Hi,
Our Family operates under a set of loosely constructed "by-laws." Basically, what we have done is write down, as performance standards, WHAT we definitely want to have included and WHEN we want to have it at each of our reunions. We have added some language relative to voting rights. A family member has to have paid his annual dues and be current on them in order to vote. This is similar to most organizations and there are places where our family has to be run like a business. I'm including a link to another person who also submitted a response, on Afrigeneas, on this topic about a year ago. It's very similar to how we operate...

http://www.afrigeneas.com/forum-reunion/index.cgi?noframes;read=317

Finally, the biggest problem that we have had, in this regard, is keeping up with where are our written by-laws. For example, we have changed secretaries about four times in the last 8 years. None of our past secretaries has admitted to losing the by-laws...so they have to be re-constructed. They were written before the era of Word processors where one could easily retrieve them. Good luck.

Randy