Robert's rules online?
June 24, 2011 8:06 AM   Subscribe

What is the best way to handle online voting by the governing board of an organization? I am the secretary for an organization whose board traditionally only met once per year, in person, using Robert's Rules of Order for running meetings. Are there any simple procedures or services for translating this type of a process online? Robert's does not seem to have entered the 21st century yet, but there is a desire among our board members to do so.
posted by mortaddams to Grab Bag (4 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
With the nonprofit board I serve on, we updated the bylaws to allow a vote by email to have the same status as an in-person vote. When we have email votes, they're conducted by the board chair who tabulates responses and reports results back by email and then confirms in the consent decree info at our in-person meetings so there is a written record.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 8:25 AM on June 24, 2011


You can use Doodle for online voting but in terms of discussion you'd need to do something like a group chat. I use it mainly for scheduling but you can use it to vote on pretty much anything and you can use it to do nuanced voting "this is better than that" rather than absolutes.
posted by leslies at 8:45 AM on June 24, 2011


You can also write your own bylaws for how online meetings/phone conferences should be handled. Robert's Rules govern when there is not a bylaw that specifically addresses the issue. I was part of a volunteer board that had meetings via conference call, and our procedures was that each vote was a roll call vote so we knew that everyone voted appropriately, etc. I'm sure your organization could use one of the online conference call programs such as GoToMeeting or a new one called Vyew. **I have limited experience with GoToMeeting and no experience with Vyew (yet), so I cannot recommend one over the other, but explore and see if they might work for your organization.
posted by MultiFaceted at 8:54 AM on June 24, 2011


You had better have some discussion about this with your legal adviser, prior to just jumping off with bylaw changes; from what I understand recently in talks with legal counsel for a small Southeastern non-profit, in some North American and many international jurisdictions, switched circuit voice telephonic or fax communications still have recognized status for board governance activities, whereas online communications (email, network phone or video, etc.) do not.

Yes, I know that the Internet carries a lot of phone traffic these days, etc. Tell that to your legislators, if you do your business in such a place, or any of your board members do, not me.

That said, if you don't have regulatory problems, there are commercial platforms like Firmex and Passageways that are offering solutions for such needs.
posted by paulsc at 4:53 PM on June 24, 2011


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