Brian:  I was caught in a transition situation as well, although not the same as yours, and I do have one suggestion for you.

 

In my case I took over a university ensemble that was also registered as a recognized student organization.  I inherited a Constitution and a set of Bylaws.  After reading through them, it was obvious that we needed to revise them, but I discovered one important thing.

 

Bylaws are considered part of your Constitution.  (At least that was true in my situation, and it may be true if you are required to have a Constitution and Bylaws because of your not-for-profit tax status.)  Our constitution was difficult to change, as a good Constitution should be, but in my opinion (which was amply born out) the Bylaws had to be more flexible and capable of responding to changing conditions.  Therefore I separated them.  I removed the Bylaws from the Constitution, which was duly changed through the required process in consultation with both student leadership and the student membership.  But I established a set of Operating Procedures outside the Constitution, capable of being ammended or added to with a minimum of fuss.

 

It sounds as if you have a start on this with your detailed prolicies and procedures, so you may already have taken care of this.  In that case, my only advice would be to include in your Bylaws ONLY those things which by rights SHOULD be fixed and difficult to ammend. 

 

In our case, it became obvious that every Operating Procedure had come into being as the answer to a problem that had come up, to try to avoid that problem in the future.  Which simply points up that it's virtually impossible to imagine in advance everything the can possibly go wrong, or just be confusing, without spelling it out:  Murphy's Law rules!! 

 

Best of luck in revising your own operating documents.  It's kind of a big drag to have to do it, but it pays off eventually in smoother operation when the predictable questions are aniticpated and answered in advance.

 

John