pointments. They prepare most nominations for action at yearly meeting sessions. They make nominations to fill vacancies at the first opportunity to either yearly or representative meeting.

Nominations in general originate in the Nominating Committee, but this committee may receive suggestions from presiding officers of existing committees or other Friends. Such suggestions are advisory but not binding upon the Nominating Committee.

Normally, nominations are confined to members of the New York Yearly Meeting, but committees may request inclusions of Friends from other yearly meetings. Under special circumstances, which the yearly or representative meeting must consider and approve, the nominating committee may propose names of non-Friends. Committees may consult others, either Friends or non-Friends, without their becoming members of the committee.

Committee members who have served six consecutive years or two terms, whichever is the longer, ordinarily should not be renamed without an intervening period of one year.

Committee members or other appointees who ask for release from service before the completion of their terms do so by letter to the clerk of the yearly meeting and the clerk of the Nominating Committee.

Members of the yearly meeting Nominating Committee are appointed by the quarterly or equivalent meetings on the basis of one member for each 200 members of their respective areas or additional fraction thereof, with at least one member from each such area. These meetings should designate an alternate to serve on the Nominating Committee whenever notified that a regular member cannot attend.

Appointments to the Nominating Committee should be made in the spring months of the year for three-year rotational terms, with new terms becoming effective at the close of the next succeeding yearly meeting sessions. The yearly meeting office assigns and coordinates schedules for these appointments so that about one-third of the terms will expire each year.

H. Representative Meeting

FUNCTION. Representative meeting transacts business for the yearly meeting between its annual sessions.

It approves the yearly meeting's annual operating budget and assigns shares to the quarterly and equivalent meetings. It receives memorials of deceased Friends from the monthly and quarterly meetings and in exceptional cases may forward them to the yearly meeting.