Bylaws are designed to help the group function in an orderly manner. A copy of each organizations Bylaw should be provided to all officers and board members. Each member should be responsible for making a thorough study of them. A copy of the bylaws should be made available to any member of the association upon request.

If a unit cannot locate the bylaws, a committee should be appointed by the president and chaired by the parliamentarian. Standard bylaws should be obtained from the state office for a nominal fee. Standard bylaws are sometimes pre-printed and provide blank spaces to fill in according to an organization’s needs, but generally bylaws are written with each specific organization in mind.

Changing Bylaws

Bylaws should be reviewed every year. Appoint a small committee with the parliamentarian as chairman to study them, make recommendations, and forward through channels to the organization voting membership. Generally, changing bylaws requires a 2/3 majority vote passed in order to become adopt.

Standing Rules

Whenever members are required or permitted to take any action at a meeting, a written notice of the meeting shall be given, not less than 10 days nor more than 90 days before the date of the meeting, to each member, who on the recorded date for the notice of the meeting, is entitled to vote at such meeting.

Standing rule outlines the procedures of the organization that are not included in the bylaws and must not conflict with the bylaws. Some examples of the differences are:

• Bylaws state when the meetings of the association and executive board are held.
• Standing Rules tell where and what time these meetings are held.
• Bylaws give the primary responsibilities of officers and chairmen.
• Standing Rules give the specifics.

If the Bylaws state that the first vice president is responsible for the program, the Standing Rules would list the various chairmen, who work with the vice president under the first vice presidents title, such as program, Founders Day, Honorary Service Award, hospitality, refreshments, and program booklet.

If the organization has supplies and/or equipment, the Standing Rules would state who is responsible for them and where they would be kept.

Standing Rules might also list:

• Who has the responsibility for securing the outgoing president’s pin and its inscription.
• If there is to be an installation of officers, who is responsible for selecting the installing officers and when the installation should take place.

In short, Bylaws are hard and fast rules that may be amended only with prior notice to the membership.

Standing rules are the details of regular work that may be changed from administration to administration or from meeting to meeting. They generally require a two-thirds (2/3rd) majority vote without notice and a majority vote with 30 days notice to adopt or amend.

Robert’s Rules of Order is the short title of a book containing rules of order intended to be adopted as a parliamentary authorityfor use by a deliberative assembly.

Currently in its tenth edition and published under the name Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised (and often referred to using the initialism RONR) it is the most widely used parliamentary authority in the United States, according to the National Association of Parliamentarians, a professional association of approximately 4,000 members which provides education and accreditation certifications for parliamentarians.

History and origins

The first edition of the book, whose full title was Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies, was published in February 1876 by then U.S. Army Brigadier General Henry Martyn Robert (1837–1923) with the short title Robert’s Rules of Order placed on its cover. The procedures prescribed by the book were loosely modeled after those used in the United States House of Representatives, with such adaptations as Robert saw fit for use in ordinary societies. The author’s interest in parliamentary procedure began in 1863 when he was chosen to preside over a church meeting and, although he accepted the task, felt that he did not have the necessary knowledge of proper procedure. In his later work as an active member of several organizations, he discovered that members from different areas of the country had very different views regarding what the proper parliamentary rules were, and these conflicting views hampered the organizations in their work. He eventually became convinced of the need for a new manual on the subject, one which would enable many organizations to adopt the same set of rules.

Explanation

The book is designed for use in ordinary societies rather than legislative assemblies, and it is the most commonly adopted parliamentary authority among societies in the United States. The book claims to be a “codification of the present-day general parliamentary law (omitting provisions having no application outside legislative bodies).” This statement does not imply any approbation on the part of the courts, and the “general parliamentary law” is related neither to statutory legal requirements nor to common-law precedent derived from court judgments. Being widely accepted, and being based for the most part on long-standing traditions of parliamentary procedure, however, the current edition of the book is a reliable reference. Nevertheless, the provisions of any particular manual are not, as a general matter, legally binding upon an assembly that has not formally adopted it as its parliamentary authority; any such manual can at best be cited as “persuasive.” In addition, a number of changes have been made to recent editions, such as provisions dealing with videoconferences, teleconferences, and email, which now makes these editions more than merely codifications of the “present-day general parliamentary law” as existed at the time Robert was originally writing.