Folk Project Board members,

The Nominations Committee is proposing the attached 2023 Nominations Slate for approval by the Board.

SUMMARY OF SLATE CHANGES: (see attached slate)

• Amend By-Laws: Officers may serve no more than THREE consecutive terms with the exception of the Treasurer who can serve up to four consecutive terms.

• Officers: President, Vice President, and Secretary nominated for an additional one year term

• Trustees whose terms end in 2022 are renominated for another three year term expiring in 2025.

• Non-Board Positions (at the request of the candidates):

  • Please note there is no requirement for committee chairs to be board members.

  • Lindsey Meyer as Archivist reporting to President

  • Pat Brangs as Community Services and Performer Resource ”chair” reporting to President

  • Susan Lembo as Membership “chair” reporting to Treasurer

BOARD AGENDA ITEMS:

11/1 Board Meeting

• Propose the change to the Bylaws (with notice to members). This proposed change will be voted on at a special meeting no sooner than 3 weeks (11/23 or later). A straw poll will be taken at the 11/2 meeting - if the Board is not in favor of the change, the Nominations Committee will need to continue its work.

• Present the Nominations Slate for discussion only - vote will be taken at special meeting since the slate is contingent on the change to the Bylaws.

11/23 Special Meeting

• Motion to approve the change to the Bylaws

• Motion to approve the Nominations Slate

BACKGROUND :

The Nominations Committee held 5 meetings to create the proposed slate. The process included confirming with all current board members their willingness to continue to serve on the Board, identifying vacancies to be filled, proposing and discussing potential candidates, calling potential candidates, and developing a slate based on the availability of qualified candidates.

During this process, the Nominations Committee concluded that the best plan of action at this time is to recommend that the Board extend the term limits for the officers whose terms were expiring (President, Vice President, and Secretary) by one year. Those officers - Elizabeth Lachowicz, Paul Fisher, and Jeff Canter - agreed to continue if the term limits are extended.

The reasons for the above decision were manifold:

• Unlike chairmen, where experience and success can keep them in their positions for many years, the two-year limit means losing experienced and successful officers.

• COVID, aging, and competent chairmen retaining their positions have limited the choices available with the experience, skillset and desire to take on these positions.

• The current officers are not only the best slate we can propose. We’d also like to maintain the era of peaceful productivity that they’ve initiated.

To change the bylaws, a proposal has to be made at a board meeting and then voted upon at a board meeting occurring at least three weeks later at a second board meeting.

The NominatIons Committee invited Board members to discuss this proposal at a meeting on October 20. We did receive some positive comments via email and no one attended the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

The Nominations Committee

Gary (chair), Todd, Evelyn, Peg, Elizabeth and Mark