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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>The NESFA By-Laws, Standing Rules, and Related Materials</title> <style type="text/css"> h1 { text-align: center; font-size: 200% } h2 { text-align: center; font-size: 160% } h3 { text-align: center; font-size: 120% } .subhead { font-size: 60% } </style> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../buttons.css"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../scrollbar.css"> </head>  <body background="../shieldbg.gif" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#660066" style="background-attachment:fixed; background-position: center center;"> <h1>The NESFA<sup>®</sup> By-Laws<br> and Related Documents<br> </h1> <p>The HTML versions placed here by the NESFA Rules Committee are the official versions, and have been certified by the Rules Committee to be correct as of their stated dates.</p> <p>There is an <a href="archive">archive</a> of older versions of these files.</p> <p>Recent proposed changes to the By-Laws and the Standing Rules are stored in a <a href="SR-pending.txt">pending file</a>, awaiting <i>perfection</i> (a term of art in the rules business) or review before they are folded into the official HTML files.</p> <p>In addition to decisions for immediate action, NESFA enacts two types of enduring rules: <ul> <li>The fundamental ones, which set the basic form of the organization, cannot be ignored, can only be adopted or changed by vote of the Membership, and are intended to be harder to change, are ByLaws. They are the "constitution" of NESFA.</li> <li>Other rules are policies which may be adopted or changed by the Membership, the Executive Board, a committee, or the holder of an elected or appointed position. These are compiled by the Rules Committee and codified as the Standing Rules. Each rule is tagged with "M" (Membership), "E" (Executive Board), or "F" (Fiat, followed by the issuer), to indicate its source.</li> </ul></p> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h3><a href="#By-Laws">The NESFA By-Laws</a></h3> <h3><a href="#Standing-Rules">The NESFA Standing Rules</a></h3> <h3><a href="#related">Related Material</a></h3> <h3><a href="#linking">Linking to the By-Laws and Standing Rules</a></h3> <h3><a href="#quoting">Quoting from the By-Laws and Standing Rules</a></h3> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h2><a name="By-Laws" href="Bylaws.html">The NESFA By-Laws</a></h2> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#blp.html">Preface</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl1">Article I: Membership</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl2">Article II: Meetings of the Membership</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl3">Article III: Election of Officers</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl4">Article IV: Duties of Officers</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl5">Article V: Management</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl6">Article VI: Committees</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl7">Article VII: The NESFA Fellowship</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl8">Article VIII: Discipline</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl9">Article IX: Amendments</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl10">Article X: Miscellaneous Provisions</a></h3> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#bl11">Article XI: Boskone</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR-pending.txt">Rules already in effect but not yet incorporated into the ByLaws or Standing Rules</a></h3> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h2><a name="Standing-Rules" href="SR.html">The NESFA Standing Rules</a><br> <span class="subhead"><a name="Code">(AKA The NESFA Code)</a></span></h2> <h3><a href="SR.html#srpref">Preface</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sr1">Section I: Officers and Committees</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sr2">Section II: Finances</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sr3">Section III: Meetings</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sr4">Section IV: Services</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sr5">Section V: Miscellaneous</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR.html#sra">Appendix A: Humorous Motions</a></h3> <h3><a href="SR-pending.txt">Rules already in effect but not yet incorporated into the ByLaws or Standing Rules</a></h3> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h2><a name="related">Related Material</a></h2> <h3><a href="Bylaws.html#blnotes.html">Some Notes on NESFA Constitutional History</a></h3> <h3><a href="ao.html">The NESFA Articles of