vote now on bylaw amendments
Dear all,
At Women and the Silent Screen X in Amsterdam last year we notified the WFHI membership that minor changes were required to our bylaws to standardise the language used, and to bring them into conformity with the reporting requirements attached to our incorporation as a non-profit in South Carolina, USA. At that meeting, and more recently in Pordenone, we also signalled that a membership vote would be necessary to ratify these amendments to the bylaws. The WFHI Steering Committee has drafted amendments to the bylaws and we now request your attention to these amendments, and your vote for or against their ratification.
Please vote via the Google form link below in the next two weeks, and no later than November 26.
The changes required are minor in substance, but affect multiple sections of the bylaws. For this reason, we provide a link to the bylaws, with the proposed amendments, here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f7lZm0OckQTvSGPsLY3qUQZ4uEyuVLOnwmGIDFFg0IQ/edit?usp=sharing
In order to make the changes easier to recognise, we have used different colours to identify them in the source document.
The amendments to the bylaws can also be summarised as follows:
To include the role of Treasurer where necessary, and to define this role (in blue);
To change ‘Membership Coordinator’ to ‘Membership Secretary’ where necessary, in accordance with language used in South Carolina’s articles of incorporation (in red);
To clarify the Steering Committee’s role, including in conference host selection where there is more than one offer to host (Article V(4j)) (in green);
To change notification dates for elections from four (4) months and two (2) months to two (2) months and two (2) weeks, respectively, to bring these closer to actual practice (Article V(7a and b)) (in purple);
To allow for business meetings every year by holding electronic meetings in years between conferences, as required by South Carolina law (Article VI(3)) (in orange).
We remind you that, following our vote to become a dues-paying organisation in 2018, WFHI members are now considered to be those who have paid their biennial membership dues. Only those who have done so are eligible to vote on these changes to the bylaws. It is vital that we build our membership dues account to ensure the ongoing health of the organisation, and so that WFHI can contribute funds, for the first time, to Women and the Silent Screen 2021. We encourage any of you who have not yet joined us as dues-paying members to do so by following the link on this website, at https://www.wfhi.org/about/join-wfhi/ before voting on the amendments to our bylaws via the Google form link above within the next two weeks, and no later than November 26. Please join today!