How Do I Get a Quorum for a Business Meeting?

“Quorum” simply means that enough people are represented to make a vote valid. (One would think in this day and age, electronic voting would mean everyone would get a chance to vote, making the traditional quorum concept unnecessary… but I digress.)

As a club officer, you probably get frequent notices throughout the year about turning in proxy votes for the International Convention, and about attending the District Business Meeting (or assigning a proxy). It can be quite hard to reach quorum in some cases!

The same issue can affect clubs as well. In Toastmasters, you need more than half of your active members present to reach quorum. 11 out of 20 is a quorum; 7 out of 13 is a quorum. Maybe you officially have 30 members on the rosters, but many of them you haven’t seen in months. Then people are sick, on vacation, out of town… you have 8 members show up at a meeting. How can you reach quorum?

The trick here is the definition of “active members.” What does that mean? For business purposes, it’s slightly different than membership states of “active” and “graced” and so on.

After talking to a representative from Toastmasters International on the phone, it turns out that the club officers are supposed to define what this means for their club. Guidelines should be established and a list of active members maintained. That’s what is supposed to happen, anyway. At the very least, make sure the officers have created a guideline and apply it consistently. For example, perhaps someone is inactive if they have not been to a meeting in the past 30 days, or 3 months.

Note that this does not affect their membership in Toastmasters in any way. Their membership still is based on them paying dues renewals, and still has the Toastmasters International grace rules automatically applied. What it does affect is spelled out in the Club Constitution and Bylaws, specifically Article II, Section 4.b. Basically, they cannot vote, they cannot be a club officer, and cannot compete. With the possible exception of being an officer, those are pretty hard things to do if you aren’t attending club meetings, so it’s not exactly much of an issue.

(Note: a club can theoretically charge different amounts for local club dues for active and inactive members, but I have never heard of a club that has done so, and would not recommend it.)

If you have a policy about how long members are absent before they are “inactive,” and you track membership attendance well, this can make getting a quorum easier. Now you’re only concerned about the members that actually show up to meetings.

There’s another option as well; members can voluntarily request to be considered inactive. Someone is going to be in a different state for the next month, but you have a business meeting coming up for some important votes and you are afraid you may not reach quorum? Have them send something in writing (email is fine) saying they request to be considered inactive (when I do this, I like to set a fixed time period).

With these guidelines, you should be able to reach quorum at any meeting, except for ones in which most of your members are simultaneously absent for some reason… then you’ll just have to wait for the next meeting.