Early in the 2008, the committee produced or revised the documents listed and linked to below. It is recommended that they be updated as future committees change MC processes and procedures.
During 2008, in addition to Committee meetings, the Membership Committee conducted much of its business via e-mail. Records of the meeting proceedings are in the meeting minutes. The secretary also archived the business-related e-mails to provide a record of the actions taken and decisions made. It will be worthwhile for the Committee Chairman to review these minutes and archives to familiarize himself with the issues dealt with and recorded therein.
During consideration of the first candidates in 2008, some MC members expressed frustration in trying to rank candidates. They felt that any candidate sponsored by a member would make a good Fellowship Forum member. They saw no rational way to differentiate among candidates when they had never met them all personally. The Committee discussed this issue at length, and decided that, for the remainder of 2008, we would screen all candidates for suitability, based primarily on their responses to the attendance and willingness to serve questions on the application form, and propose for membership any that passed that screening on a First In, First Out basis. For the remainder of the year we followed this practice, checking at each "ranking" meeting to ensure that we still had unanimous Committee approval for this means of choosing. I would say that the method served us well. However, at the Annual Business Meeting in January, 2009, when this was presented to the General Membership it was roundly criticized. Accordingly, it was agreed that this process would not be used in the future - the Membership Committee would return to a full ranking process for all new members.
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