Meeting formats

A couple of weeks ago the hosta society I belong to well we had our annual meeting. We are a group that in the past have had an agenda but not a real formal meeting.

We have a new president how also had an agenda but all of a sudden we are using the format of Roberts Rules of order which we haven't really strictly followed in the past.

To me this seems a pretty formal way to have a meeting and I'm wondering if there is a less formal method of having a meeting.

We have officers and "nominations" which of course no one wants to hold these positions. So people (like me) are suggested for these positions. I always seems that any group I join no one wants to hold these positions but the people I know always want be to run for president of these groups. I've done that in the past and don't want to do so again!
Also a treasurer's report but we are not taking sums of money either.

It just adds to the confusion of our meetings as most people are not familiar with the above mentioned method of holding a meeting. If someone states we are not doing it "correctly" how are we to know?

Any thoughts??

If you have pretty much the same group of people all the time, then what I would suggest is that each person must hold one of the positions at least once each or rotate. We had a social committe at one of the large companies I worked for and everyone had to "volunteer" for one of the positions (Secretary, Treasurer, President, etc.) at least once. Nobody was allowed to not participate and do their part.

Gail, I work for a nonprofit organization with about 80 committees, and I'm also a trained group facilitator, so this is my particular area of interest. Please feel free to PM me if you want more information.

The short answer here is that if it's a smallish group and you aren't making any heavy-duty legally binding decisions there's probably not really a need to follow any sort of formalized meeting procedure at all. You do need an agenda and a format that works well for your group, but the formality of Robert's Rules will probably just stifle the meeting.

If you do need a formal procedure for whatever reason, you might think about using Sturgis instead of Robert's. It's a much more streamlined process. Very few groups are using Robert's these days...it's considered pretty archaic.