At the Silicon Valley Young Democrats next General Membership meeting, we will have an agenda item to discuss and vote on amendments to the SVYD bylaws. The meeting will take place on October 21, 2019 at 7pm. The tentative location is the San José West Valley Library community room - please check the Facebook event for confirmation of the location.

The proposed changes were carefully thought out by the Bylaws Committee, and include the following changes:

• Creates a new Vice President role. The VP would run the organization internally and lead our meetings and committees. The VP would also replace the Membership Director as the Officer to succeed the Presidency in case of a vacancy. As previous Presidents of SVYD have had a huge burden, the Bylaws Committee is proposing this new position to make our Executive Board more productive. If the bylaws are approved, we will have an election for the Vice President at the same meeting.

• Remove standing list of standing committees from bylaws. Allows general membership to create a committee by majority vote, in addition to existing powers by Executive Board.

• Rename the Treasurer to Financial Director, to recognize the plans to more actively fundraise for the 2020 election. Also creates a Finance Committee to spearhead this initiative.

• Changes to expenditure requirements to allow the club to more effectively and quickly use our future funds. With these changes, all expenditures on endorsed candidates over $600 will require a 2/3 vote by the Executive Board. 

• Change requirement for Executive Board approval on endorsed candidates from $100 to $600. Other expenditures over $100 require a majority Executive Board vote. All expenditures over $100 require membership notification.

• Miscellaneous

  • An “SVYD Year” is explicitly defined as being from July 1 to June 30.

  • The area that SVYD covers is changed from “Silicon Valley”, which has vague borders, to the more explicit “Santa Clara County.”

  • Adds social media to Secretary duties

  • Add Facebook as a primary means of communication, in addition to email

  • Minor section numbering changes

  • Minor grammatical changes

As a reminder, in order to vote, members must have attended at least two meetings and paid annual dues since July 1, 2019. You can pay dues here: http://svyd.org/join-us/pay-via-paypal/ 

You can view the proposed changes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19l-yhL0q2vwywA3S9DpWetvFLav6gZLvmHaxq2Cb6bM/edit#

Ryan Globus

Chair of the Bylaws Committee

Interim President, Silicon Valley Young Democrats