Bylaws
Bylaws CommitteeCounty Bylaws
Regional Bylaws
Bylaws Archive
Bylaws Discussion
Changing the Bylaws
What Are Bylaws?
Interpretations
GPCA Home
What Are Bylaws?
Bylaws are a set of rules adopted by an organization or assembly for governing its own meetings or affairs. There are three general types of rules that are often included within bylaws:
- Definitions of organizational structure.
- Descriptions of the rights and duties of members. An organization's bylaws are intended to detail the rights and duties of the members within the organization and the extent to which the general membership retains control, or to be relieved of detailed concern with, the organization's business.
- Descriptions of the group's decision-making process. Before a group-decision can be made, the group must agree on what constitutes a decision, what is the process for reaching this decision, and how much agreement must exist before the decision can be regarded as reflecting the will of the group.
The GPCA Bylaws represent the General Assembly's contract with itself about how it wants to be structured and how it wants to make decisions.
Except as noted in the bylaws, the General Assembly has full and sole power to act for the entire organization. In general, as in most democratically-organized societies, any limitation or standing delegation of this power must be explicitly provided for within the bylaws.
Unlike many organizations, the GPCA does not refer to an external reference for general parliamentary procedure (i.e.. Robert's Rules of Order) as the group has decided to incorporate a different consensus-seeking procedure into its decision-making process. Because of this, the GPCA Bylaws devotes a considerable amount of space to describing the details of this consensus-seeking decision-making process.
In order to facilitate the GPCA business and to handle possible disagreements concerning its parliamentary or executive conduct, the bylaws...
- must be clear, concise, and unambiguous; and
- must be made no more restrictive nor more detailed in specification than necessary; and
- should correspond with the actual (or intended) current practice and operation of the organization.
The Bylaws Committee is charged with building and maintaining a set of structural and procedural rules that meet these criteria.