Fall: Membership

At a well-run Little League, there are two types of members: regular members and player members. This section deals with regular members — the people usually defined as eligible to vote at the annual meeting and other general membership meetings.

Regular members of a well-run Little League include, by definition, all current managers, coaches, volunteer umpires, board members, officers of the board, “team moms/dads,” volunteer maintenance workers, volunteer concession stand workers, etc. Just who exactly is a member is defined in the local Little League’s Constitution. (Model Constitution, Article III, Section 2 b).

One of the worst mistakes any league can make is to define its membership as all the parents in the league. Think of it the same way as any parent/teacher organization in a school. Simply having a child in the school does not mean you are a member of the organization. You must DO SOMETHING to be a member — even if it’s simply to pay the annual dues.

So it is with a regular membership in a Little League program. The registration fee paid at most  Little Leagues does not include dues for being a regular member. In fact, the league does not even solicit for new regular members at registration time, since it knows a majority of the parents who sign their children up will probably not attend general membership meetings.

A well-run Little League requires those who wish to be regular members to pay $5 in dues annually. If dues are not paid prior to one day before the annual meeting, the member is dropped from the rolls. However, your league could choose to waive a membership fee for the volunteers mentioned earlier in this section.

A league that includes all of its participants’ parents in membership is inviting problems, such as:

• The single parent of four children in the league could charge the system is unfair, and he/she should have FOUR votes.
• Which parent gets to vote? If both get to vote, the single parent above has an even more compelling argument of unfairness.
• The normal quorum for a meeting is one-third of the members. In a league with 200 participants, this could result in more than 400 eligible members, requiring more than 132 members to be present before any business can be conducted.
• If business is conducted with fewer members, the election could be challenged.

A database of all of these Operations Tips can be found here: http://www.littleleague.org/leagueofficers/Tips_Successful_League/2009-2010.htm

Next article: Review Constitution