New Guidelines for SdelleS

Thanks to the wonderful group of ladies in our book club we are a thriving and growing group! After our recent growth spurt - we've added 5 new members since March and 3 of those joined last month! - we realized the need for some "official guidelines".

We want our club to continue to be successful and the only way to do that is by assuring that all our members are active in the decisions we make, and happy with the direction our club is going. With that in mind, we spent some time at our last meeting discussing ways to improve the club. Here are the guidelines that we agreed on:

New Book Club Guidelines for SdelleS

1. Choosing books and scheduling meetings:

• After we finish our current “book picker” rotation (next up is Annette, then Nancy, and finally Joan) we are changing the way we choose books. Here’s how it will work:

• Three times a year we will have a planning meeting. This will be part of our regular meeting that month (not an extra meeting, so don’t worry). Everyone can bring one book to suggest and take a few minutes to “make a case” for that book. Then each person will vote for the books she wants to read the most. The four books with the most votes will be our selections for the next four months.

• At that planning meeting we will also set dates for our next four meetings. Because of our group size, we realize that we cannot plan a meeting that everyone will be able to attend. Our best option is to rotate between weekend and weeknight meetings to better accommodate everyone’s schedules.
  
  
• Our first planning meeting will be part of our Christmas party this year.

2. Meeting locations:

• Our current policy is that if you want to host a meeting, you volunteer. If you don’t, you don’t. We’re sticking with that policy but with one addition. If you want to host but can’t do it in your home, you are welcome to find an alternate locations (a church, park, office, etc.) and host us there.
  
  
• We also agreed that weeknight meetings at Chevy’s (Happy Hour!) would be back on the schedule.

3. New Members:

• We agree that new people bring new perspectives and fun to our group; however we realize that if the group gets too big it will lose some of its charm. For now we will continue to accept new members but we will reevaluate that decision at each planning meeting and we may decide to close the membership at some point.

4. Reading Speed:

• We agree that 100 pages per week is a reasonable goal for our club. At the same time, we understand that some months are busier than others. We expect our members to make every effort to read the book before each meeting; however if you just can’t fit it in one month, you are still welcome to attend the meeting and participate in the discussion.
  
  
• At the same time, if you are consistently not reading the books from month to month, you may want to reconsider your commitment to the book club. [Of course we do have “maternity leave” for those members with new babies – come when you can, read what you can, you’re welcome whenever.]

5. Author Meetings:

• We definitely want to pursue additional meetings with authors, either in person or via speakerphone. If the opportunity arises, we will bump our next planned book to the following month and fit the new book in as quickly as possible.

6. Annual Family Party:

• This topic split the group evenly. Half were opposed to the idea while half were in support of it. However since no one was willing to plan or host this event we decided to stick with our “girls only” meetings.