Start a Society in your Community
Society of PM Professionals
of Greater Vancouver
Start your own Society for the PMPs in your community. You do not need
permission from anyone.
On this website, you will find
a model constitution
and copies of all the notices that have gone out since inception for the
Vancouver Society. Feel free to use as models any of the governance documents,
manuals, forms, and templates that you find here.
To get started you need a core group of willing PMPs. We suggest that you adopt
the model constitution from our website and hold a founding meeting among three
Officers as a first step. Then plan your first professional development
seminar. At the first seminar, solicit memberships and hold a membership
meeting to elect the Officers through the year end. Simple.
If you are in Canada, do not be concerned with provincial registration if this
issue is brought up. The Vancouver Society is NOT provincially registered, nor
will it be. We enjoy freedom of association in Canada, and you do not need
anyone's consent to form a club. The technical term for the legal status of the
Society is unincorporated collective. This is a close parallel to a partnership
in the world of business, and is the same status as a labour union. The members
share equally in liability. If you study the constitution, you will see that
there is no executive, and that the Officers have no powers of governance. Only
the members in a general meeting can make governance decisions. Completely
democratic.
When we formed the Vancouver Society, we first tried holding organizational
meetings, but no-one showed up. So the core group just went ahead and organized
our first PD seminars. We hold an annual business meeting in conjunction with
one of the PD seminars; generally no more than 30 minutes during the lunch
break.
Your biggest challenge will be to establish communications with the PMPs in
your community. Likely you will have to rely on the PMI Chapter to distribute a
notice. In this initial notice you could ask interested PMPs to register for
your first seminar, and to contact you if they wish to receive notices for
future events. This will give you a start for your own distribution list.
You may have to pay for this initial advertisement. The PMI Chapter likely will
perceive the Society as a competitor. You should be able to recover this cost
from the fees for your first seminar.
This page updated April 7, 2008