In the past, committees were formed to ease some of the burden of the board/excecs by providing a group of people interested in certain aspect to the club who would generate ideas, do the legwork on ideas, and then present to the board; or, alternately, to whom the board could throw ideas to suss out and refine. They were given a good deal of autonomy to accomplish their "areas of expertise" as they best see fit and with trust from the board that they would do so with the best interest of the club at heart (e.g., find the best price or find the lowest-impact method).
It seems lately the model has morphed a bit into: *anyone* (committee or not) with the motivation to do so can take an idea and run with it.
So, my main question is: are the committees still a viable part of the club? If so, how much autonomy and control over their area do they get? If not, should we consider them defunct or should we bring them back into play?
So... "cum tacent, clamant"? Is the lack of discussion proof enough that they're defunct?
I think the idea behind having committees was to devolve some/most of the day to day operational things from the board. To the extent that people--outside of a committee--are picking a task, organizing it, submitting some sort of plan or proposal to the board for approval, and then executing it, is only a good thing. I think we can keep the committees, particularly for anything that gets handled in a top-down fashion. It's good to have a point person for the board to communicate with. If nobody is interested in being a member of a committee, we can disband that committee.
Makes sense. I'm certainly not against non-committee people stepping up and doing stuff. That's for sure.
Thanks for your input, Adam!
Do we have an education committee? That's something I'd be interested in.
Joe, we do indeed have an education committee!
After thinking about this a bit and reading Adam's response, I feel that the committees are worth keeping and we're using them informally anyway. The brewhouse committee to discuss and track new projects, which has been helpful over the past few months. The education committee has been used for BJCP training and the Hop School thing at Cerveza. (Joe you were involved with the education committee and didn't even realize it!)