Organizing a general meeting within your association requires scrupulous adherence to well-defined legal procedures. Here, we examine the three fundamental aspects of these events: sending out invitations, running the AGM itself, and the steps to be taken afterwards.
TheAnnual General Meeting is an important event for your association, and careful organization is essential. There are three key stages:
- convening members,
- the course of the meeting,
- management of decisions taken after the AGM.
Each of these phases is governed by specific rules that must be scrupulously respected to guarantee the legality and legitimacy of the decisions adopted.
AGM call phase
The purpose of this essential step is toinform your members of the forthcoming General Meeting. Your association's articles of association must clearly state who is authorized to convene the meeting, whether it be the president, the board of directors or, in more exceptional cases, a group of active members.
Notices of meetings can be sent out by various means (post, email, posters, etc.) and must ensure that all members are properly informed. They must include key elements such as the date, place and agenda of the meeting.
Important to know: strict compliance with the convening procedures stipulated in the bylaws or internal regulations is essential to ensure the validity of resolutions passed at the meeting.
General Meeting
The second step is to organize the General Meeting in accordance with the established rules. It is crucial to ensure that the quorum is respected, i.e. the minimum number of members present or represented required for the meeting to deliberate validly.
In addition, voting procedures (by show of hands or secret ballot), the type of majority required to pass resolutions (simple, absolute or qualified), and voting methods must be clearly specified in the bylaws or internal regulations and strictly adhered to.
Post-meeting formalities
The final step is to record the decisions taken at the meeting in the form of minutes, which are essential for implementing the resolutions adopted. Although this document is not always compulsory, it is strongly recommended and may even be required by the association's articles of association.
To ensure transparency, these minutes can be made available to members, and publication may be necessary in certain cases to make decisions binding on third parties.
It is also important to inform external stakeholders, such as the bank, of any changes in the persons authorized to manage the association's accounts.