If you are affilliated with a non-profit museum or rail preservation group, please indicate which and tell how often your board of directors meets officially: monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or other (Please specify.)

Thanks in advance.

At The Railroad Museum of Long Island we hold fourteen scheduled Board meetings per year. The second Tuesday of each month and two general membership/Board meetings on Saturdays in May and October. Additional special meetings to move on major projects or to hear proposals/presentations take place occasionally.

Don Fisher, Trustee
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The board at National Capital Trolley Museum meets quarterly. The executive committee (pres, vice pres. treas., secretary) meet between meetings as necesssary.

Wesley

The Pacific Southwest Railway Museum has a "hands-on" type of board with active members. We meet monthly, or, more often as needed.

Jim

The SC RR Museum's by-laws require monthly Membership meetings but only one annual Board meeting. In practice, both bodies meet monthly. I would not recommend our structure to another group.

The Railroaders Memorial Museum Board meets monthly. Once we feel our standing committees are reorganized and more effective, the Board is going to consider moving the Board meetings to bimonthly or quarterly. As is the case with so many non-profits, most of the discussions and topics covered at the Board meetings should more appropriately be handled at committee level and the Board should concentrate on what a good non-profit Board is chartered to do - set policy and provide governance.

Orange Empire Railway Museum has monthly Board of Directors meetings and an annual membership meeting as required by the bylaws.

Additionally, the officers generally hold their own monthly meeting to maintain communication and plan activities.

Several activity areas in the musuem (collection, physical plant, publicity, etc) have, or have had, their own monthly meetings -- these are for planning, foreman's reports and safety topics. For special event planning additional meetings will be held as needed -- these include people from all sectors of museum activity.

The musuem holds several member-only actitivites during the year.

As there were and are other LA area railfan groups, OERM has never had to operate monthly program or social meetings.

I should also note that most states have laws regarding "Non-stock" corporations that apply to non-profit organizations. The state non-stock law supercedes the by-laws of the organization and I found that many organizations have not only not kept their by-laws current with current state law but many of the board member are unaware of the requirements of the current state laws. While the laws I'm familiar with are pretty non-specific regarding the frequency of board meetings, they are very specific in regards to the notice required to the members in order to hold a meeting. Not only that, my state requires all committee meetings to be noticed to the members of the organization and be held "open to the membership" as well. Also, non-stock corporation law strictly forbid any decision making (board voting on issue(s)) unless the meeting is open to the membership and having been properly noticed beforehand. Also, board cannot vote while in executive or closed session, they only may discuss and I suppose they could decide how they will vote but the vote must actually occur in an open meeting of the board. In my state, the requirement to provide notice to the members makes the meetings of the board and committees very cumbersome. Lawyers who specialized in homeowner association law are usually fairly current on non-stock corporation law for your state.

Ed

I'd also note that it's possible that non-profits that receive any sort of public money are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Coming from the operations side of things, I've had "when in doubt take the safest course" drummed into me. Therefore I tend to err on the side of caution when dealing with legal issues.

The Port Huron Museum has monthly board meetings, and annual meeting in October, monthly Staff/ Volunteer meetings, and at least once a month meetings for our Finance, Collections, Fundraising and Long Term Planning Committees, which answer to the Board.

In addition, now that we have four sites, we have just established advisory board for each site, whose chairman sits on the Museum Board and makes recommendations to the Board on improving/ issues at each site.

T.J. Gaffney