AEOE Board Policies and Procedures Online Manual

Please help post policies! This page will be a growing and dynamic resource where board members can look up policies on AEOE business. I will post policies as they are made and reported to me! If you want to post or correct or change a policy here, email me at

Overview:

The Mission and Vision should be the guidelines by which all decisions and actions are measured.

The Mission of AEOE:

The Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education supports and inspires educators
in their quest for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential to help all learners understand, appreciate, and care for their environment. 
As an integral part of achieving our mission, we encourage direct experience outdoors.

See 12 Principles of Governance that Power Exceptional Boards, from BoardSource.org

Governance

• Board and Council Members
  • Must now sign a Confict of Interest Statement: Background (5 page pdf 108K) and Statement (2 page pdf 99K)
    • All board and council members must fill out and sign a conflict of interest statement to ensure our status as a fully tax-exempt 501c3 non-profit. Please read the Conflict of Interest Background (from the AEOE Bylaws), then print and sign the Conflict of Interest Statement (it is two pages, so if you would like to save paper, print page one only, then turn the page over to print page two). These should be kept on file by the State Coordinating Secretary.
• Elections
• How Elections can be held/Who has to be elected:
  • Section Chairs/Chairs-elect are elected. State President is elected. Other positions are appointed by the board. Elections are made and appointments are approved by simple majority of voting members of the board or council in which the position is held.
• Who can vote:
  • Board of Directors: All persons elected to the Board of Directors, also called the State Executive Board, may vote. The Chair and Chair-Elect from each section are automatically elected to the board, and three at-large members are elected to the board. Except for the offices of President, Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer, and State Coordinating Secretary, which are always board members, other positions or offices appointed by the board do not have voting privileges unless that person is also a board member. One vote per position, that is, if there are people sharing the position, they share one vote for 1/2 vote each. (See the bylaws sections on Directors and Officers) Currently Executive Board/Board of Directors with voting privileges include the following:
    • State President (only 1 vote, even if also a section chair)
    • Section Chairs (one vote each section)
    • Section Chairs-elect (one vote each section)
    • State Coordinating Secretary (1 vote)
    • Chief Financial Officer (1 vote) (added to the executive board by vote in 2002)
    • Public Relations Officer (1 vote) (added to the executive board by vote in 2005)
    • Other voting members may be added, up to a maximum of 9, as voted by the board.
  • Section Councils: Everyone on the section council can vote - Chair, Chair-Elect, Secretary, Outings Organizer, Newsletter Editor, Past Chair, Members-at-Large, and anyone else the council agrees to include. See the bylaws on section governance - click here
• When Elections are held / When leadership transitions occur
  • Chair-elects now become section chairs at the Fall conferences; The new state president (traditionally, but not necessarily the section chair of the section hosting the spring conference) assumes power after the Fall conferences as well. We changed the transfer of power from Spring to Fall so that... why did we do this again? Something to do with fiscal year? or when we could have our annual meeting?
    • The sections elect section councils at the fall conferences, which could be as little as the chair-elect, or include more council members and/or offices. This is not further defined, yet.
    • The state board then accepts the section chair and chair-elect as members, elects other people to serve on the board, and then selects from among its full board membership, officers. By tradition, the chair from alternating sections is selected as President, but nothing in the bylaws require that this is so.
• Meetings:
• The Board of Directors will hold a minimum of two meetings per year, one at the statewide conference, and another in the fall after the last section conference and before November 15. The primary purpose of the meeting at the statewide conference will be for the board and members to communicate, though other business may be conducted. The required purpose of the fall meeting is to elect the Chair-Elects (elected by the section councils at the fall conferences) to the board, to elect the three at-large board members, and to elect board members to specific offices including President, Secretary, Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer, and State Coordinating Secretary (bylaws, Article 3, Section 8). This fall meeting is the legally required annual meeting. Other business may be conducted at this meeting. At least one additional board meeting is traditionally scheduled during the year, often during the summer, in order to conduct in-depth business and strategic planning. Any board meeting may be conducted by teleconference or electronically if the business to be conducted makes that appropriate, as determined by the President.
• The intent was that the summer retreat meeting be the major board meeting of the year, so that issues could be addressed in detail, and that fall and spring meetings be less in-depth. The fall meeting is the official annual meeting to meet legal requirements.

