- [Paula] The ASK Resource Center webinar.
Today we are pleased to host Duane Miller,
a registered parliamentarian
with the National Association of Parliamentarians.
He is employed as an interim minister
in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Duane coaches leaders
on the management of meetings of all sizes,
and also assists with governing document writing
and interpretation.
He holds a certificate non-profit board education
from BoardSource,
and works with a variety of nonprofits
to improve their governance structures.
In today's webinar, Presiding at a Meeting,
you will learn the basic principles
of Robert's Rules of Order,
how to preside over a meeting from beginning to end,
and parliamentary procedure lingo and key phrases to use.
Now we're going to turn it over to our presenter.
Duane, thank you for joining us today.
- [Duane] You're welcome, Paula.
Let me just say a little bit more
about the specific agenda for this webinar.
We're gonna look at six things.
First we're gonna start out with some basic principles
of parliamentary procedure.
Then we're gonna walk through some basic steps
for presiding at a meeting.
Then we'll deal with the specific steps
of handling a motion.
We're gonna spend a little time on classes of motions
and the myriad motions that are out there.
We're not gonna get real specific about those,
but just give a general overview of those.
And then a few things that people don't realize
about Robert's Rules of Order
we're gonna talk about at the end.
And then we'll share a couple resources.
So, the rules don't exist just for the sake of being rules.
The rules have a purpose,
and the purpose is a regard for several constituencies.
First of all, what's the will of the majority in any group?
Also, what are the rights of the minority,
especially when that minority
is greater than 1/3 of the group?
What are the rights of individual members
in a society or an organization?
What are the rights of the people
who can't be at the meeting for one reason or another?
The rules seek to protect all of those interests together.
Organizations have all kinds of rules. (laughs)
They're governed by several sets of rules,
starting with federal, state, and local law.
And then if your organization has a charter,
that governs what your organization can do
on the local or regional level.
And then the rules
that you're probably most likely familiar with
are constitution and/or bylaws.
The state law usually calls those bylaws,
but depending on your organization,
some organizations have something called a constitution
and then some bylaws to go along with it.
In parliamentary parlance, constitution and/or bylaws
are called bylaws for the sake of our conversation.
And then after you have your bylaws,
you have something called rules of order,
we'll talk about those a little bit more specifically
in a minute.
Rules of order govern how meetings are carried out.
And then standing rules usually have
something to do with the administration of an organization.
And then finally, believe it or not,
oftentimes the way people proceed in meetings
and in the organization doesn't have anything to do
with anything that's written down.
Custom oftentimes has something to do with
how meetings are conducted and how business is transacted.
But we won't talk about custom too much.
We're gonna talk a little bit about bylaws first.
Bylaws govern how your organization works.
And these include rules so important
that they can't be changed,
usually without previous notice or a 2/3 vote.
So things like the name of your organization,
the purpose of your organization, how one becomes a member
and what a person must do to maintain membership.
How meetings are scheduled and conducted,
provision for a thing like an annual meeting.
If you have an executive board,
authorizing that executive board
and what it's allowed to do.
Committees, what their functions are
and what they're allowed to do.
Those rules that are so important
that you want some consistency from month to month
and year to year.
So that's what bylaws do,
they govern how an organization works.
And they do place limits on what an assembly can do
and what other parts of an organization can do.
And generally speaking, bylaws cannot be suspended.
There's some exceptions to that,
but in the main you can't suspend a bylaw.
Rules of order,
which is what we're going to spend most of the time
on our webinar with today,
rules of order govern how the meeting works,
governs how you transact business
when members come together to make decisions
for the organization.
So we're gonna spend a little time now
on just some basic steps and basic things
that make for a valid meeting
where business that's transacted is legal.
First of all, you probably already know this,
gotta have a quorum.
What's a quorum?
A quorum is the minimum number of members
that you need to be present for business to be transacted.
And the reason for the quorum is
that you wanna protect against unrepresentative action.
You wanna protect against two or three people
deciding on a whim that they're gonna show up
and make a decision for a hundred or a thousand people.
A quorum should be specified in your bylaws,
how many people have to be together to hold a valid meeting.