Organization and amendments thereto</a></h3> <h3>The NESFA IRS Ruling Letter <a href="irs.html">in HTML</a> and <a href="irs.pdf">as a PDF</a></h3> <h3>The NESFA IRS Reinstatment Letters <a href="irs-reinstate-2019.pdf">(2019)</a> and <a href="irs-reinstate-2023.pdf">(2023)</a> as PDFs</h3> <h3><a href="som.html">The Somerville Tax Exemption Letter</a></h3> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h2><a name="linking">Linking to the By-Laws and Standing Rules</a></h2> <p>By intention, every section, sub-section, sub-sub-section, etc. of the By-Laws and Standing Rules can be directly linked to by a URL that (again, by intention) will never change. (If anyone finds a section for which this is not true, please inform the Rules Committee.) This capability is used extensively within the By-Laws and Standing Rules to link related and referred-to sections, but is also available for use from elsewhere (for example, many of the Treasury procedures at <a href="/Treasury/index.htm">/Treasury/</a> link to the rules underlying them).</p> <p>The form of these URLs is standardized, so that someone who wishes to link to a section can deduce the correct URL without having to examine its HTML source.</p> <ul> <li> <p>The By-Laws exist as a single file, with URL <http://www.nesfa.org/rules/Bylaws.html>. The beginning of each article has its own link and may be reached by the URL <http://www.nesfa.org/rules/Bylaws.html#blX> (where "X" is the article number).</p> </li> <li> <p>The Standing Rules exist as a single file, with URL <http://www.nesfa.org/rules/SR.html>. The beginning of each section has its own link and may be reached by the URL <http://www.nesfa.org/rules/SR.html#srX> (where "X" is the section number, or "a" for Appendix A).</p> </li> <li> <p>To link to a specific section, append a fragment identifier to the URL for the appropriate file; that identifier is derived from the section, sub-section, etc. "numbering" by concatenating its elements, in order, separated by ":" – for example, section 1.7(5)II would become 1.7:5:II, article 5.3(c) would become 5.3:c, and section A.2(7) would become a.2:7. This value is prefixed with "bl" for a By-Laws item or "sr" for a Standing Rules item and then appended to the file's URL, set off by a "#". The full URLs for these examples would be <a href="SR.html#sr1.7:5:II"><http://www.nesfa.org/rules/SR.html#sr1.7:5:II></a>, <a href="Bylaws.html#bl5.3:c"><http://www.nesfa.org/rules/Bylaws.html#bl5.3:c></a>, and <a href="SR.html#sra.2:7"><http://www.nesfa.org/rules/SR.html#sra.2:7></a>.</p> </li> </ul> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <h2><a name="quoting">Quoting from the By-Laws and Standing Rules</a></h2> <p>Whenever possible, please link to the By-Laws and Standing Rules rather than quoting from them – quotes tend to be forgotten when the original text is updated, and so all too frequently end up outdated. If you must quote (for instance, when writing a procedure to be followed in detail, where following a link to get some bit of information would break up the flow), please <strong>also</strong> link to the [sub]section quoted and inform the Rules Committee of what you've done. This will allow us to add to the annotation for that [sub]section a "quoted in" link back to your page, so we can ensure that it is updated if the underlying rule is changed. A link adjacent to your quote both is useful to anyone who wants to check the details of the underlying rule and makes it likely that the Rules Committee will eventually discover your quote even if you forget to tell us about it.</p> <hr width="50%" align="center"> <table align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1"> <tr> <td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org">NESFA</a></td> <td width="1"></td><td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/press/">NESFA Press</a></td> <td width="1"></td> <td class="nav"><a href="https://www.boskone.org">Boskone</a></td> <td width="1"></td> <td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/about/contact-us/">Contact NESFA</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/events/the-clubhouse/">Clubhouse</a></td> <td width="1"></td><td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/events/">Calendar</a></td> <td width="1"></td><td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/awards/yearly-hugo-lists/" >Hugo Lists</a></td> <td width="1"></td> <td class="nav"><a href="https://www.nesfa.org/awards/">Awards</a></td> </tr> </table> <hr> <small>"NESFA" and "Boskone" are service marks of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.</small> <hr> <address>Comments about this web page: <a href="mailto:rules-committee@lists.nesfa.org">rules-committee@lists.nesfa.org</a>.</address> </body> </html>