Membership

• Institutional Members:
  • Benefits: are now (as of 4/15/05) only for the organization. All individuals, including the contact person, must join as individuals to attend conferences and events. The benefits of institutional membership are: 1) program listing on the California EE Providers Pages, 2) free job postings on the AEOE Joblist, 3) participation in conference Job Fairs, and 4) promotion of their events on the AEOE Calendar, and any other benefits we may add. Institutional members who joined before 4/15/05 will still receive the benefit of the contact person having individual membership privileges (non-transferable) until their expiration date, at which time that benefit will also expire.
  • Memberships for programs with multiple sites: If the program acts as one program with different campuses, the institutional membership can extend to all campuses. For example, Orange County, LA County, San Diego County, Camp High Trails, WOLF School, and Exploring New Horizons all have multiple campuses, but their clients generally go to only one and all have the same basic curriculum, in addition, hiring is done centrally and the staff may move around as needed to different sites. If the organization has multiple sites that act as distinct programs, then each program should join separately. For example, Guided Discoveries (Astrocamp and CIMI), Yosemite National Institutes (YI and Headlands), YMCA Camping Services of San Diego County (Camp Surf and Marston) all act as separate programs, with distinct curricula, and sometimes clients will attend both programs in different years. Staffing is generally taken care of separately, and staff generally do not move around during a given year.
  • Comp memberships - we have in the past given Institutional memberships as thank-you's to organizations who support AEOE in other ways - hosting the AEOE website, cutting costs for using their site for AEOE conferences, allowing board/committee members to work on AEOE projects (such as newsletter, website, conference planning, etc) on paid work time, thus underwriting volunteers, providing publicity, use of materials and equipment (copies, phone/conference calling, mailing fliers to network, etc), and other ways. There is no set policy on this, be we think it's a good idea to say "thank you" to those organizations that support AEOE in this way, and we will do this on a case-by-case basis.

Communication

• Email expectations and "netiquette":
  • Regular access to email has become a necessity for participating in the board. It is an expectation of being on the Board that you will keep up with email and communication.
  • For conversations that only concern one or two other board members, use their individual email addresses - keep the use of the board and council mailing lists for business that may concern everyone. To "reply" only to the sender in Yahoo! Groups, you must delete the group address and add the sender's email. Conversely, now replies to the State Board only go to the sender as the default, so if you want to reply to the whole group, you need to delete the sender's email and enter the group address.
  • Use of the AEOE group mailing lists is for AEOE-related business only - if you have something you want to forward to group members for personal reasons, please send it to their individual addresses.
  • General "Netiquette" tips"
    • The Basics: It is HIGHLY recommended that you read "Netiquette 101" or some other guide to online etiquette, even if you are not an internet "newbie," there are great tips here to make us all more effective and courteous communicators. Especially read "Courtesy #1 - Get to Know the Basics!"
    • Formatting: Not all email programs can read fancy formatting, so try to send your emails in only plain text. Using varying font sizes, colors and backgrounds will often make a message unintelligible or confusing. Keep it simple.
    • Attachments: Try to keep attachments small in file size - many people have free email programs and their in boxes fill up and stop other incoming mail if you send large attachments. If it is something that you want to share with everyone on the board, you can upload files to the Yahoo! Groups website and send an email so people can go there and download it.
    • Attachments 2: NEVER open attachments from anyone you don't know, and don't even open unexpected attachments from those you do. There are virus programs called Worms that get into people's address books and spoof the address from which they are being sent, so often virus emails that appear to be from a trusted friend are not. If you get something you are not sure about, contact the person directly and ask them first if they sent you something. Remember, they may not be the ones whose computer has a virus, since the "from" email address is invariably "spoofed," but someone who has them in their address book does have a virus. Even if the email seems to be from a reputable source, if it is unexpected, DO NOT open the attachments - virus designers use all kinds of "social engineering" to trick people into opening these files and infecting their machines to spread the virus further.
    • Forwards: If you are forwarding something related to AEOE business, it will be easier to read and use if rather than just hitting "forward" you copy and paste the text you want to send into a new email. This will eliminate the >> forwarding characters that are put into the text by email programs and make it easier to read.
    • Forwards 2: Never forward emails that ask you to forward them to everyone - they are usually hoaxes or chain letters. You can check their veracity easily by going to one of several email hoax, urban legend or netlore sites and entering the subject line of the email in the search box. Good sites are http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/ and Snopes.com.
• Yahoo! Groups Features

  To sign up to be on one of our Yahoo! Groups mailing lists:

  • State Board - goes to everyone on the state executive board, northern and southern councils plus some members-at-large
  • Northern Section Council - just the northern council and some state board who need updates, such as publicity and webmaster and interested members-at-large
  • Southern Section Council - just the southern council and some state board who need updates, such as publicity and webmaster and interested members-at-large
  • Executive Board - the statewide voting board: President(s) (and past Presidents as advisory members), Section Chairs, Chief Financial Officer, State Coordinating Secretary, PR/Outreach Coordinator, plus Webmaster (non-voting, but need the information to keep the website up to date) and state Membership Coordinator)
  • To join the AEOE Strategic Plan Discussion Group, Click Here

  To manage your email preferences on Yahoo! Groups, or to see a list of group members, or to read the messages online, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/ (or click on the appropriate group above, or follow the link at the bottom of group emails) and follow directions for editing your membership or joining.

