At the Community Forum held during Spring 2017, a decision was made to separate the role of staff from the role of the Board. (In previous years, the staff and the Board were the same group of people.) Staff will now essentially function as a logistics group, tasked with planning for and putting on the conference on an annual basis. In contrast, the Board, which will have staggered multi-year terms, will be tasked with long-term vision and community-based decision-making, utilizing input from the community and from various committees and working groups.

Below is some relevant information that was presented by the Governance Committee and ratified by the community and the Board during the Spring 2017 conference:

We the Spring Community Form ratify the following operating procedure changes:

1. The Board Members shall cease to run the actual conference, and instead shall create and oversee committees at its own discretion or at the behest of the Community Forum, and shall give those committees a specific charge at time of creation.
2. The Board shall appoint a standing committee, referred to as staff, to run the actual conference using the current election process.
3. The Board shall elect the next Board, with the understanding that Board members shall serve for at least two years and rotate out in such a way as to provide continuity.
4. When any committee runs into something out of the scope of their charge, they shall inform the Board, who will deal with it appropriately.
5. The board shall convene a Community Forum yearly at a conference
6. The Community Forum shall select issues for discussion brought to it by the Board or by a community member, and the Board shall abide by decisions made at the forum.
7. When the Board determines that an issue requires the input of or a decision by the greater Spring Community, the Board shall, when the Community Forum next convenes, present that issue to the forum.
8. Board members may serve on various committees when practical and convenient.
9. No committee shall have authority over any other committee. Any conflicts between committees shall be resolved by the Board.
10. When the Board creates a committee, it shall create a liaison process between itself and that committee.
11. Any committee created by the Board shall include at least one community member, with the recommendation that committees be comprised of at least 50% community members.