Bylaws, Policies, and Procedures

OrigamiUSA is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization incorporated under New York State law. The organization is governed by a Board of Directors elected from the membership, and operates in accordance with a set of Bylaws that are consistent with relevant state and federal laws. This page contains documents that describe how the organization operates.

Bylaws

The Bylaws are the fundamental governing document of the organization; they play the same role in OrigamiUSA that the U.S. Constitution does for the country. The Board and its supporting volunteers have considerable latitude in day-to-day operations; however, all policies, committees, and actions must be consistent with the Bylaws. Bylaws, by their nature, rarely change; OrigamiUSA has made major changes only once, in 2001, to reflect the growth of the organization and to permit broader geographical representation for its members on the Board.

To download a copy of the OrigamiUSA Bylaws, click here [PDF].

Policies and Procedures

While the Bylaws form the ultimate governing rules for the organization, day-to-day decisions and operations are governed by a set of policies and procedures. The policies reflect the Board's interpretations of the Bylaws (or in many cases, the interpretations by individual committees); procedures define the implementation of those policies. In contrast to the Bylaws, which rarely change and require a full Board vote, policies and procedures are living, fluid documents that change fairly often in response to new circumstances, needs, or concepts. Generally, a committee can decide on its own policies and procedures without going to the full Board for approval; however, policies that apply across multiple committees or have widespread impact will typically be discussed by the full Board before a policy decision is reached.

The sections that follow provide downloads of the latest versions of policies and procedures, organized by committee. Please keep in mind that we are, at core, a volunteer organization, and in many cases a committee consists of only a handful of people, which has an effect on the scope and uniformity of style of these documents. While we make every attempt to keep this list up to date, there is no guarantee that any given item is current. Furthermore, these policies are not set in stone; as circumstances change and opportunities arise, new policies and/or procedures may be developed that may not yet be reflected in these documents. We will do our best to update them when things change, however. If you have any questions about any of the policies and procedures, please don't hesitate to contact the relevant committee or Board Member via our Contact Page.

Note: this section is under construction. We will be adding P&P documents throughout 2008. Meanwhile, here are the committee names and the existing P&P documents. We'll fill in the rest as they become available.