Governance Review

The SRA Council has approved a recommendation from the Governance Committee to run a series of votes with the membership. The membership refers to those individuals paying dues to SRA International. The votes are regarding edits to our bylaws (and in some cases, Articles of Incorporation) to increase our efficiency and effectiveness as a Society. The five votes are summarized below, and the tracked changes versions of the bylaws and articles are linked for each proposed vote for those interested in reviewing the detailed language.

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Proposed Change 1

Revise the current presidential term of 1 year to a 2-year term (still following 1 year as President-elect and followed by 1 year as the immediate Past President). Under this proposed change, the President would co-chair the Annual Meeting Committee during their 2-year term and Chair the Awards Committee during their year as immediate Past President.

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Proposed Change 2

Revise the current Executive Committee and Council structure to that of a Board and Advisory Council.  This would result in a leadership structure in which fewer voting members meet more regularly to guide Society business (through the Board), and more representation of the Society on the Advisory Council (which would consist of representatives from each specialty group, region and committee).

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Proposed Change 3

Reduce the standing committees from 16 to 10: Finance, Governance, Annual Meeting, Awards, Member Engagement, Audit, Students and Young Professionals, Specialty Groups, World Congress, Risk Science and Translation, and Strategic Planning.

The following standing committee functions would be embedded elsewhere as noted – Regions (replaced by the Advisory Council), Executive (replaced by the Board), Publications (managed by the Board), Nominations (embedded in Governance), or Conferences and Workshops (embedded in Annual Meeting and Risk Science and Translation).

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Proposed Change 4

Standardize the voting language across the bylaws to be consistent and reflective of Robert’s Rules of Order, while establishing a clear quorum for both in-person and online votes of 20% of the Society membership.

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Proposed Change 5

The remaining bylaws or Articles edits are minor edits that bring the Society operations up to date and better reflect current practice (see full list below).

• Changing Executive Secretary (BAI) to Executive Director (BAI)
• Allowing 14 days to return a vote (from 30 days to return a vote)
• Adding to powers of the Board (journal contracts, strategic planning, conferences other than the annual meeting)
• Adding explicit terms for Treasurer and Past Treasurer (not just Treasurer-elect)
• Clarifying Board meeting cadence (at least once per month and no more than once per week)
• Modernizing language (for example, “mail” to include e-mail, and  “conference calls” to include video meetings)
• Revising the Articles from three classes of members to “the number of classes of membership as needed to maintain business operations”.

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Additional documents and presentation for your reference

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