Robert's Rules

[emb021]

Originally Posted by honeychile

It doesn't matter whether you're a bif or small sorority to use Robert's Rules. In fact, I would consider learning how to properly use RR as a major plus for being in a sorority! Your meetings will run much, much smoother.

Short story: We used Robert's Rules, but our meetings still went much too long - as long as 3 hours! When one of the Traveling Consultants visited, she was floored, and the next thing we knew, we had to have a time keeper at our meetings, to keep them under one hour. I would highly recommend this to any other sorority with a time problem!

There are a couple of ways that parliamentary procedure can help you keep your meetings shorter.

The 'standard rule' in discussions is that each person is allowed to speak twice for 10 minutes on each matter. (this can be shortened or extended by the group by a 2/3rd vote). Discussion needs to be on the matter at hand, not extraneous cr*p. Enforcing that can keep things civil and shorter.

Using committees properly can also help. Instead of discussing in detail each and every event, etc, allow your committees to do that in their own committee meetings outside the main meeting. This way the committees report on the even, with them more or less fully planned out, and the main group hopefully just agrees (or not) on them. Social events would be planned out by your social committee, fundraisers by your fundraising committee, service/philanthropy events by that committee, etc.

Again, this is why learning parliamentary procedure is so important. I encorporated as session on it in my chapters pledge program when I was pledgemaster, something I recommend. Refresher sessions with the membership is always a good idea, also.