Bylaw Amendment Proposal Example

I hope this post will be helpful for other service unit delegates.  If you want to become involved, but you’re not sure how to go about it, you’ll first need to educate yourself about your role as a delegate and also familiarize yourself with your council’s governance framework.  I started a Delegate Duties category on this blog to pass on what I’ve learned myself as a delegate.  It’s dry and not the most interesting topic, but it’s important to know what you’re walking into so that you don’t spin your wheels trying to do something that’s not possible.  I don’t have a lot of posts in this category yet (because they aren’t the most exciting things to write!), but I do plan on adding to it from time to time.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a bylaw amendment proposal that’s been recently submitted to our board of directors.  For the past few years, our annual and spring meetings have been closed.  Only delegates, board members, and select staff members can attend.  I personally have been asked many times if they are open by people interested in attending.  Unfortunately, our delegate body is not very engaged.  At our last annual meeting, only 15 out of 35 service units were represented.  That means no one from those service units attended the meeting at all.  As part of our duties, delegates are supposed to go back to our service units and share what was discussed.  But if there’s a volunteer from one of those 20 service units who wants to know what happened, they are out of luck.  This also applies to anyone who is still involved as a volunteer but doesn’t necessarily belong to a service unit for whatever reason.

Many states require that nonprofits open their meetings to the public or at the very least to their membership.  In order to know if this is the case with your council, you’ll need to read through your state’s nonprofit act or sunshine laws.  It’s usually somewhere on your state legislature’s website.  South Carolina’s is located in the Code of Laws.  However in our case, unless I missed something, it doesn’t look like South Carolina requires business meetings to be open.  So at this point, we looked at our council’s bylaws in order to put something in effect to mandate that these meetings be opened to our membership who are 14 years and older.

It’s possible that this might be an option that your delegate body could take for a pressing issue. But before doing so, read through your council’s bylaws to verify how an amendment proposal should be brought forth in order to be added to the agenda for a vote.  There’s no sense going through the process and expend a lot of energy only to find out that what you’ve done is the wrong way to go about it.  Also, if you’re going to go this route, I’d suggest getting a parliamentarian to either write it or read through it at the very least.

I didn’t link directly to the petition because we want the signatures to only come from our council, but here’s the text:

We, the signers of this petition, support the following amendment to the Council bylaws and petition (1) for this proposed amendment to be added to the notice and agenda for the spring meeting of the council and (2) for this proposed amendment to voted on by the delegates of the council.

Amend By-Laws, Girl Scouts of South Carolina – Mountains to Midlands, Inc., Article V, by adding the following after Article V. 3:

4. Open Meetings. The Council’s annual meeting and any additional and special called meetings of the Directors, Officers, and Delegates of the Council shall be open to individuals age 14 and older who are members of the Girl Scout Movement and who are currently registered through the Council. Announcements regarding date, time, place, and purpose of any such meetings, inviting attendance by those eligible to attend, shall be made through council communication channels no later than the time formal written notice is sent to Directors, Officers, and Delegates.

Rationale for Proposed Amendment:

GSSC-MM’s delegate meetings are currently closed; only the council officers, board members, and delegates may attend. In the spirit of transparency, we believe that our council’s meetings should be open to any registered member of GSSC-MM (includes lifetime) who is at least 14 years of age and who desires to attend to witness the proceedings. Allowing meetings to be open allows any member eligible to be elected to be a Service Unit delegate to:

(1) learn more about our council’s purpose, strategies, and objectives,

(2) learn how our council is governed, and

(3) be more prepared for a future delegate role in our council.

Both our girls and our adults deserve the chance, if they so desire, to witness our council’s governance in action so they can be better prepared to participate in council governance in the future, thus strengthening our council’s governance and democratic processes.

We attached a copy of the petition and signatures along with a draft copy of the bylaws and emailed it to our council’s chair of the governance committee and the chair of the board of directors.  If you’re not sure to whom you should send agenda requests and action items such as a bylaw amendment proposal, and your bylaws or other documents don’t give you any direction, then usually the chair of the governance committee would be your best bet.

Currently, we’re waiting to hear back from the board.

I want to really stress that it’s very important for the membership and delegate body to participate in your council’s governance.  If they don’t, then I can guarantee you at some point the voice of volunteers will be taken away.

Addendum clarification:  The business meetings referred to in this bylaw amendment proposal do not apply to board meetings – only business meetings involving delegates.