Our Organization

Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM) is a community of Friends and Meetings across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and neighboring parts of the Rocky Mountain West. The organization provides a structure for gathering, engagement, shared resources, collective discernment, service, and the work Friends carry together.

From its beginning, IMYM has endeavored to provide enough structure to support the life and work of the yearly meeting without the organization itself becoming the focus. Over the years, Friends have experimented with different ways of sharing responsibility, coordinating work, and staying connected across distance. Some structures have served for many years; others have changed or been laid down as the needs and energy of the yearly meeting changed.

Today, IMYM’s work is carried by its officers, committees and working groups, regional and half-yearly meetings, Friends serving in appointed roles, and the many people who offer their gifts to particular pieces of work.

How IMYM is organized today

Following Friends’ practices, IMYM is organized around shared discernment, distributed responsibility, and service. Responsibility for the work is shared among Friends gathered for business, regional and half-yearly meetings, and Friends serving in appointed roles. Officers, committees, working groups, and other appointed Friends carry the ongoing work of the yearly meeting.

Nominations for service are brought forward either through IMYM’s nominating process or by the regional and half-yearly meetings. All nominations are then considered by Friends gathered for IMYM business, either at Annual Gathering or at another business meeting during the year. Once confirmed by the gathered body, the nomination becomes an IMYM appointment.

How decisions are made

Friends gather for IMYM business during Annual Gathering and at other times during the year. These gatherings are where matters affecting the yearly meeting as a whole are brought for consideration and discernment. 

Friends listen carefully to one another and seek a way forward that reflects the sense of the gathered body. The Clerk guides the process and articulates the sense of the meeting as it emerges.

Committees, working groups, officers, and other Friends in service carry the responsibilities entrusted to them and bring forward matters that call for broader discernment, direction, or confirmation by Friends gathered for IMYM business.

Service in IMYM

Service is one of the ways Friends participate in the life of the yearly meeting. Friends serve as officers, committee members, coordinators, delegates, and in other appointed or temporary roles.

Some service is ongoing and structured; other work is carried by working groups or individuals for a particular purpose or period of time. In each case, Friends are entrusted with a piece of work and carry it faithfully with care, communication, and accountability to the wider yearly meeting.

IMYM’s experience has also shown that structures need to remain responsive to the gifts, energy, and capacity of the community. Roles and committees may be reshaped, combined, placed on hold, or laid down when the work changes, when another structure better carries the responsibility, or when there is no longer sufficient energy to sustain them.

IMYM's current structure

IMYM’s current structure includes officers and a number of committees, working groups, and other appointed roles carrying particular areas of responsibility. These include Coordinating Committee, Ministry & Counsel, Gathering Committee, Finance Committee, Youth & Family Program Advisory & Support Committee, Nominating Committee, and Friends serving as delegates to other Quaker organizations, along with other ongoing and time-limited forms of service. The structure continues to change as Friends discern what work is needed and how best to carry it. 

How our organization has evolved

From the beginning, IMYM has treated its organizational structure as something that can change in response to the life of the yearly meeting. The 1974 minute establishing IMYM emphasized fellowship, community, and spiritual renewal, and called for the organizational structure to be minimal.

As IMYM grew, responsibilities accumulated and the structure became more complex. By the early 2010s, Friends were examining overlapping responsibilities, communication, representation, and the relationship between the work of the Annual Gathering and the work carried throughout the year.

A restructuring process begun in 2011 and completed over the following several years created clearer distinctions among some of those responsibilities, including the development of separate Representatives and Arrangements Committees. When Friends evaluated the restructuring in 2018, they found that some parts were working as intended while also identifying continuing concerns about complexity, communication, and the number of positions requiring appointment.

More recently, Friends have returned to some of the same underlying questions: What work is essential? What structures are sustainable? How can responsibility be shared in ways that reflect the gifts and energy available in the yearly meeting? The “Why IMYM?” conversations, the Way Forward process, and subsequent work on structure and nominations have continued that discernment.

That discernment is ongoing. Friends remain attentive to continuing revelation, trusting that way will open toward new understandings of what the yearly meeting needs, what we are called to do, and how our work can best be carried. Committees and roles may be reshaped, combined, placed on hold, or laid down, while other forms of service emerge in response to changing needs and leadings.

Explore the history

IMYM’s organizational history is preserved in the SAGE Collection, including documents that record how Friends have understood the yearly meeting’s purpose, experimented with different structures, evaluated those experiments, and discerned new ways forward.

Explore IMYM Organization & Structure in the SAGE Collection → 

If you have questions or you would like assistance to find something, email imym@imym.org