It should be the largest number
that can be expected to attend under normal circumstances.
You want it to be a representative group of people
when you can.
And one thing we recommend in the parliamentary world is
that the quorum should be a specific number of people,
a raw number and not a percentage.
And the reason for that is that if you do it on percentage,
then you're always having to calculate what the quorum is,
because if you're like any other organization,
your membership numbers change from time to time
and you'll always have to recompute that.
And so having a raw number is the best way to do it.
Now, there's a question I get a lot.
What happens if you don't have a quorum?
Well, you can still start the meeting.
But you're limited in terms of
what you can do at that meeting.
So what you should do
if the time for the meeting has arrived,
or you've given it a little time extra,
and your quorum isn't there,
your minimum number of people isn't there.
Call the meeting to order.
Maybe take some steps to obtain a quorum,
working the phones, getting people there.
If you can't get people there,
one thing you can do is you can legally set the time
for a continuation of the meeting.
It can be the next week, the next month,
whenever you wanna have that.
And what's important about that is
that, say for example,
you're supposed to have an annual meeting
in January of that year.
You try to have your annual meeting on January 31st,
and you have a blizzard. (laughs)
And two people show up and you don't have a quorum.
You can still adopt a motion
to extend the meeting to meet sometime in February,
and you've met your legal obligation
to have that meeting in January.
So you can set a time for a continuation of meeting,
and the more important thing is here,
if you've tried to meet in January,
you've done, you fulfilled your legal obligation
to have your meeting in that month or at that time.
Now if it's an emergency,
and something absolutely needs to be adopted
at that meeting, say for example, the roof's leaking
and somebody's gotta okay a contract
to get the roof repaired.
Oftentimes what you can do
is you can still take emergency action,
approve it, trust that it's gonna be ratified by the group
at a subsequent meeting.
It's a risk, but more often than not it's a good risk.
If it's an emergency you can take action
and you can have it ratified at the later meeting.
So those are all of your options
if for some reason you don't get a quorum at your meeting.
You need at least two officers to have a valid meeting.
This is, again, assuming Robert's Rules of Order
is your parliamentary authority.
Two officers are needed to hold a valid meeting.
The presiding officer could be the president,
call it the chair, whatever you call it.
The presiding officer conducts the meeting,
sees to it that the rules are observed.
The secretary keeps a record of what was done.
That record is usually called the minutes.
The important thing about minutes is
that minutes are a record of what was done,
not necessarily what was said.
The important thing is to capture the actions of the group.
Some secretaries will put things in
that record what was said as a way of giving some background
behind the decision,
but you don't have to legally do that.
Sometimes people do that just to provide background.
Minutes are typically what was done in a meeting
and not what was said.
Now, the minimum number of officers for a meeting
is different from how many officers
do you have to have for your organization.
If you're in Iowa, state law says
that unless your bylaws provide otherwise,
you need to have three officers for your organization.
That being a president, a secretary,
and a treasurer in Iowa.
But that's different from what do you need for your meeting.
For your meeting, you just need two officers,
that presiding officer, and that secretary.
Usually, and we're gonna talk about an exception
at the end of the webinar,
but usually you wanna have some degree of formality
in your meetings.
The larger the meeting, the more this is true.
And so members will address the chair,
and there's different ways to address the chair.
Calling that person, that presider,
Mr. President or Madam President,
Mr. Chairman or Madam Chair,
Mr. Chairperson or Madam Chairperson,
to address somebody by their title and not by their name.
And then members address each other through the chair.
It's not proper usually to just turn to someone
and start talking to them during a meeting.
You go to the chair, you address the chair and say,
you address the membership
by speaking to and through the chair.
Members do not speak until they are recognized by the chair,
and when you're recognized by the chair,
that gives you complete control of the floor
and ability to speak.
We want one member speaking at a time
for the obvious reason that meetings aren't very productive
when there's a lot of sidebar conversations going on.
And then the chair refers to him or herself
in the third person.
So the chair rules this
or the chair recognizes the member from Adair County
or whatever it might be.
