Seeking Endorsements for Bylaws Proposal - Change to membership application signature requirements

General
1

Hello All,

Our annual Annual Meeting of the Membership is coming up on July 20th and this is when we vote on Director and Officer positions as well as changes to Hive13’s bylaws.

I propose a change to Hive13’s bylaws. Approving new members and completing the membership application process is awkward and cumbersome. Specifically, requiring that two Directors or Officers sign the application often causes delays in processing applications and sometimes multiple visits for a prospective member. Should we be in the situation where there is an increased interest in joining Hive13 or the situation where there are vacancies or less active members in our leadership group the problem only worsens. We have many members who have previously held leadership positions and understand the membership application process as well as recognizing qualities that make an applicant either a good or poor choice for membership.

I propose that we reduce the number of required signatures to one and that we give the board of directors the ability to designate members to have the authority to approve and sign applications.

Currently, the bylaws read:

Membership : Eligibility : 2 - Any eligible person may be approved as a Member, at any meeting with any Director or Officer to complete the membership application form and waiver of liability. The official membership application must be signed by two Officers or Directors. Upon payments of their first periodic dues their membership is validated.

I propose changing this to read:

Membership : Eligibility : 2 - Any eligible person may be approved as a Member, following completion of the membership application form and waiver of liability. The official membership application shall be signed by an Officer, Director, or any member designated by the board of directors to have the authority to approve applications. Upon payments of their first periodic dues, their membership is validated.

The current bylaws require the endorsement of five Members in order to go up for a vote. Please, if you are willing to endorse this change, post here saying so so we can put this up for a vote (I count as the first of 5 endorsements). If you have alternate suggestions for how to better re-incorporate this, let me know, we can tweak it for your endorsement.

Thanks,

Dave Schwinn
Lame Duck President

Hive13

2

I support this change.

Brad

3

I support this proposal. Sometimes events will encourage people to join the Hive, and having the ability to approve their membership without two officers would be a great way to make membership more accessible for interested potential members!

Tara

4

I think this is a much needed change to make the hive more approachable to new members and relieve some burden from leadership! I definitely endorse this.

Thanks,

Kevin M.

5

I think this is an improvement, and will serve to make the membership process more accessible. I endorse the change.

Kate

6

Thank you! We have a “quorum”. I believe this is the first bylaw change proposal since the enactment of the bylaw rule requiring five endorsements so we don’t really have a clear protocol for what comes next. Just because it seems more official to do so I am going to resubmit this as a formal proposal to go onto the ballot.