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One week left to vote in our AGM

As you know, our AGM is fast approaching and there are now only seven days left to have your say before voting closes at 11am on Thursday 3 December. You can find out how to vote in our AGM booklet on the main website here.

The AGM itself is on Saturday 5 December, and, includes items and resolutions, such as voting in our new trustees, appointing our auditors and receiving 2019 annual accounts. Members are also being asked to vote on a special resolution about our membership offer.

What’s it all about?

Currently, we require one tenth (10%) of the total legal membership to vote in person or by proxy in our AGM for decisions to be valid. However, over recent years our membership has consistently fallen, and the percentage of members voting at the AGM has hovered around 12-15%. If numbers of voting members fall below 10%, we risk not being able to make legitimate decisions at general meetings.

So we’re asking members to update our legal structure to support a more inclusive community and reach many more people affected by MS. The changes will help us to support more people, build a stronger community, and drive forward our goal of providing vital support services and world-leading MS research. The new legal structure will also allow for more efficient governance of our organisation, making sure that we can retain the ability to make legitimate decisions.

Under this proposal, making decisions on constitutional matters would be protected by making the Trustees and Chairs of National Councils the sole legal members. The existing membership would step down as legal members while retaining the right to elect new Trustees.

You can read more about the new electorate here.

What do you need from me?

With declining numbers of members voting, we need your help to encourage your local members to vote in this year’s AGM. With this special resolution, it’s even more important than ever that our members have their say.

It’s important to remind your members that we had to change our process in order to drive down costs, and to allow for changing social restrictions from the Government. So for everyone we had an email address for, we’ve only sent the AGM booklet and voting instructions via email.

We’ve created a short note here which you can use on your social media accounts, just copy and paste the below text:

"Calling all MS Society members. We need YOUR votes!

Make sure you check your emails for a link to vote on our new membership model and brilliant trustee candidates. Deadline to vote is 11am next Thursday 3 December: https://mssoc.uk/3letMil "

If you have any questions or issues, please do get in touch with the Governance Team.