On 11 Jun at 11:40, Alec Tritton <alec.tritton@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: > Hi Julian I shall be at the AGM this year after voting with my feet > last year. Once again we will have a change to the constitution forced > upon us by the Trustees (many of which are hardly ever there apart > from meetings of the Trustees) without adequate debate by the > membership. We can talk about the change at the AGM as much as we like > but in reality there will be more than enough proxy votes to "out > vote" the meeting, so it won't matter a stuff what those who have > bothered to attend think. This clause will allow the Trustees to go to > such organisations as http://www.do-it.org.uk/ and advertise for > Volunteer trustees that they want. May be sensible, but surely they > should first advertise for set skills amongst the membership first? We > should have considerable safeguards built in. After all it is only a > small step from there for the Trustees to recommend certain > individuals above genuine volunteers for committee. Proxy voting > originally prevented our current chairman from being re-elected and > only by intervention at the relevant AGM forced the then committee to > co-opt him. Actually the only way to object to constitutional changes > without discussion would be to NOT attend the AGM so that it would not > be quorate What is the purpose of the Trustees? Some people think they are super-volunteers and should be expert at all matters of the details of the Society's activities. Others think that the Trustees are primarily responsible for the financial management of the Society. One of the continual problems of the Society for perhaps the last ten years is shortage of finance. So what we need is a sprinkling of people with access to large funds; they do not have to be volunteers, they do not have to be expert at the details of the Society's activities, though they do have to support the Society's aims of serving Genealogy. Some people with access to finance may not have been a member for a long time; I do not see the harm in this if they can (begin to) achieve what is needed. We would be foolish to throw out the opportunity to gain this sort of expertise. The proposed change is to being "a Member of the Society throughout the term of his or her election". With rolling membership I am not sure what "Term" means. If it means January to January, then I would support this proposal as it would give them five months of membership. If "Term" means "from the start of their rolling membership" then they might only be a member for a week before Election and I would not support this proposal. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/