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The "ad hoc committee" is one of the very best student leadership tools you're probably not using. Most organizations have a provision which allows the formation of special short-term committees to address specific organization challenges. If your constitution doesn't mention ad hoc committees, and there's nothing specifically prohibiting them, then you should experiment with them this next academic year.
OK, so here's the idea. Let's say that you're having a terrible time finding a chapter advisor. Create an "ad hoc committee" of selected members, and charge the ad hoc committee with working on the problem. You can create a committee to work on almost any problem: member retention, housing, public relations, constitutional revision, safety issues, whatever.
When you create a committee, you should specifically designate the amount of time that the committee will exist – usually a semester or less. Make the ad hoc committee's job a very specific one.
Why would you use ad hoc committees? Perhaps there's a chronic problem in your organization and you want some energy focused on solving it. Or, perhaps you have an issue that is very controversial and requires a lot of input from the membership. In this case, you can turn it over to an ad hoc committee instead of burdening yourself as an officer to get it resolved.
Ad hoc committees are also a great way to give someone something to do. Let's say that the person who ran against you for president (and lost) now has nothing to do. Maybe this person is now causing problems, or is simply drifting away from the organization. Putting this person in charge of an ad hoc committee to address a real problem might pull them back in and give them something meaningful to do. A lot of groups use this strategy for past officers.
An important note... if you're going to create an ad hoc committee, you need to give it some actual authority. Give the committee a real problem to solve. It's a very bad idea to have an ad hoc committee do a bunch of work, then you and your executive board come along at the end and change everything or veto the committee's work. That will just annoy everyone.
If you're going to create an ad hoc to tackle a problem, let the committee and its leaders do their job and respect the work they do. For those of you who are control freaks, this might be pretty challenging!