So those are just some patterns of formality,
and again, the larger your meeting,
the more formal you're probably gonna wanna be.
And the more hot the meeting is,
if there's a big fight going on,
the more formal you're probably gonna wanna be.
So some basic steps for a meeting.
When the appointed time for the meeting has arrived,
and it's been determined that a quorum is present,
the presiding officer calls the meeting to order.
And a couple of tips on how to call a meeting to order,
first of all, try to avoid starting the meeting early
unless you know everybody is there.
I can tell you a couple stories about
when a chair started a meeting early
and some decisions were made before everybody got there,
and of course the people who were there on time,
but late for the discussion, were understandably not happy
that the meeting had started early.
Again, that gets to protecting the rights of the members.
And then one way to start a meeting
is just simply to say something like,
the meeting will come to order, or I like to add please.
The meeting will please come to order.
So just a couple tips about how to get a meeting rolling.
So order of business.
Now, if your organization
has adopted Robert's Rules of Order,
you may not be aware of this, but if your organization
has adopted Robert's Rules of Order,
this is your order of business.
There's already one in the book,
unless you've decided to adopt another one.
And this can be a good template for
how you organize your meeting,
whether or not you have your own rule of order
or build your own agenda.
One, you start out
with the reading and approval of the minutes
from the previous meeting or meetings.
Then you have reports of your officers,
your board, if you have one, and your standing committees.
Then if you have any special committees, they can report.
Special orders are things that got scheduled
for a specific meeting or a specific day or a specific time.
Then unfinished business,
anything that's carried over from a past meeting,
and then any new business.
So that's not a bad way of structuring your meeting,
even if you don't wanna, even if you don't have this
as your set rule of order, it's not a bad guide.
Now what many organizations do
is they adopt an agenda for each meeting,
and they do this after the meeting's call to order.
One example, if you were wondering
what special rules of order are for a meeting,
this is one example.
Your agenda is actually a rule of order.
Most of the time, an agenda is put together
by unanimous consent,
and is changed by unanimous consent.
If there is no objection, we will take up the report
of the committee on paving the parking lot
or whatever it is you wanna deal with.
Strictly speaking, an agenda needs a 2/3 vote
to change once it's agreed to,
but again, if it's non-controversial
you can change it by unanimous consent.
Again, if there's no objection,
we'll take up whatever it is you wanna take up next.
So, handling a motion.
This is really important for a chairperson to be aware of.
There's two halves to this.
The first half is bringing the motion,
getting the proposal for action in front of the group.
And then second half of it is
the actual consideration of the motion.
So, the first thing in bringing a motion
is a member makes the motion.
Someone gets recognition and they move a certain action.
And then a second member seconds the motion,
and all that means is
that another member wants to talk about it.
The only purpose of having seconding
is to protect the group's time.
So, someone makes a motion,
another person seconds the motion.
This is where friendly amendments are appropriate.
So if there's a minor change
that someone wants to suggest to a motion,
they can ask if the member's okay with it.
And if the member's okay with it,
the person who seconds, if they're okay with it,
then it can go forward.
Now if I suggest a change to a motion someone else has made
and the seconder doesn't like it for some reason,
then I can go ahead and second that motion,
the whole point being that a couple people
wanna see the specific motion get in front of the group.
But that's where friendly amendments have to happen
because once the chair states the question,
that is, says it's been moved and seconded
that X, Y, or Z is gonna happen.
Once the chair states the question,
that motion becomes the property of the assembly,
and friendly amendments are generally
not in order at that point,
and you need to use more formal ways to amend a motion.
So a member makes the motion,
another member seconds the motion,
and then finally the chair states the question
on the motion, says it's been moved and seconded that.
And then you can ask, chair can ask,
are you ready to vote?
And if no one wants to speak to the motion,
then they're apparently ready to vote.
But usually, people are gonna wanna talk about it.
So three steps for considering a motion now.
The motion's in front of the group,
and members debate the motion or discuss the motion.
And the way the chair recognizes a member is to say,
the chair recognizes, they can call that person by name
if it's a small, informal kinda group.
