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Appoint a Chair

Every committee needs a chair.1 The committee chair is responsible for appointing members, scheduling meetings, drafting agendas, presiding over meetings, taking minutes, and reporting back to the board. The chair is also a member of the committee.

It is a lot of work to be a committee chair. Fortunately, the chairperson can delegate any or all of it to people they trust.

The committee chair is usually appointed by a majority vote of the board.2

  1. Some NCs like to appoint multiple chairs or co-chairs to a committee. The goal is to share the workload or to make sure that at least one chair is available when needed.

    This introduces the risk of not having a single authority. If the co-chairs disagree on what goes into the agenda, there is no way to resolve the disagreement.3

    It is also unnecessary. A committee chair can delegate any of their duties to anyone else as they see fit to share the workload. ↩

  2. This is described in Article VII, section 3, paragraph B of the NC Bylaws. For example: “All Committee Chairs shall be appointed by a majority vote of the board.” If the bylaws are silent, Robert’s Rules of Order describes ways the chair may be appointed. RONR (12th ed.) 13:17-18 ↩

  3. “The anomalous title ‘co-chairman’ should be avoided, as it causes impossible dilemmas in attempts to share the functions of a single position.” RONR (12th ed.) 13:17 ↩