The 2021 Annual General Meeting for the Charity will be held at the Club in the Upstairs Hall at 8.00pm on Friday 9th July.
All members are welcome and encouraged to attend, though spaces are limited.
If you would like to attend the AGM, please email the Club Administrator Vicki Baird on membership@oldruts.club
If you can’t attend but would like to cast your vote by proxy, there are 2 ways to do this. Either
- – complete the form https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSeljtJo1Vs-dLCoG8A8mTsRt7KdXVtyxtrLMMyt8JSDaQX_6g/viewform?usp=send_form
Or
2. Complete the Proxy Voting form available from the website and return it by email or mail to Vicki.
If you are unable to access any of the documents, please contact Vicki who will provide you with a hard copy.
Kind Regards,
David Doerr – Club Secretary
On Behalf of the Board of Trustees, Old Rutlishians Association
There are a number of points that the forms don’t cover.
1. How do members who wish to vote by proxy get to submit questions for the board and how are those questions and their responses made available to all?
2. It should be possible for a member to nominate another person to be their proxy and vote freely or on their behalf. How is this going to be handled?
Jason – Thank you for your comments, please see below:
1. How do members who wish to vote by proxy get to submit questions for the board and how are those questions and their responses made available to all?
The Proxy Notice has been amended so that a member to appoint a proxy to attend the AGM on their behalf. If a member wants to submit a question they can do this via their proxy. Alternatively they can nominate a member of the Trustee Board (e.g. Hon Secretary) to be their proxy and submit questions via that Board Member. The minutes of the AGM will record questions and responses. A summary report from the AGM will be included in the Orbit newsletter following the meeting.
2. It should be possible for a member to nominate another person to be their proxy and vote freely or on their behalf. How is this going to be handled?
The Proxy Notice has been amended. The proxy will only be entitled to vote in accordance with the wishes of the member with respect to the resolutions on the AGM Agenda. This is in accordance with the Club’s Constitution. para 11.6.3.
Thanks for all your efforts Vicki, such a shame that none of the trustees who are responsible for running this part of the process have responded. Unfortunately the paper proxy form still falls well short of the open and transparent process that was in place last year. I see that the paper form has been amended to allow another proxy to be allocated but the electronic one hasn’t and the changes haven’t been communicated to the members so they are aware this level of engagement can happen.
11.6.2 of the constitution says ‘The Club may require proxy notices to be delivered in a particular form, and may specify different forms for different purposes.’
As the voting is all for the same purpose and not a different one then the paper and electronic ones should be the same and offer the same level of engagement and interaction. This was carefully considered last year and was why the electronic process was a mirror of the paper one.
It is clear to me that the trustees running this process are deliberately trying to avoid allowing a member to be a proxy for other members who may wish to allow others to be their voice. This can only be because they are concerned how this might affect the decisions they have already made, as they were last year when some of them feared their positions or election being challenged. I take it this is also why the AGM is being held so late after the start of the financial year and at a time when so many people will be on holiday and unable to represent themselves in person.
Without this option being in place the ability for the constitution to hold trustees to account is largely irrelevant, as the simple majority voting and 75% of members required to vote for any change, means decisions made by the board have little or no chance of being challenged by the members.
This is further emphasised by the lack of any detail provided by way of a chairman’s report and no detail provided on who the trustees are, their suitability or skills for the role and how they will be contributing to the various sub committees. I am sure many of them are more than qualified and will make an excellent contribution but by omitting this detail most members will simply vote ‘For’ a person they know and are unlikely to vote ‘No’ for one they don’t – making the voting process somewhat farcical.
Once again, thank you for all your efforts to compile the documentation. As always, I know you will have done a thorough job with what you have been provided. I would say I’ll see you soon for a drink but it seems the Board have also seen it reasonable not to spent the £25k raised by members to support the additional costs of covid and have instead raised beer prices twice since reopening – more than 20.5% increase!