Or if it's a formal convention,
the chair recognizes the member from Polk County
or wherever you happen to be.
And then as the debate progresses,
the chair continually is checking in,
is there any further discussion
or is there any further debate?
We'll talk about rules for debate in just a minute.
But after it's apparent
that nobody else wants to talk about the motion anymore,
the chair then puts the question or puts it to a vote,
and the way a chair puts the question to a vote
is to say, all those in favor say aye,
or all in favor say yes.
I prefer to say yes.
Or all those opposed say no.
And then once the vote's been taken,
usually by a voice vote,
and we won't get into other ways to take votes
in this webinar, that's a little more on...
That's for another webinar. (laughs)
So anyway, the chair announces the result of the vote.
There are X in favor and Y opposed.
And then say, after you've announced,
and please announce the result of the vote.
I know in some organizations
they're shy for whatever reasons
about announcing what the vote is,
but the members really do have a right to know
how many said yes and how many said no.
If you have the custom of asking for abstentions or present,
please know that in the normal case,
abstentions are not counted
in the calculation of the majority.
It's the majority of people
who cast an actual yes or no vote in the usual case.
So there are X in favor, Y opposed,
the motion is adopted or the motion is lost,
or you can also say the motion is defeated.
Anyway, so, debate, put the question,
announce the results of the vote.
So, a couple rules about how to assign the floor in debate.
The member who made the motion has,
it's called preference in being recognized,
and the member who made the motion may speak first
if she or he wants to.
So if you're the chair and you've announced
that the motion has been moved and seconded,
are you ready for the question,
you look to the person who made the motion
to see if they wanna speak first, and if they do,
they have first crack at speaking, if they want to.
And they usually do. (laughs)
Now a member may speak a second time
after others have had the opportunity to speak
the first time.
And this is a little tricky, especially in big meetings,
but as much as a chair can,
a chair should try to alternate
between those who are in favor of the motion
and those who are opposed, to the extent that you can.
Sometimes that's hard to know.
Some conventions use red and green cards to identify
who's in favor of a motion who's and who's against it,
but this is as much as you can,
try to alternate between those in favor and those opposed,
because again, this is the rules
are trying to get to be fair,
to hear both sides or all sides of any given question, okay?
Some other rules for debate.
The chair does not participate in debate.
The chair's job is to remain impartial,
which is sometimes hard to do for chairs
when they have an opinion about
what's in front of the group,
but that's the job of the presiding officer
during consideration of business, to be impartial.
There's an exception to that
which we'll talk about that at the end of the webinar again.
Unless you have a different rule,
now if Robert's is your rules, get ready for this.
Speakers are limited to two speeches,
which isn't a bad rule, and 10 minutes of speech. (laughs)
So you're gonna wanna at least have
one special rule of order
which defines how many minutes a person can speak
for a speech.
The places where I'm parliamentarian
usually make that two or three minutes per speech.
And then a member needs
to stick to the merits of the motion.
So if a member is starting to talk about
the motion to pave the parking lot,
and then they start talking about
how beautiful the parking lot would be
because it's so sunshiny and warm today
and they start talking about the weather,
then the chair's job is to get somebody
back to talking about the merits
of the question, of the motion.
And so the way to do that if you're the chair
is just to simply say,
the member will please confine their remarks
to the merits of the motion.
And again, this is that third person stuff
that we were talking about earlier.
The chair refers to him or herself in the third person,
and the chair refers to the members,
usually in the formal study,
in the third person as well, all right.
Vote requirements.
Most of the time, majority vote is needed
to adopt a motion, and majority means more than half.
So, easy enough to calculate.
Now, some resources like to talk about
how a majority is 50% plus one,
and that's a little tricky
when you're talking about an odd number of votes.
So it's just basically best to understand
that majority means more than half
when you're computing a majority.
And then in some cases,
a 2/3 vote is needed to adopt a motion.
And some examples, this isn't all of them,
but some examples of what you need a 2/3 vote for
are whenever you wanna close debate, or adopt rules,
or modify existing rules, or change your agenda.