  These are group discussion mailing lists and facilitate communication among board members across the state. Replies go out to the entire group. To help cut down on ~unnecessary~ emails, if you only need to reply to the sender rather than the whole group, please delete the group email address and add in the sender's address when you reply. Some things generate quite a bit of discussion, however, that is important for those on the board and councils to be aware of, so be prepared to check your email often!

  If you are getting too many emails, you can change your email preferences to "daily digest" and just get one email with all the messages of the day combined. You will not be able to receive attachments this way, however. If you need help changing your settings, , and I will be happy to help. If you wish to unsubscribe, follow the directions on the bottom of the emails you receive from the group.

  To use other features of the group, go to the website and click on the feature you'd like to use, such as "files" for uploading files, or "photos" for sharing photos, and follow instructions.

Publicity

• Internal review of ALL public documents (newsletters, articles, flyers), official communication with outside people (letters to potential keynotes officially representing AEOE), etc, to make sure we are well-represented. Just one or two other board members should check it over/edit it before it goes out to the public to ensure there are no typos, grammatical errors, and that we are accurately and well-represented. For newsletters, they can be uploaded to the "files" section of Yahoo! Groups for review and that works really well!

• Whenever listing AEOE or any AEOE events with other organizations, always be sure to add "California" to the front of our name, so we show up in searches and databases with other California events, rather than appearing to be a national organization, which has created some confusion in the past. The listing should appear like this: The California Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (AEOE)..."

Discounts, Comps, etc.

• Statewide Conferences:
  • Presenter Discounts: At the September 2003 Statewide Board Meeting in Wrightwood, it was decided that the standard workshop presenter discount should be 50%, going down to 40% after a certain deadline. Presenters must get their applications and registration in by the early deadline to get the discount.
    
    NOTE from Heather: On the topic of presenter discounts, I think being flexible is necessary and one of our strengths with the conferences.  We wanted to give 50% discounts in 05, but weren’t able to due to the high cost of the site.  So, the $50 discount ($100 for two workshop sessions) was what we used.  And for volunteers, we gave complimentary reg. fee to the big 12 volunteers, $50 off for the medium/large jobs and then shirts/merchandise/gifts to the 2-4 hour volunteers. 
    
    When doing presenter discounts, having the presenter applications due a bit earlier and just one presenter deadline and a single presenter discount amount worked great;  I wouldn’t do 2 different discounts if I could avoid it since it would have increased the complexity of an already huge job without a whole lot of return (from what I saw).  We had a TON of applications by the presenter deadline and had no need for a second presenter discount (something workshop coordinators have consistently told me causes them a lot more trouble than help). 
    
  • Conference Committee: Certain jobs on the conference committee are very large, important and time-consuming, and should get full complimentary conference attendance: 1) Conference Coordinator, Registrar, 2) Workshop/Presenter Coordinator, 3) Registration Packet / Conference Program (Printed Publications), 4) Conference Publicity (including fliers, web, outreach, etc), 5) CFO - Conference Money Handler, 6) Keynote Coordinator, 7) Entertainment Coordinator, Housing/Transportation/Recycling (same person had all three jobs, so that became big enough to give 100% comp), Volunteer Coordinator, Talent Show Coordinator, Scholarship Coordinator, etc. This is at the discretion of the conference committee. Other jobs that discounts of 50-100% should be considered for are Merchandise (tee shirts, mugs, etc) including design, art, ordering, etc, Tea House (like at Walker Creek - that was a lot of work!), Charitable Giving Coordinator/Silent and Live Auctions (this is also a lot of work and brings in lots of scholarship money!), and others at the discretion of the committee for each conference.
  • Board Discounts: Being on the board alone does not guarantee a discount - being on the conference committee should be the criteria.
• Fall Section Conferences:
  • Our cost for these is much less, so we can, so far, give workshop presenters a free conference. Also conference committee. Just need to watch costs to make sure we have a net gain for the budget rather than a loss!
• Newsletters
  • Some organizations receive a complimentary newsletter to make sure their staff are informed of AEOE events. "If it's an org. that is not a member, and has no individual members, and I think they could potentially benefit from receiving our newsletter and attending our conferences, then they get it. OR - if it's an org. with many sites and the "main site" has the Instit. membership, then the OSS sites get a comp. one." - Helen