I am assisting my club in the area of writing a set of bylaws. In our club’s purpose, I have elected to define our geographical area of service since we are a small club with limited resources. I figured that if I didn’t define it then it could be defined by default which would mean the club would serve any and all areas which could interfere with the efforts of other clubs to serve the needs of their areas.
In an effort to support this item in the purpose statement, I have chosen to consider having some membership requirements. I’m considering limiting membership to our service area. It seems to be a no-brainer to me.
Have you considered that there are some good reasons that players outside your geographical area that might want to join your club? I have a friend that travels for a livng. He likes to play chess and is in certaint geographical areas one night a week, every week, for his job. He would love to join a club in those areas if one existed.
There may not be chess clubs in every geographical area close to the one you define in your by-laws. However, your club may be the only chess activity for players living in those areas. They may want to participate in what your club has to offer.
Personally, I think you’re making things too complicated. Keep it simple and flexible. Down the road you may decide to cooperate with clubs in other areas to co-sponsor certain events. You may decide to host state championships. Who knows? Then your geographic limitation would be getting in the way.
In reality, your club’s interests and desires (which may change from time to time) will define your service area, not your bylaws.
Also, there are people quite willing to belong to multiple clubs at the same time. For that matter, I’ve known people who have been officers in multiple clubs at the same time.
If you limit your club to a specific geographical area then what do you do when somebody moves? You probably don’t want to eject people, but if you don’t then you have members that violate your geographical self-limitation. There are clubs closer to me than the one I belong to, but I’ve been going there regularly since 1982 (three zip codes ago), and had sporadic attendance from the mid '70s (when it was the closest club) to 1982.
I’m considering basing our membership requirements on the historical and current club membership. We’ve never restricted membership to any one area. Even with an open door policy there never has been any interest in anyone living outside our area to be a member. BTW, we don’t charge a membership fee and never have. Nor, am I considering that. If it had been shown that a substantial number of players outside our area wished to join the club then I would not have considered specifying our service area and residency requirements. My aim is to have the club serve the needs of the local members and players and to have the club’s governing body represent the players from our area by restricting club membership.
There is the potential for a conflict of interest in having officers that serve on the boards of more than one club when one considers such things as submitting tournament bids for our state championship. Who’s to say that the officer in question would not like to see a club that he is closer to will be awarded the bid?
If a member moves out of our service area, I would have the bylaws state that he will forfeit voting rights and any office he might be holding. Since membership is open to the public he would be welcome to visit the club at any time.
The Manhattan Chess Club used to have two kinds of memberships, members who lived within X miles had to pay one rate, those who lived outside that area could pay a lower rate, with most (but possibly not all) of the privileges of membership.
You could say, for example, that those who lived outside the defined geographical area are not eligible to vote for or serve on the Board, not eligible to play for the club championship, etc. But they could still get the ‘member’ rate on other chess events.
Yes that would be a justifiable option I think to preserve voting and Board membership to members that reside in the club’s service area. If the membership list grows and the number of members that reside outside the service area gets to a point where their representation becomes an issue then the service area should increase. We’ve never had a ‘member’ rate on our chess events and aren’t contemplating that now.
I’m wondering how large your club is. Is your board that extensive or wielding that much power that you would demand that people give up their voting rights if they moved outside of a geographical region? I didn’t know there was that much power on a local chess club board…I’ll have to get myself elected to one so I can execute my plans for world domination!
Small but old club. No board or elected officers for many years. Down to one person controlling the club from long distance. Members have had no rights or input for a long time. Members kept in the dark about financial arrangement of our tournaments until recently. Club has a few serious problems but the main ones are a lack of democracy and resistance to member inclusive governance.
What is stopping you from just forming a new club? Are there any assets (i.e. a building, collection of books, sets and clocks)? If one person is running things from a distance, let them, but just start your own club. Are you paying dues? If not, what financial issues are there? I guess I’m not seeing the seriousness of this issue as you do.
Writing a set of bylaws will not solve the “people” (person?) issue you describe here…unless you are writing a set of bylaws for a new club, which you intend to legally incorporate.
A piece of paper won’t give the membership any control the membership didn’t already have.
Does the rest of the membership care enough about this to do something about it?
In many clubs there is only one person with any interest in doing the management tasks to keep the club going, and the players are just fine with that person doing everything as long as the club can continue meeting. Some clubs have recognized that to the extent that instead of electing a president they acknowledge a king.
At my club we used to have just a president (who was our equivalent of a king). Now there currently are five officer positions with all of them are subject to our annual election. In the past 20 years there were only three years where any position was contested, and in each such year only one of the five positions was contested (some years it has been difficult to get candidates for all positions). Considering how apolitical the local chessplayers are I think we’ve done fairly well with finding people willing to accept an officer’s position and with only around three mid-year resignations of an officer position in the past 20 years.
The ‘older’ members weren’t/arent’t interested in club governance and, truthfully, neither was I. I’ve been a member since the club started 35 years ago and done my share during the first 15-20. After that I did just as everyone else did and just supported the club’s tournaments. Moved away for a couple years too.
Some of the ‘newer’ members came in after the changes had already occurred and have no frame of reference to make an honest comparison. Can’t blame them.
Everybody just accepted things the way they were. Don’t understand that. Anyway, I got some people together and we agreed to write some bylaws and elect some officers. We’d elected officers every year for the first 20 and never had bylaws stating that we would. We had some good members that cared enough to volunteer and do the work. But annual elections fell by the wayside. Maybe if we spell out what is expected in the club, we won’t let this happen again.
I agree with the others about not requiring members to live within a specified geographical area. It’s been a long standing tradition when playing in USCF rated tournaments, you have to be member of both the state in which you are playing (reciprocity is okay) and the USCF, in a few cases even the local club that is hosting the tourney. So to my mind, it matters not whether you belong to one chess club or 30.
On the other hand, officers should live relatively close by so that they will be able to attend the majority of meetings.
In another thread, I posted some links to other chess club by-laws. You can find more using either dogpile.com and input chess club by-laws.
The idea of specifying that members and officers of a club reside in the local area is a good one based on a few fundamentals. Requiring that membership is limited to a specific area would, in effect, identify a service area for the club. Identifying and providing opportunities for a club’s service area is vital for the health of any club. Witness the effect that outside promoters have on local organizers across the country. This problem has been recently posted elsewhere on these forums. It’s nothing new and has been around at least as long as I’ve been playing. It’s always been evident to me that service area and membership residency requirements go hand in hand.
I am beginning to see GB’s point. An officer that is out-of-town tends to be risky. They can be self-serving if they are a for profit tournament organizer and as well not as interested in the local club
Regarding the matter of requiring that officers reside in the immediate area, my main point referenced the need for proper representation and adequate management. It is a local club’s right to be managed and represented by officers that live in the area. A club’s governing body should understand the need for that.
Naturally, a club officer living far away from the club he serves is at a disadvantage and the club is not being served as well. A club should be able to expect that all officers will be able to attend weekly club meetings and the occasional Board meeting which, by the way, should be held at a club’s meeting place so that regular members can easily attend.
Those were my points regarding officership. It is simply club policy or lack of it that invites risk. Every officer and member should first consider whatever is in the best interests of the club.
Now we get to the heart of the matter.