Those are things that require more than a majority
because in all of those cases,
you are messing to some degree with the rights of members,
and those require a supermajority, if you will,
to make changes to those rules and arrangements.
Just gonna spend a little time,
this is just gonna be a broad-stroke overview
of classes of motions.
I mean, we could spend all kinds of time
on the ins and outs of motions,
but I just want to spend some time
helping you get a little familiar
with all of the possible motions
that are out there.
A main motion is a motion
that brings a substantive piece of business
before a group,
and you may only consider one main motion at a time.
Now where some people get confused sometimes
is they leave the main out of that sentence
and they go, oh, only one motion at a time.
And then they think they gotta adopt one motion
before they can move on to something else,
and that's not really the case.
You may consider one main motion at a time,
but there are a bunch of other motions
that may or may not be in order that help transact business
while a main motion is being considered.
And that's what subsidiary motions do,
they help the group manage the main motion.
And then there's another class of motions
called privileged motions,
which help meet the needs of the group,
and I'll show you some examples of this in a minute,
that help meet the needs of the group
while the main motion's being considered.
Then there's a fourth class called incidental motions
that help the group manage its business.
There may or may not be a main motion on the floor
while that's going on.
And then there's a fifth class of motions,
they're called
motions to amend something previously adopted,
or we call 'em bring back motions,
is the better term for it.
So overall, five different classes of motions.
Some motions need a second, some don't.
Some motions are debatable, some aren't.
Some motions are amendable, some aren't.
Some motions, we already talked about this,
need a majority vote, some need a 2/3 vote.
Some don't even need a vote.
The chair decides whether the motion's in order
or is admissible.
Some motions are urgent enough to interrupt the speaker.
Question of privilege, the building's on fire!
It's really on fire!
That's when you wanna interrupt the speaker.
Or question of privilege, someone looks like they're sick,
can we call an ambulance?
Some motions can be reconsidered and some can't.
And so the one resource that I wanna point to you now
is the resource, it's a color chart.
It's a chart of ranking motions is the first piece,
and then a chart of non-ranking motions.
If you're a chairperson and you're kind of floored
by the fact that some motions need seconds, some don't,
debatable, some aren't amendable, how do you do that?
The best thing short of committing all this stuff to memory
is to have a helpful chart in front of you.
I'm offering one to you,
there's charts in Robert's Rules of Order,
there's other helpful charts floating around out there.
The key thing is don't worry about
committing all of this to memory.
There are tools out there
that can help you look up
details about motions so you know how to proceed.
And I think the chart that's in the resources
is one of the better charts that's out there.
It was put together by a friend of mine,
an attorney in Seattle, Washington.
Anyway, so see that helpful handout,
and we're gonna actually refer to that as we move,
when we get to subsidiary and privileged motions.
Okay, a little bit about main motions.
Main motions bring business before the group,
and they're in order only when there's nothing else
before the group.
So,
if the group is talking about
whether or not it wants to adjourn,
someone cannot say,
I wanna make a motion to pave the parking lot.
It's only when there's no other motion before the group
that a main motion is in order.
The original and incidental main,
this a little bit of, it's important,
but don't sweat on this too much
to know whether it's an original
or an incidental main motion.
An original main motion
is a totally fresh new piece of business,
an incidental main motion is something
that's been kicked around already but you're solidifying it,
so the motion to adopt, for example,
usually grows out of a committee report.
A committee comes out and reports,
we recommend that the parking lot be paved,
and then it's in order then
to have a motion to adopt that recommendation
that the parking lot be paved.
Or go back to our example of the emergency
when the quorum didn't show up and the roof is leaking
and we needed to get a thousand dollars spent
to get the roof fixed.
Then the group can have a motion to ratify,
which was to say, yeah, we're okay with the fact
that you fixed the roof.
So those are examples of incidental main motions.
Or sometimes they deal with procedure.
A motion to adjourn
if there's no other business in front of the group,
or a motion to take a recess
if there's no other business before the group,
those are also incidental main motions.
Again, just some specific information about those.
In the end, not important, not too important,
they're main motions.
Now what a subsidiary motion does
is it helps the group manage the main motion.
