Designing Member Guidelines

Last week, I posted “When Should You Consider By-Laws?”, which covered when to begin writing actual rules that your members (and you too!) follow in matters of the IPC. In this post, I’ll introduce the ‘lite’ version of by-laws, 'Guidelines.'

In short, guidelines are suggested standards that you want members to follow in dealing with the club and other members. Unlike by-laws, guidelines are not hard and fast rules, but a guide to follow at the request of the club. Also, unlike by-laws, they’re not enforceable. They can stand alone, or work in tandem with by-laws, becoming in enforceable in the context of the IPC. In those two instances, one is to assist your members when there are no by-laws, and the other are areas where solid by-laws are not needed, but some guidance is needed and can be referred to via the by-laws.

In “When Should You Consider By-Laws?”, I suggest waiting until your IPC is large enough to need by-laws that are written and enforced. This is not to say that you shouldn’t create some basic guidelines to define the expectations of the club and its members. If you have a social club, some common-sense behavior and etiquette guidelines can be established. By the way, for more information on behavior and etiquette, refer to the “A Matter of Manners” post. Guidelines can go above and beyond behavior and etiquette. In “Finding the right members for your IPC,” I introduced the fictional Atlantic Philatelist Club. This club is all about postage stamps, so guidelines would involve meeting attendance, or expectations of presentations or meetings that members host. I haven’t of stamp collectors getting too far out of hand, so behavior and etiquette guidelines would be less than that of a socially-oriented club. These guidelines will help inform the base of any by-laws your club decides on.

Once you have by-laws on paper, you may have some areas that don’t need to be covered by-laws, you may be waiting to see by-laws might be necessary in the future, or there is an area where the situation might be too dynamic to have by-laws. Let’s say that the Atlantic Philatelist Club has established in the by-laws each member must host one meeting a year to remain in good standing with the club. While this is a solid by-law, it might point to guidelines on the minimum standards for a meeting, which don’t need to be covered in the by-laws. With those guidelines, you might also stipulate that the meeting organizer must be in attendance. It’s not a problem now, but if the situation arises consistently, then that stipulation might be promoted to a by-law in the future. In another instance, you may have guidelines that discourage bringing stamp collections to certain meetings, but you also see that this guideline may need to be bypassed for special occasions. 

While I suggested waiting on establishing by-laws, guidelines can be established close to the start of an IPC. However, I also recommend getting member suggestions and feedback, if not shared ownership of the club’s guidelines.