Length of Chapter Meeting
 

Hi all.

I'd like to get your opinion...

What do you think is the max time chapter should be? A lot of us think it should be an hour max, but some others think it's okay if it's 1.5/2 hours, like when we have a programming chapter.

What do you think?
Thanks!

Thanks for your input!

What about in the case of programming...so when you have guest speakers? It should still be no more than an hour?

I agree with KSUViolet-no longer than 1 hour unless special circumstances.

Guest speakers-it would be great to limit it to 1 hour-not only for the speakers benefit, but also for the chapters. Of course-if you had a Red Cross volunteer coming in to give CPR lessons, that might be longer, but again, that would be a special circumstance.

For chapter meetings, we try to make them last no more than 2 hours, since the building we're in closes at night. Chapter choir is the same.

If we had someone coming in, we would keep it to about the same length unless the person was an Province/Regional Officer or from NH. It would be longer then, probably.

Thank you for all the replies. I'll mention that this is also for a Panhellenic sorority. A lot of other Panhellenic chapters on our campus vary from 30min to 1.5 hours.... but the associate chapters (music, christian, business, service) have told me their meetings usually last 2-3 hours!

I think if you are having a business meeting, you should limit to one hour, even if you are doing programming. Have a paper meeting if you have a speaker so you don't prolong the meeting. If you want to stay later to do a sisterhood event during meeting time, you could go over the 1 hour time, but sisters should be allowed to leave if they want to. This should especially be adhered to if your chapter is having problems with attendance at chapter meetings.

I always tell my groups to have a 45 minute goal, and one hour limit for general business meetings. Special circumstances aside, reports and discussion should not last longer than that, and if they do you members will certainly start to turn on you, haha. If meetings going significantly over an hour I would recommend brushing up on parliamentary procedure and making sure you're using your committee system to its full potential.

I'm working with a new chapter. The first year, they really had a hard time keeping meetings under 2 hours, even with a resident sorority consultant. But, they were combining new member education with regular business the first semester. This year they have really tried to keep it to an hour, and that makes everyone happy. There are still things I think they could cut down on...like not taking verbal roll and just having the recording secretary eyeball and mark attendance. They have been making announcements more effectively via e-mail/electronic posting, too.

2-3 hours, noooooo way....I wouldn't worry about keeping up with the Joneses in that dept.!

How often do your chapters meet? (For anyone who has posted)

My APO chapter met roughly monthly for anywhere from one hour to two, but we saw each other often in between for pledge meetings, eboard meetings, etc.

My NPHC alumni chapter often met for two hours, plus an hour repast. A past president changed it so that the meetings were exactly an hour. The problem is that they became cold and clinical and alienating of the older men for whom this was their only Alpha outlet every month.

NPC chapters meet weekly.

All of them? Any reason why?

Yeah, all of them meet weekly. It's part of the experience. Since meetings don't include alumnae members, meetings aren't spread out to accommodate their busy schedules.

All of the non-NPHC orgs at my school meet weekly as well. I can't speak for the NPHC orgs since they don't talk about when/where they meet.

For SigEp, our meetings are usually about an hour. We also try to keep them an hour for presentations as well. We will perform a paper-only meeting if there is an event after the meeting as well.

When I first joined, though, I experienced normal meetings that went 3 hours long. Thank goodness we're long past that point!!!!

:eek: Holy God! That's worse than any old school Membership meeting I ever sat through. I'd DIE.

Count us in with the chapters who met weekly. I think that most of our chapters do that. The Fraternity recommends weekly meetings, although the requirement is at least two meetings per month.

When you meet that often, an hour should normally be plenty of time.

Met weekly unless it was dead week (all reports emailed to members) or finals week.

We always tried to keep it under an hour. I remember when I was a new member the President always asked the people giving reports to keep it under two minutes. Few actually could do this, but it as a consistant effort.

We meet weekly. The reason it takes so long is because we have to get through reports from 10 elected offices and 10 chair positions, plus we have "sharing items" (stuffed animals, CD, etc that get passed around). This has also been a really busy year for us, so they've been longer this year than usual.

But really, does every one of those people have a critical update every week?

Our chapters used to run 2+ hours. But after viewing how larger chapters do meetings in under that time, we've adjusted to be less than 1.5 hours. It's still hard, considering our reports can get quite extensive.

It's funny, but when I was an UG, 3 hour meetings were the norm.I never would have imagined only an hour.

We started to limit open forum to 5 minutes max, but then brothers just kept motioning to extend it.

My collegiate chapter meetings typically last 1 hour for informal meetings, and 1.5 hours for formal meetings. My fiance's, on the other hand, are never shorter than 2 hours. I feel for him...

Make sure you are using Roberts' Rules of Order.

Also, don't get hung up on OMG WE WENT OVER THE AVERAGE TIME. There are going to be meetings where there are things that need discussed more than other weeks, and no you can't have it on paper only, and no you can't do it in committee. But keeping the meetings flowing as a standard practice will result in a lot less bitching and a lot less "screw it, who gives a rat's ass, let's go home" when there IS something that truly needs discussion.