And what's listed in front of you
are the subsidiary motions
that are ranked from highest to lowest,
and they're on that first of two handouts as well.
And these have rank.
And here's a little bit of the logic
behind subsidiary motions.
So you got a main motion to pave the parking lot.
And let's say you're a member who just doesn't think
that paving the parking lot is, frankly, all that important,
and you'd like to see this thing go away.
In other words, you wanna kill it.
And so the motion that that member would make is,
I move that we postpone this motion
to pave the parking lot indefinitely.
And that is Robert's version of kill.
If you wanna kill something, that's what you move.
Lay on the table is a different motion
that has a different purpose
and we'll get to that in a minute.
So, motion comes before, I wanna pave the parking lot,
somebody moves to postpone indefinitely,
and somebody says, is thinking,
no, I wanna see that parking lot paved,
but I wanna make sure
that we don't blow a lot of money on it,
and so they make a motion
to amend the main motion
by inserting at a cost no more than $5,000.
So here's the logic behind this.
Robert makes kill a very low priority.
If someone wants to talk about and perfect that motion,
their motion has rank over killing the motion.
That's the logic of Robert.
So now we've got, believe it or not,
three motions in front of us.
Somebody else says or thinks,
oh, this is way too complex for us to deal here,
let's dump this on a committee.
Mr. Chairman or Madam Chairperson,
I move that we
refer the three motions in front of us
to a committee to report at the next meeting.
And so the committee then has to then deal with
what's the best way to handle the paving of the parking lot
and they'll report back to the next meeting.
So, see how this works?
How that rank of motions works?
It allows the group to kill it if they want to,
but if someone wants to perfect it, you can.
Or someone, if the group decides
that it wants to commit it to a committee, they can do that.
That's kind of how this ranking works.
Other subsidiary motions that you can apply to a main motion
are to postpone to a certain time.
Let's say you don't wanna send it to a committee,
but the group wants to think about it for a month,
so someone can move, I move that we postpone consideration
of this parking lot motion to our next regular meeting,
or whenever that might be.
Other subsidiary motions can be
to limit or extend the limits of debate on a main motion,
to order the previous question or close debate
on the main motion
and whatever else is being considered.
And the rules on this are getting a little complicated,
which again, is good for another webinar.
And then finally there's lay on the table,
which oftentimes is used
when you're in the middle of something,
but your speaker has showed up
and you wanna listen to your speaker,
and so, I move that we take
the motion to pay for the parking lot
and lay it on the table, and so that sets it aside
so you can get to something else.
So in a nutshell, that's subsidiary motions.
The thing to remember about them, again,
is that they have rank,
and their purpose is to help the group
manage the main motion.
Privileged motions.
Now these rank above the subsidiary motions
as you'll see on the handout.
And these are in order
when there's a main motion on the floor,
and I'm not gonna say a whole lot about these
except to say that these help the group manage its needs
while it's considering a main motion.
And again, these are ranked from highest to lowest.
The surprising thing here is
that adjourn has a very high rank,
and the reason adjourn has a very high rank is
that a group actually has the right
to quit its meeting anytime it wants,
even if it's in the middle of something.
And so a motion to adjourn is in order
even when there's business on the floor
if the group decides that it just wants to quit for the day,
or the meeting.
Then fix the time to which to adjourn
is getting back to that example
of the quorum that we had earlier
where the quorum didn't show up.
Fix the time to which to adjourn is to say,
it's a motion to decide that we're gonna extend our meeting
to another day or another time.
This one is oftentimes
used when there probably isn't gonna be another meeting
quickly down the road,
but people are feeling a need to get that together soon
to deal with something.
Okay, I'm not gonna walk through
every incidental motion here.
Just know that there's any number of other motions
that are out there
that help the organization manage its business,
and whether they're in order
depends on a wide berth of circumstances,
again, way too much to try to get to in a basic webinar,
but just be aware that there are all kinds
of different motions that are out there.
And again, the chart, especially the second page,
there's a real helpful resource if you need to know
whether you can interrupt the speaker with any of these,
or whether these need a second,
or whether they're debatable or amendable,
or what kinda vote you need on 'em.
