Proposed Chapter Changes

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To all Yankee PRSA members:

Last year at the PRSA Leadership Assembly, new national bylaws were adopted. As a result, all local chapters are required to review their own bylaws and bring them into compliance with the new national bylaws changes. The YPRSA Board appointed a committee to review our chapter bylaws and draft any changes necessary to come into compliance. The committee, under the Board’s direction, also looked at our current bylaws to see if anything needed to be updated. Finally, over the past several years the Board has contemplated changing the chapter’s fiscal year to a calendar year (versus our current 7/1 – 6/30 fiscal year) to bring our year into line with the other 99% of chapters around the country and also with PRSA national. The bylaws committee used this opportunity to address that issue as well.

See proposed Bylaws (pdf) HERE.

See proposed Bylaws w/annotations (pdf) HERE.

In large part, the changes being recommended by the committee and the full Board of Directors for the Yankee Chapter are non-substantive. However, two issues – the change in fiscal year and the structure of the Leadership Assembly Delegates positions (required to be in compliance with the new national bylaws) – are highlighted here:

  • Policy Issue: Change of fiscal year from July 1–June 30 to January 1–December 31 to be in sync with national and nearly all other chapters. This would also improve coordination with other chapters, district and national. In order to accomplish this change, YPRSA would need to close its books as of December 31, 2011 (thus shortening our current fiscal year by six months in order to start a new year on January 1, 2012). This is the common way to adjust an organization’s finances when changing its fiscal period.The other issue raised by a fiscal year change is the terms of the officers and board. It was decided by the Board (with the concurrence of national) that it makes more sense to lengthen the terms of office by six months rather than shorten the terms. This would help the chapter in its fiscal year transition. The following chart shows the current terms of the officers and Board and what their terms would be if the fiscal year change is approved.
Chapter Position Current Term Term if Fiscal Year Changed to Calendar Year Term for Next Set of Elected Positions
Officers (President, President-Elect, Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer, Secretary) 7/1/2011 – 6/30/2012 7/1/2011 – 12/31/2012 1/1/2013 – 12/31/2013
Directors (2) 7/1/2010 – 6/30/2012 7/1/2010 – 12/31/2012 1/1/2013 – 12/31/2015
Directors (2) 7/1/2011 – 6/30/2013 7/1/2011 – 12/31/2013 1/1/2014 – 12/31/2016
Assembly Delegate 7/1/2010 – 6/30/2013 7/1/2010 – 12/31/2013 Would be replaced with a Director*, term: 1/1/2014 – 12/31/2016
Assembly Delegate 7/1/2011 – 6/30/2014 7/1/2011 – 12/31/2014 Would be replaced with a Director*, term: 1/1/2015 – 12/31/2017

* Replacement with a Director position would be optional, but would retain the current size of the Board. The duties of the Assembly Delegates would be assumed by the President and President-Elect. See next bullet for details.

  • Procedural Issue: One change in the national bylaws was the minimum requirements for Leadership Assembly Delegates. A recommendation strongly encouraged by National is to designate the chapter president and president-elect as the chapter delegates for the annual Leadership Assembly. In our chapter’s case, because our membership numbers currently allow for two delegate representatives, the Board is recommending we send our chapter president and president-elect. This would ensure that our Delegates would be in compliance with the requirements outlined by national’s bylaws. Our chapter’s current delegates would serve out their terms of office. At the end of those terms, the sitting President and President-Elect would assume the duties of the Assembly Delegates. As our current delegates meet national’s requirements, there is no issue with them serving the remainder of their terms.

In addition to these two main issues, the bylaws committee and the full Board of Directors are recommending the adoption of some non-substantive changes to the chapter bylaws. In brief, they are as follows:

  • New Sections: Following the suggested template established by national, the Board recommends adopting the following new sections to the bylaws:
    • Stating the chapter’s territory and locations
    • Scope of the Board and Officers’ role within the Chapter
    • Requiring the chapter to abide by applicable IRS and federal/state laws
    • Appointment and dissolution of committees (replaces our current language, but would not affect any standing committees)
    • Several miscellaneous sections that are standard to most bylaws
  • Deleted Sections: There are several deleted sections that are either no longer applicable to the chapter or have been replaced with new language in other parts of the bylaws.

All other bylaw changes that the committee would put forward are simple language clean-ups and the flow of the document and formatting.