Bylaws for hobby groups: what good points to include?

[iris lilies]

I am revising the by-laws for our lily society. This is a small group that is likely dying. If we had a clear set of approved bylaws, I wouldn't worry about it. But we've got a document that was re-written by the last secretary from pencilled-in notes. This is the only official document that exists. I doubt that this version was approved by the membership.

I want a clean, practical set of bylaws to be put before our membership for ratification, and then placed on our website so that we always know where they are.

Does anyone have experience in this area to suggest what they found most useful in drafting bylaws for a small organization? I will be looking at the bylaws of other plant societies in the area, but I'd like tales of personal experience.

[bae]

I've found the best approach is to throw out the old, start from scratch, steal liberally from examples on the Internet, and focus on what you want to accomplish and the bylaws to do, rather than what the current mess says. Assuming the current bylaws allow amendment.

We just redid our firefighter's association by-laws, a 50-year mess of cut-and-paste, by simply starting over, ended up with a mere couple of pages.

The bylaws don't have to be very organization-or-purpose-specific. I'd make them as free and liberal as possible, and clear - don't create a mess of special cases and instructions, foist off responsibility onto the board/membership instead.

[cdttmm]

iris lillies, thanks for asking a great question. And, bae, thanks for an excellent answer. I find myself in a similar situation with by-laws so this is most helpful!

[razz]

I had to develop a constitution and bylaws for our local Friends of the Library group a few years ago. I simply went online and found a sample for a non-profit and went through it deleting all the extra stuff and keeping it very simple as Bae has suggested but making sure that the critical points were covered.

http://www.anrep.org/news/news-4002da1d1f500.pdf This is quite lengthy but can be reduced very quickly and effectively.
I took the sample and the draft to a meeting and said let's review. In my case, I needed committee approval and they needed to feel the power and authority in decision-making. We came up with a two page constitution and bylaws that is reviewed annually.

I would also stress the need for some Policy and Procedures guidelines. They came in very handy when newcomers tried to organize activities without the knowledge and consent of the board and raised serious insurance liability risk. Simply pointing to the P&P guidelines made the resultant discussion less confrontational and the situation did resolve.