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What
are Consent Calendars or Agendas? Robert’s Rules of Order, Section 40, Order of Business, provides information about Consent Calendars. Any routine matter—i.e., minutes, treasurer’s report, officer and committee reports not requiring action or discussion—may be placed on the Consent Agenda. These reports are not debated and are submitted to the Board or membership prior to the start of your meeting. In the case of your Board or Executive Committee, you may request reports submitted ten days before the meeting. In the case of membership meetings, you may provide written reports at the time of meeting registration. Doing so allows participants to review the written reports before the meeting begins. If, for any reason, action or discussion is requested on a report, it is removed from the Consent Agenda and placed in line on the Action or Discussion Agendas. Otherwise, the reports are accepted by consent. All of us are interested in what our association committees have been doing, but we don’t necessarily have to listen to a report that could have been distributed and read prior to the meeting. This procedure speeds up the business meeting and allows us to participate in other activities in the short time we are together. For example, how about scheduling an additional educational topic during the time you save? Perhaps you’ve been wanting to add another aspect to your meeting schedule—a certification study session, a technology hands-on presentation, or a professional development topic? A consent agenda would still keep your members informed through written reports while streamlining your meeting to include only those things on which you want member input. From a meeting-planning standpoint, you will have more flexibility in shuffling the schedule because of the shorter business meeting. You may want to continue to include officer and director reports in person, as these persons were elected by the membership and are accountable to them. By continuing to require them to report in person, you are also preparing them for future situations when they may be asked to give presentations. Public speaking can be a difficult thing to work through, and by allowing them to speak in front of the membership with their verbal reports, they become more comfortable with it. Growing new leaders continues to be a main goal, and consent agendas are not meant to undermine that. You will want to include verbal committee reports on anything that will be happening before your membership meets again. Again, this can be an important stepping stone in getting members more comfortable with speaking in front of a group. This committee chair could be one of your association’s brightest future leaders. After-the-fact reports are still important, but they can usually be handled in writing. Your membership should be just as informed; you just want to decide how best to inform them. How to Put Together Consent Calendars or Agendas There are several basic elements to a consent agenda: • Call to Order. This may contain a reading of the Code of Ethics or Mission Statement and a welcome address. • Consent Agenda Items. No item should be placed in this section that requires action by the Board/membership or that you want to discuss in order to obtain information from your members. Examples include approval of minutes, budget reports, and reports of the Board of Directors and Committees. If you choose to have a written report distributed and approved by consent, the report should be distributed as early as possible before the meeting. Apply this logic: The Education Committee has everything under control for their upcoming seminars. They submit a written report to you detailing what they are doing, who is accomplishing the work, and indicating that they do not need input from the Board on any issue facing them. This report would be provided as part of the Consent Agenda Items and filed with the minutes. • Action Items. Action items are dependent upon what your bylaws say. If your Board of Directors takes care of budgeting issues, sets registration fees, sets meeting dates, and generally deals with day-to-day business of the association, these are the issues that would be dealt with here on a Board agenda. If your bylaws state that the membership must approve certain items, they would be placed here on a membership agenda. One that has been coming up on many agendas in Washington recently is changing the association name—this is where such an item affecting member rights would go. If you have no issues that need to be voted on in this manner, you do not need to include Action Items on your agenda. As presiding officer, you should be aware of any Action Items in advance of the meeting unless it is an issue that your members raise at the time of the meeting. For example, NALS of Washington bylaws provide for a process by which the membership can place an item on the agenda, but it requires a petition of 2 percent, (which is about six members if your membership is 300). We had such a thing occur with changing our name. When the petition was submitted to me as presiding officer, I simply announced at the beginning of the meeting that an Action Item was being added to the agenda at the direction of the membership. A practical example might be: The Certification Committee is working on a new concept for a study group and needs input from the Board with respect to registration fees and setting the date for the study group to meet. Their report would be placed under Action Items so the dates and fees can be set. Discussion will obviously take place prior to the action, because it will result in action by the Board. • Discussion Items. These items may have been previously found under Unfinished Business on previous agendas. This is where open discussion takes place regarding upcoming association activities and concerns from committees. Member input can be used to guide committees on how to proceed. For example, the Technology Committee needs input from the Board about what to include in the new website design. This will likely be more of a brainstorming session which will result in the Technology Committee taking action. This would be placed under Discussion Items. This is also where consideration should be given to your Strategic Plan. You may conduct a focus group in a specific area or have your Strategic Plan chair moderate an information-gathering session about a key area of the Strategic Plan. Spend as much time as you can getting input from your attendees about current trends in the workplace, issues facing student members, technology, membership benefits, marketing to corporate sponsors, or ethics. Or open up the floor for a question-and-answer period about association goals. This session can also be held at another time outside of the forum. • Information Items. I am a firm believer that people have to be reminded as often as possible about upcoming events. Check NALS.org or the NALS website for upcoming events in your region; add state association meetings, workshops, and seminars, and include your association’s functions. • Recognition/Adjournment. You may choose to recognize members who are working behind the scenes on an association project or a member who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in a particular area. Recognition is an important aspect of a healthy organization. After that, adjourn your meeting and send everyone home feeling good about themselves and the association’s activities. These are suggestions for how to set up a consent agenda. Your bylaws may require that you include other things or conduct portions of these in other forums. The bottom line is: Make the most of your time together and provide your membership with useful information in a timely fashion—and then offer them some additional education or networking opportunities!! How to Organize Minutes with Consent Agendas You’ve decided you want to use consent agendas. Good for you and your members! Now it’s a matter of educating those around you about the new procedure and what you envision for implementing it. Your Board of Directors and committee chairs will need to know deadlines for submitting written reports and the format they should be submitted in. The better you are able to educate the key team players, the easier it will be to put the consent agenda together. Of all the people to inform, your secretary or whoever is selected to take your minutes, will want to be clued in. If your minutes are set up in much the same way as your agenda, it will be easy to locate items in the minutes after the fact and make everyone’s life much easier! Written reports submitted under Consent Agenda Items should be attached to the minutes and filed in the minute book maintained by your secretary. Any motions passed should be detailed under Action Items. Any items under Discussion should include the subject of discussion and the direction decided upon. It is not necessary to make the minutes a “he said/she said” recount. As a practical matter, the Information Items can be restated in the minutes. You may also want to include a list of those present in the case of a Board meeting. Everyone organizes things differently, and there is no right or wrong way to set up your minutes. The best advice I can give is to work out those details early and get the secretary off to a good start. After one or two sets of minutes, the process will become routine and less time consuming. <Chapter
Name> Call to Order Reading of Code of Ethics or Mission Statement Welcome Member, Guests Consent Agenda Items
Action Items
Discussion Items
Strategic Plan Issues Information Items
Adjournment Recognition Closing Remarks by President
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