What is this paper meeting that people mentioned?

I'd have to say a major problem we have is that most of us don't know Roberts' Rules of Order. My pledgemaster wanted to teach it to us, but he couldn't fit it within the program. I think it is something that should be taught.

If they have nothing, they just say, "No report", and we move on. The past presidents have been really good about making sure that people don't waste the rest of the sisterhood's time, so reports, unless there's something important/serious going on, don't take longer than 10 minutes, and that upper limit is usually used by the 2 VP's or the president.

Most of the time is taken up with people asking questions so that everything is completely clear.

We also have a weekly meeting for the elected officers to take care of some things so that they don't need to be completely rehashed in chapter.

Really, if there isn't something that needs to be DISCUSSED, it should be bypassed, particularly if your group tends to go long. Any straight forward announcements can be done in paper or electronic form, preferably BEFORE the meeting in case it turns out the announcement requires discussion or rebuttal. Our meetings were long, IMO, but nothing like some meetings I've been part of as an adult. Thankfully my collegiate chapter wasn't full of middle aged women who need a hobby (re: a group I belonged to in Dubai) so it was in everyone's interest to get through the business and get on with the fun. And I don't think programming should be considered part of chapter, partly because your speaker would likely not be participating in any closing ceremonies of your chapter and partly because, as stated above, if some girls need to leave, at least they are fully committed to chapter. Even if the programming is a rockin good time, it will come off better if chapter took 1 hour, even if the girls were together for 4 hours that night.

Exec is another can of worms, and if you can keep that to an hour I think you've mastered something MANY organizations haven't.

If our chapter didn't meet we called it electronic chapter and the secretary emailed out the minutes (all officers and chairwomen would email her their announcements).

We averaged 1 hour but there were some chapters (i.e. formal chapter, revision of bylaws, elections) that we all knew would probably go longer. But we also had a clause in our bylaws that after any motion was made that discussion could last only 5 minutes (monitored by our parliamentarian) and then after 5 minutes we would have to vote to extend the time or just vote on whatever it was. That helped us speed up our meetings considerably.

The basic rules that the average member needs to know can fit on one sheet of paper. Everyone in the chapter should have a copy.

Do you have someone who serves as parliamentarian? For us, that was the warden, and it was his job to make sure Roberts' Rules were being followed. He can "teach" the chapter by example.

Do an educational meeting on Roberts' Rules. It's worth the effort.

Here is a useful reference sheet on Robert's Rules of Order: http://files.meetup.com/1279233/Simp...lesofOrder.pdf

We call ours the Sentinel, but he doesn't know it well either. My pledgemaster used to do check to make sure it was followed otherwise, but he graduated. If I could see this sheet of paper I could give it to all the members.

:)

^^^ Couple that with this and you should be good to go.

My chapter calls it a "Yale Meeting." Basically, the agenda isn't just bullet points; it's a full breakdown of everything that would normal be discussed verbally. Usually, we'll maybe discuss 1 or 2 things that need to be discussed, but you're supposed to read the rest on your own.

The President monitors our discussions as a chapter since we use a loose version of Robert's Rules. If things are getting repetitive or we're not reaching a conclusion, he'll help guide discussion or end it.

Also, our 300 chair positions and committees only report if there is something very specific to them that they need to report. Otherwise, the Vice President (5 of them) or other Executive Board Position (Chaplain and President) that oversees them will report for them.

Also, discussions that need to happen between different E-Board members or committees or whatever are usually taken care of outside of the meeting. This way, things are more streamlined and we can just report on what is actually happening.

For example, if the Social Chair and the Brotherhood Development Chair need to work together for an event, brainstorming and what not will happen on their own. At our meeting, they will just announce what is actually happening.

Another way that we trim the fat off of our meetings is that we have meeting "activities" dedicated to each Executive Board member. For example, at the beginning of the school year, at our first meeting, we had our normal meeting, closed, and then we had a session about all of the Programming events that we had in mind for the school year and why/how we wanted to do them. We do this a lot of speakers, presentations, brotherhood events, etc. This way, it is also optional if someone really can't stay for the extra stuff.

/novel

Our exec is actually shorter than normal chapter (E-board is 1 hour). I think part of it is people just not listening and asking questions that have already been covered. We're getting better about that portion though.

Currently, we try to hold our chapters to <1 hour, although certain chapters (room picks, elections) do get rather lengthy. Our Eboard also tries to keep it to less than 2 hours. When I first joined the house, chapters were at least 1 hour, generally 2, and E-board was 6-8 hours!! (Yes, you read that right!)

My bf's fraternity, on the other hand, has minimum 2 hour chapters. He topped out at 9 pm-2 am when they had elections one day, and that was after having 6-10 the weekend before for the first half of elections.