Annual Business Meeting of American Mensa

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The Annual Business Meeting of American Mensa (ABM) is the official reason, under the bylaws, that the Annual Gathering of American Mensa (AG) exists. It is a meeting, open to all members of American Mensa, where the officers give reports on the status of the organization, and members are able to propose and vote on resolutions, or propose bylaws amendments to be brought to postal ballot of the membership. Most ABMs are fairly routine, but there have occasionally been significant actions at them, such as the one in 1995 at which chairman Dick Amyx resigned from his position. Formerly, the term of office of American Mensa Committee members officially ended at the close of this meeting in odd-numbered years, but that was later changed to a flat July 1 term ending date, in conjunction with bylaws changes that permitted a wider range of dates for the ABM in order to accommodate the 2006 World Gathering.

In the ABM of 2004, the ProxyQuest vote, where a majority of the total membership was represented either in person or (mostly) in proxy, was passed to amend the certificate of incorporation to remedy an error of 30 years earlier under which past votes conducted by mail or having less than the quorum of half of the membership were technically invalid.

In past times, the ABM was commonly held on the last day of the AG (usually Sunday, but sometimes Monday when it was a holiday) in the morning, as the last major event of the AG, with few or no other events up against it in the schedule, but running up against the need of participants to catch flights on that day. More recently, however, the ABM tends to be held earlier in the AG, sometimes on the first day when the problem is that some members' flights haven't arrived yet. Scheduling the ABM in the middle of the AG, as has sometimes been done, avoids flight issues for most members, but opens up the problem of there being many other competing events at the same time drawing attention away from the ABM.