Excerpts from Leader Link,
October 2003 (full
article)
Minding the Meeting's Minutes
Taking
minutes is balancing act between capturing what
happened, and overloading the minutes with unnecessary
detail. Unfortunately, quite a few first-time volunteers
get thrown into this role. In fact, it is one of the
most critical roles on a board or in a committee.
What
should I include?
What does need to be included is any action taken,
highlights of any report given, and any requests for
board consideration or action. This includes:
-
purchase
of equipment not already in the budget,
-
expenditure
of any unbudgeted funds,
-
changes
to policy or procedure (some of which may need to be
approved by the constituency � members � and
possibly the state board),
-
pricing
changes (newsletters subscription fees, conference
fees, and advertising rates),
-
election
results (or any change to the board or committee
officer structure, including presidential/chair
appointments),
-
award
proposals and acceptances,
-
any
vote taken by the board, and
-
any
item upon which the board reached consensus.
How
much of the discussion need to be included?
Only the highlights. In fact, in many legal circles you
are taught not to include the names of the people who
made and seconded the motions. Instead the record just
needs to show that there was a motion, a second, and
whether the motion was carried or not.
Minutes
should reflect both the meeting agenda, and the actual
order of events... Write the minutes in the order of the
activities (with the item numbers from the agenda
unchanged), and note that the minutes were written in
the order in which the items were discussed. Items added
to the agenda at the meeting should be given action item
numbers starting from the next available number. (Sample
agenda)
All
official meetings should have minutes taken and kept for
your protection and for the protection of CWEA. After
your minutes are taken, they should be reviewed by the
board/committee at the following meeting and amended and
approved as necessary. (This action of approving the
minutes will appear in that meeting�s minutes.)
This
formal acceptance of the meeting record reduces the
likelihood that something was incorrectly recorded.
Copies of the minutes should be forwarded to the CWEA
office after they are approved. And, any tape recordings
or meeting notes destroyed. This helps when the auditor
needs to know at which meeting
a particular action to was taken, and to reduce
the amount of paperwork you as a volunteer need to keep
hidden in your office or home.
Further
Reading: The
Art of Taking Minutes, by Delores Dochterman. |