Again, this is why charts are really handy,
because there's just a lot of possible motions out there.
And then finally, the bring back motions
are just motions that help a group revisit something
that they've seen before.
These are not ranked, nor were the incidental motions,
those aren't in the order of rank.
These are in the order of how they're presented
in Robert's on the slides.
They're in alphabetical order on the resource.
So a little different order on the resource
then you see in Robert.
But these are,
these are cases where the business is coming
back to the assembly for one reason or another,
and I won't go into these in any detail.
So that's the overview of the motions,
and I realize that that can be overwhelming,
but with a little study and with the use of the resources,
and remembering that the incidental,
or the privileged and subsidiary motions have rank,
and the incidental motions may or may not apply
depending on circumstances.
The use of the charts
can be really helpful to a chair.
Now some things that you're gonna wanna know.
The most important thing that I think chairs need to know
and groups need to realize is
that we've talked during this webinar
about the need for formality,
but sometimes formality is frankly kind of impractical.
And in some cases, formality isn't even required.
A group can proceed informally
if it's
a board of
no more than about a dozen members,
so a small board can often proceed informally.
Committees can proceed informally under the rules,
and any small group can proceed informally
as long as the issue that you're considering
is not really a hot one.
Well what do I mean by informal consideration?
In informal consideration you don't have to have a motion,
a formal motion in front of the group
to bat something around.
You can just simply kick something around,
decide what your course of action is gonna be.
Once you've decided what your course of action is gonna be,
you can formally move something be done
and approve the motion, have a vote on it.
But you can have informal conversation about something
leading up to a decision if you're in a small group
or a small board or a small committee.
So that's the first thing to know,
is that you don't always have to abide by the formal rules.
Now if you're in a small group and you've got a hot issue,
I would recommend then you be a little more formal
in how you go at it.
And then we talked about this a little earlier,
but you can use what's called
unanimous consent or common consent
when you have general agreement on things like an agenda,
minutes, an amendment or adjournment.
And again, what the chair says,
if there's no objection we will adopt this agenda,
or if there's no objection, the minutes are approved,
or if there's no objection,
we'll incorporate this recommended amendment
into the motion,
or if there's no objection, we're going home. (laughs)
It just kills me at the end of a meeting
where people feel like they have to have
a formal motion to adjourn when it's clear
that the order of business is done
or it's 11:30 at night and we're all ready to go home,
I just, so.
There's no objection, all in favor please rise,
let's get out of here.
Let me back up to the informal consideration.
Something I forgot to say there on informal consideration
is that the chair can participate a little bit more
in conversation in informal consideration.
The chair can speak to things
and maybe even make a motion and vote
if you're doing informal consideration.
Again, that's an exception to the usual idea of formality,
but in small groups and non-controversial things,
the chair can participate more too.
Then finally, just remember the purpose of the rules
is to determine the will of the majority.
That's why we have the rules, that's the bottom line.
The rules don't exist for their own sake,
they exist to determine the will of the group.
A few resources besides the things
that are available on the webinar website.
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised
is the current edition.
That's important to know
because there's a bunch of other books out there
based on Robert but they aren't Robert.
The current color is brown.
Now this is a thick book, it's kind of intimidating,
it's something around 500 to 600 pages.
And the 12th edition's coming out soon,
and the color will probably change as well.
There's a shorter book out there that is really,
if you're new to parliamentary procedure
or even if you aren't, there's a shorter book called
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief.
It's based on Robert, it's written by the same people
who wrote and published Robert's,
and it's a valid authority as well,
and it's a great book if you're new to presiding,
and it's a yellow book and it's a thin book
and a very readable book,
and I commend that to you
if you're looking for an introduction to this material.
And then finally, I'm willing to,
one thing that the person who introduced me didn't mention
is that I'm the stepfather and co-guardian
of a young person with multiple disabilities,
and so I have a stake in working with
groups in the disability world.
So feel free to call me at 515-867-1162
if you need advice on presiding
or how to proceed with something
or interpretation of bylaws, I'm happy to help in that way.
So feel free to give me a call.
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