On August 24, 2013, Toastmasters clubs will vote on amendments to the standard Club Constitution that every club must abide by.  It hasn’t been amended since 1994, and is in dire need of updating.  However, this revision is mostly clerical in nature, things that won’t affect club operations at all.  Let’s take a closer look.

The most noticeable change is renaming the “standard bylaws” to “addendum of standard club options”.  This is where the club fills in details like the name, where and when they meet, and the dues.  Some redundancies were also removed, since the old bylaws repeated things already found in the constitution.

There are some style and wording changes, like changing “initiation fee” to “new member fee”, which makes it feel a little more modern.  To me, “initiation” makes me think of college fraternities.  “Per capita payment” becomes “membership payment”, which is easier to understand.  References to regional conferences are removed (the 2009 Proposal A got rid of them).

The section on expelling, suspending, or declining to renew a membership has the word “discipline” added as well, and this seems like a reasonable step to be sure clubs know they can take other steps short of throwing someone out.

The club executive committee will be able to call a special business meeting (previously, only the membership itself at a regular business meeting, or the club president, could do this).  Notices of changes in the date, time or place can now explicitly be done by phone, fax, and e-mail (this was probably OK anyway, since it included, and will still include, the phrase “or other reasonable means”).

The club nominating committee section adds “when practicable” after the requirement that it consist of three active members, which improves flexibility, though possibly at the cost of a 1-2 person nominating committee ramrodding their friends through.

The requirement to hold officer elections at the first meeting in May (and first meeting of November, for clubs with semi-annual terms) also gets the “when practicable” out clause added, as does the requirement that the education committee publish meeting assignments at least three weeks in advance (do most clubs do that??).  More shift to advice, instead of strict requirements.

The public relations committee gets explicit responsibility for the club website and social media (not just the newsletter).

When the board raises dues, there has been a specific requirement to publish notice in the Toastmaster magazine.  That’s been expanded to include an “or posting on the Toastmasters web site.”  I suppose this might be useful where the magazine probably has a 2-3 month lead time on content.

One of the few things to potentially affect a club is a new requirement that when the executive committee assigns a proxy for the August business meeting (a current requirement, though usually I think the president or secretary just does it on their own), the club is supposed to ratify this action at the next business meeting.  I doubt many clubs will do this, but it’s there, in writing.

Lastly, there’s a section permitting TI to modify the constitution to meet legal requirements in a foreign country, they can do so by simple policy or protocol (a vote of the board, or a decision by WHQ staff).

The new “standard options” document is mostly similar to the existing club bylaws, just stripped down to the essentials, which makes sense to me.  It’s a place to fill in the blanks with the specifics for the club.

I know some people think a lot more could and should be done, such as allowing for proxies at club business meetings or electronic voting, but I think it’s better to make these small non-controversial changes first.  At the very least, the omission of bigger changes doesn’t justify a “no” vote on Proposal A.

I recommend all clubs and proxy holders vote to approve Proposal A.

For more on Proposal A, see the one page summary from TI here (PDF).