A quorum of members. This is one of the most important things. Know your quorum, it will be in your bylaws, go right now, I’ll wait…
What is a quorum anyway “the minimum number of members who must be present at the meetings of a deliberative assembly [meeting] for business to be legally transacted”. Basically you can’t pass motions, you can’t do any of your official business if you don’t have a quorum. You can listen to people talk, but you can’t take action. It is the number of people who have to be at the meeting in order to make things happen. You have to have a quorum to take any kinds of actions or to make things happen.
It varies greatly from organization to organization. Some have a percentage, some have a specific number. It is sometimes a majority of the people in the body, sometimes it is only 10%. Robert’s Rules says that the number “should approximate the largest number that can be depended on to attend any meeting except in very bad weather or other extremely unfavorable conditions”. Also make sure you know who counts toward the quorum and who doesn’t. This is another thing than can vary. Ask someone although not during a meeting because chances are the person might not know and will have to make it up and make it sound good, then again if you are loud and sharp enough this might work in your favor. Just sound like you know what you are talking about and suggest what you want it to be in a very “I know what I’m talking about” kind of voice and chances are surprisingly good that they’ll just go with it.
This number shouldn’t be absurdly low, if it is you will make it easier for people to blow off the meeting. You should be able to guilt people into going by saying that you need them for a quorum. This number is a very crucial one. Get it and write it on the front of your folder for that organization. The benefits of having an absurdly low quorum is that you only have to get a couple friends to come or make pals with a couple people (nearly everyone likes cookies) and you can change the whole direction of the organization.
This number shouldn’t be absurdly high, if it is no one will show up because you’ll never get anything done anyway. Or when people do show up you won’t be able to complete business. Basically when you don’t have a quorum it is really hard to accomplish anything. If you are looking to kill an organization raising the quorum is actually a really good way to do this. You convince people who are there that you need to get more people to show up, you say that you are really hearing what the organization wants with such a low quorum. 1 ½ times what your current number is, isn’t going to make people be too afraid, if you go much over that they’ll flip out, I’d recommend 1 ¼ to 1 ½ your current number. And you can keep doing it until you’ve got to have everyone there to make anything happen, and when nothing ever does happen, well then people get mad and stop going and the organization becomes defunct. Especially since you have to have that absurdly high quorum to make any changes to the quorum happen.
A majority isn’t always a quorum. Look at who is a member. If you are a political organization you might have everyone who is a member of the district being a member, you can’t possibly have a majority be your quorum. You might have a very small and very select group and therefore have more than 50% be your quorum. Knowing what it is always very important.
Getting a quorum to show up is important, but only if you want to make things happen. Don’t however try to get people to not show by misleading them or giving them wrong information. If you are going to rule by deceit it has to be so subtle that they don’t know what’s happening, once they find out they are likely to try to kick you out.
So go to your meetings and figure out what else you need to know about. E-mail me at brokennails@insani-x.com and let me know what you think and what you’d like to hear about.
