Saturday, October 24, 2009

What is the law regarding Committees and AGMs etc?

We are a small committee that organises the local horticultural show and arranges social events for members of the community.
We don't have (or are not aware of, as we are all new members) a constitution.
We obviously handle the public's money, and our accounts are readily available for anyone to see.
We would like to undertake some larger projects and have the commitment of members to sit on the committee for a period of two years. What we would like to know is: Are there any laws governing the writing of a constitution and more especially, Annual General Meetings (we would obviously prefer to hold these bi-annually)
Answer:
If you go to the Charity Commission website, there is a v good basic constitution for an association which would probably serve you. You would not be charitable however unless your objects were charitable and some examples are given on the CC website, eg if you were set up for 'general charitable purposes in the village of blah blah'. Your constitution is your guide to how your organisation is run and will stipulate how many on the committee, how its made up, frequency of meetings, etc. My e mail addy on my profile if I can help.
You need specialist advice. http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/whatwedo/?id=... may be a good start.
There are rules and regulations I think to keep to but these are fairly easy to adhere to. There are more rules if you are a registered charity as well (check out the charity comission web site - it might help having charity status).

You might want a constitution to include things such as when you have committee meetings, your goals, when the AGM should be, the number of people needing to vote on issues for them to be approved, etc..

While you are a happy organisation then things will work by good will but consider making the rules such that if bad blood should occur then people cant steam roll your group and alter the way it is run to their benefit too easily. I think you can include lots in your constitution



oh ANNUAL genereral meeting - its an annual thing, not every other year!!

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