When to use it
Use it to put your council's operating rules — meeting day, dues amount, election timing, fund limits, FS compensation — into one maintained document with a shareable public link and PDF. Start here when your council needs to adopt bylaws for the first time, or when you're amending existing ones. Changes follow a four-step process under Supreme Laws and Robert's Rules; the page tracks where you are.
Step by step
- Open Settings → Council Bylaws. The process panel at top shows the four steps and which one you're on. Council identity, dues, and officer signatures auto-fill from your Council Profile, Dues Rates, and Officer Roster — edit those on their own pages.
- Edit & save. Fill in council-specific fields (diocese, meeting day/time, quorum, fund limits, FS compensation model, etc.). Optionally override any article's wording under "Per-article custom text." Click Save changes. Saved drafts are immediately readable at the public link with a "Proposed — pending vote" banner.
- Use Preview and Preview PDF (status panel, top-right) to see exactly what members will read.
- Notify members. Click Draft member notice — this drafts a broadcast email linking members to the public bylaws page. Send it from the broadcast composer at least 5 days before the vote (Robert's Rules notice requirement).
- Vote at the meeting. After the 5-day notice period, click Open Vote Tally and record each member present as Yes / No / Abstain / Absent. DuesSync computes the 2/3-of-present-and-voting threshold and, on a pass, automatically flips the status to Adopted and stamps the adoption date.
- Mail to Supreme. Print the adopted bylaws and mail to the Supreme Advocate. When the stamped copy returns, click Mark Supreme-Approved and enter the approval date.
Tips & gotchas
- Never edit adopted bylaws in place to "fix" history. Once adopted (or during an open vote), the form locks. To change anything, click Propose Amendment — that reverts to a fresh draft cycle, requires a new 5-day notice and vote, and preserves your adopted version in Amendment History.
- Amendment History snapshots are immutable — every adoption and Supreme stamp is logged and won't change when you edit the live bylaws.
- The lock during an open vote is deliberate: the text members are voting on can't shift mid-vote. Close the tally first to resume editing.
- Publish (Mark Adopted) in the status panel force-publishes without a vote — skip it unless you have a specific reason to override the normal process.
- The public page lives at
/bylaws/<your council number>; drafts show a "Proposed" banner, adopted-but-not-yet-Supreme bylaws show "Pending Supreme approval," then the banner clears. - Adopted bylaws aren't legally operative until the Supreme Advocate stamps them.
- Demo councils don't have bylaws (the shared demo login would leak across sessions).