carefully reviewed the proposed changes, and agree that these changes are reasonable at this point in time. Thank you for taking the time to consider updating the bylaws.
zuma
I have read over the proposed changes. They seem to be relatively straight forward and should be incorporated.
Tim Lange
aka: BurlingtonRR
The proposed bylaw changes clean up the ambiguous and wordy language without making significant changes to how the WGA actually operates. Nice job, Board Members!
One thing the bylaws don’t seem to directly address is a clear definition of what or who constitutes Memberhip. Maybe we missed it!!! Although the bylaws state “any individual” who registers, etc, does that mean a member is defined as one team (e.g. katste) or are both Kathy and Steve of katste officially counted as two members?
During Board elections it is always clearly defined as one vote per team. During annual member meetings and other advisory or less formal input scenarios, for quorum and vote purposes, is it one per team or is it everyone who is in attendance? Does a membership quorum at the annual membership meeting constitute 15 teams or fifteen members of teams? If one has more than one geocaching.com account, is it possible for that person to have more than one WGA membership?
Although this isn’t of earth-shattering importance to us nor anyone else that we know of, we think the “team” as one vote official membership is implied, but seeing that we are updating the bylaws, it would be valuable for inserting some language in the Membership section clearing addressing what constitutes official membership for business purposes…caching team or every individual on a team.
Example:
“Membership is defined as one duly registered caching TEAM for official WGA business and member quorum and voting. All members of an officially registered Team are considered WGA members for all other purposes and activities.”
Thanks for asking for input and your hard work in updating the bylaws. We have some experience in that sort of thing and we know it is tedious work. If you feel we are just nitpicking of if you feel our comments are a non-issue, we are not offended if you feel the bylaws already cover this.
katste
Looks good.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau
Katste, see
Article III: Membership<br role=”presentation” />Membership in the WGA shall remain open to all interested persons who support the purposes<br role=”presentation” />detailed in Article II. An active member shall be defined as an individual at least sixteen (16)<br role=”presentation” />years of age who registers with the WGA annually for an account on the WGA website, logs in<br role=”presentation” />at least once per year, and who is a resident of the state of Wisconsin as defined by Section<br role=”presentation” />29.001 (69) of the Wisconsin State Statutes
The article above states that membership is open to individuals, not teams or families. Some couples choose to register by their team name for WGA membership, but it is really just the one individual named on the registration form. Other member(s) of the team who are eligible for membership could sign up with a different username for their own membership, and would therefore be able to cast their own vote.
All opinions, comments, and useless drivel I post are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of the WGA BOD.
Big Jim, thanks for the explanation and clarification. Our official katste registration lists Steve and Kathy and we always assumed correctly that we had a just one vote for elections and member meetings, etc. which aligns with your explanation. Not many members are weighing in on the bylaw improvements, so we appreciate that a Board member (although not in that official capacity) addressed our question with a good explanation. Thanks!
I did have a concern on Article VI- General Membership Meeting.
By eliminating the sentence referencing Roberts Rules of Order (RRO), the By-laws mute the rights of members to raise a Point of Order, Point of Information, Point of Inquiry, Point of Personal Privelage, as well as other items that make up an orderly meeting.
Rather than eliminating that sentence, I would let it stand and advise the BOD to have a short tutorial at its organizational meeting after elections. This is a great time to develop leadership skills to pass on to new Directors that are elected, as well as a good review for seated Directors.
Wow, VERY nice job on the revisions, and all grammatically correct too!
My favorite revision is regarding “active member” status. The current bylaws state that one must register every year at the WGA website, and now it is being proposed that “active” membership simply requires a registered active member to log in to the website at least once annually. Nice.
Along those lines, a thought that I had is regarding voting members for the board of directors elections. Currently, to be a voting member, one must log into the WGA website AND register your membership at least once per year. Otherwise per the revised bylaws their membership will have lapsed and therefore they would be unable to vote. I don’t have a problem with that, but it would be good to point that out via a newsletter or Facebook post, for those who don’t frequent the WGA site. I like the wording that they don’t have to re-register every year for membership, simply log in.
We second Hack1of2 in support of the change to logging on once a year to retain membership. To have to re-register each year seemed redundant.
Jim and Linda’s thoughts to retain the Roberts Rules of Order phrase is worthy of more thought. We have been involved in probably thousands of School Board, government, non-profit and foundation meetings and almost all of them include RRO as the guiding process to run meetings. It is the universally accepted standard for procedures to run orderly meetings.
That being said, we think that, at times, skilled parliamentarians have used RRO to actually “disrupt” an orderly meeting to avoid a vote (think Congress, etc) or to unintentionally turn simple decisions into boring marathons where a tedious hang-up with procedure overrules common sense.
On the other hand, RRO ensures, as indicated by Jim and Linda, that everyone present gets a real voice in the proceedings in a clearly defined equal and orderly manner, if implemented properly.
Although we have a great deal of experience operating under RRO, we don’t feel that we are cognizant of all the “rules of the rules” and that 99 + percent of WGA members are in the same fog. A member probably doesn’t know that they can raise a point of order, etc. We are not sure if we support keeping RRO or eliminating it in the bylaws, we do agree with Jim and Linda that some clear guidelines for running and participating in meetings and some training would be valuable.
I’ve never been a fan of Robert’s Rules of Order. I have seen several organizations that I am involved with moving away from RRO. A member can still speak up and ask a question or make a comment without calling it a “Point of” this or that.
All opinions, comments, and useless drivel I post are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of the WGA BOD.
While digging a bit deeper on RRO, non-profit organizations have eased up on procedural RRO, since the financial status has lower limits than for-profit entities. A by-law can still be suspended by motion, if it is necessary for an action.
I agree with Big Jim, and RRO is not needed in a small org like the WGA.
zuma
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback! The board considered the discussion here during our January meeting and decided no additional changes were needed. We voted unanimously to adopt the changes as proposed. The bylaws page on the website will be updated within the next day or two.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
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