Adopted by State Committee January 20th, 2018

SPONSORS: Matthew Andrews

VETTING COMMITTEES: Membership, Technical, Fundraising

FLOOR MANAGER: Matthew Andrews

SHEPHERD: Matthew Andrews

SUMMARY: Dues for the state party will be set at $20 for 2018.

BACKGROUND: The Green-Rainbow Party needs to set a real dues policy to raise money and recruit committed members. This simple proposal is intended merely as a first step, to get people accustom to the idea that dues are a responsibility of membership. A further discussion will be needed to for a more thorough dues program.

TEXT OF PROPOSAL: The State Committee sets dues for 2018 at $20 per person. A special “Dues” donation page shall be set up and linked to on the home page of the GRP website to encourage payment. Members may designate donations made through other methods as their dues. The month and year a member’s dues are paid through shall be recorded in Nationbuilder. This policy will be carried out in accordance with the bylaws (Section 4.2).

A member’s dues paying status shall not limit any rights legally conferred through voter registration.

IMPLEMENTATION: The Fundraising Director shall be responsible for encouraging dues payment. The Secretary shall be responsible for maintaining the records in Nationbuilder. The Treasurer shall aid the Fundraising Director in reporting dues collection information to the Secretary. The Technical Committee shall automate dues collection and record keeping as much as possible.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
If we can get 200 people to pay $20 dues, we will raise an additional $4,000. There could be some negligible printing costs associated with membership application forms.

REFERENCES AND ATTACHMENTS

Bylaws Section 4.1

Membership in the Green-Rainbow Party is open to all residents of Massachusetts, regardless of age, who are not registered voters in another party or political designation and who fulfill at least one of the following criteria:….

Pay dues to the Green-Rainbow Party. Fee waivers must be available for individuals who are active participants in the Green-Rainbow Party and are unable to pay due to economic constraints. Any membership application may only require a member to provide a name, address, signature, date signature was signed and whether the member applied for a fee waiver.

TITLE: Telecon Meetings of StateCom

SPONSORS: John Andrews, Roni Beal

VETTING COMMITTEES: All

FLOOR MANAGER: John Andrews

SHEPHERD: Brian Cady (proposed)

SUMMARY: This proposal modifies the Standing Rules of StateCom to specify how telecom meetings will be scheduled and managed.

BACKGROUND:

StateCom has decided to have a telecom meeting in between each regular meeting. However the procedures for holding a telecon meeting have never been clearly defined. It is not advisable and not practical to apply all the procedures that are used for face-to-face meetings. This proposal adds appropriate language to the Standing Rules to ensure that telecom meetings can be properly planned and conducted.

TEXT OF PROPOSAL:

The following text shall be integrated into the Standing Rules of State Committee:

Telecon Meetings

a) At each regular StateCom meeting, a motion will be entertained to schedule a telecom meeting before the next quarterly regular StateCom meeting. The purposes of this telecom meeting shall be to complete business left over from the previous business meeting and to exercise routine StateCom duties such as making appointments to vacancies in officer positions or committees, approving state convention plans, taking final action on proposals discussed at the previous business meeting, and taking legal actions. The co-chairs may approve additional agenda items to be taken up as urgent business or as “advisory discussions”. “Urgent” means that the item cannot be delayed to the next regular business meeting without doing clear harm to the Party. An “advisory discussion” does not make official decisions but allows StateCom to provide guidance regarding a question. New proposals, not discussed at the previous business meeting, shall not be placed on the agenda of the telecom meeting unless they are classified by the facilitators as “urgent business”. There is no “proposal ranking” process such as that associated with proposals to the regular business meetings - the facilitators determine the order in which items are addressed.

b) The facilitators of the preceding regular business meeting will be the facilitators for the telecom meeting unless they withdraw or unless StateCom appoints new facilitators at their regular meeting. The GRP Co-chairs shall make appointments to fill vacancies in the co-facilitator positions, including replacing a co-facilitator who fails to call in to the telecon.

c) A requirement in these Standing Rules that notice be given to StateCom may be satisfied by sending an email to the State Committee business list. However if this list is nonfunctional for some reason, the notice may be mailed directly to all the member email addresses listed in the Secretary’s official list of State Committee members.

d) The facilitators will send out an email notice of the telecom date and time at least one week in advance (Ideally, such notice will go out immediately after the StateCom regular meeting that sets the date). A reminder notice shall be sent out with an agenda prior to the meeting. If both facilitators agree that the planned meeting date is infeasible, they may set a new date providing at least 48 hours notice of the change is sent to StateCom.

e) The sections of the Standing Rules that govern regular business meetings shall also govern telecom meetings with the following special stipulations:
1) The standard agenda need not be followed.
2) All votes shall be by roll call of all members who have declared themselves to be present. At the end of the roll call, the facilitators shall ask “Is there any member present whose name was not called?” Such persons shall then be permitted to vote.
3) The quorum shall be the same as the quorum for the previous business meeting unless the Secretary provides the facilitators with a new quorum number. The existence of a quorum for any vote shall be determined by the total votes cast. To allow a proper tabulation, all members present should vote either “aye”, “nay” or “abstain” during the roll call.
<<Explanation: Since people may join or drop out of telecons at any point, it is difficult to know if a quorum is present at any given moment. Thus the vote total is used to determine quorum at the time of each vote. >>
4) If technical difficulties prevent the meeting from continuing, the facilitators shall adjourn the meeting. After consultation with the co-chairs they shall either reschedule the meeting (providing as much notice as possible) or send out notice that all further business will be postponed to the next regular quarterly meeting.

IMPLEMENTATION:
The approved text shall be integrated into the Standing Rules of State Committee

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
None.

REFERENCES AND ATTACHMENTS

[1] Standing Rules of State Committee

Proposal header ‘Dear Adcom: Find directors and officers’
Proposal preamble: Frustration with GRP lack of performance has led to calls to change our structure, yet with communications and fundraising directorships open for most of many years, we haven’t really tried fully using the structure we’ve got. Large groups are best at deliberating and setting laws, small ones at getting things done. So let’s instruct the small group of adcom to nominate candidates for the three empty GRP director and officer positions; Secretary, Fundraising Director and Communications Director.
Proposal short title: ‘Officers’
Proposer/Floor Manager: Brian Cady, 617-943-2853 [email protected]
Co-sponsor sought:
Vetting committee: MDVRComm
Explanatory background: The Fall 2017 Statecom discussion’s attempted ‘proposal from the floor’ on Adcom pursuing candidates for these three open positions was not in accord with our laws, namely Standing Rules section 1.
    ”...No proposals will be accepted at the meeting, except by any StateCom
    delegates which are elected within 4 weeks of an upcoming scheduled StateCom
    meeting.”
Hence this proposal, which merely seeks to properly pass what was attempted at the Fall 2017 Statecom meeting.
Proposal summary: Adcom will nominate, to Statecom, people to temporarily staff these vacant officer and director roles through until the 2018 convention, when convention elections for these roles can be held. Statecom will elect interim Secretary, Fundraising director and Communications director at the 2018 Winter/Spring joint adcom-statecom teleconference, in accord with our bylaws.
Financial Impact: Forecasting this is difficult, as a Fundraising Dir. might well collect dues from many of our 5,000+ members, yet filling these positions may well require hiring people. If $25 dues was collected from only 2/5ths of the approximately 5,000 members, this would yield $50,000.
Implementation:  Adcom will pursue getting these director and officer positions temporarily filled.