When it comes to annual or special meetings, member-based organizations such as professional associations, sports clubs and credit unions have unique needs. The leadership in these organizations may be volunteer or a mix of paid and volunteer, and both financial and human resources are often stretched.
While faced with these challenges, it is still important to exercise good governance in running these meetings, ensuring you have solid participation, transparency, accountability and responsiveness. This is especially true when carrying out votes on business resolutions – approving changes to bylaws, electing new board or committee members, and appointing an auditor are all achieved through voting.
Managing a meeting on your own is a large undertaking, both from the cost and administrative perspectives. Do you have the control in-house to manage the entire meeting from beginning to end, with clear accountability for your team members at every step?
To begin, you'll want to review your regulatory and legislative requirements to ensure compliance. You must distribute voting procedures and ballots to members, by specified deadlines, track the votes received and tabulate them.
If you're still using paper votes as opposed to offering electronic voting options, this can be time-consuming and the larger your member base, the more cumbersome and expensive the paper process is. Paper votes have also been reported to have lower participation rates. Offering electronic voting can streamline this process and allow you to report on results in real time.
If your organization retains external counsel, you could engage them to perform the meeting activities, but this may be a much more expensive option. A more cost-effective choice may be to hand over all or part of these responsibilities to an outside service provider.
Outsourced meeting and voting services
When you choose a third party, the administrative burden of mailing and voting activities is assumed by a company with experience in these areas, who takes responsibility for the process from beginning to end. Whether you are using paper mailings or electronic delivery of materials, you can be sure these are sent on time, and trust the integrity of the votes.
If your organization is still governed by old bylaws that don't allow for e-delivery of materials, a third party provider can help you obtain the necessary consent from your constituents to update these policies before moving to electronic communication.
There is also the option of offering your members, shareholders and constituents the convenience of voting by mail, phone or online. Most organizations report greater member engagement and satisfaction when given more choices in how to vote, with online voting gaining in popularity.
There are also situations in which your organization can particularly benefit from an experienced service provider. These include approving a major initiative such as an acquisition or if there's a chance you'll be facing a dissident or contentious meeting.
To ensure accurate and timely reporting of proxy results for better governance and less risk, while potentially saving money through greater efficiency, consider outsourcing your annual or special meeting.
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