Beyond Meeeting Minutes! A Living Document?
 

James, is everyone from GC invited to the Margaritaville Semi-Formal? I would really like to see what happens at a Margaritaville Semi! :D

*sigh* Try and post something serious on GC and you can't even get a constructive response . . . :(

But yes Cream, you are more than welcome to come to our Margarittaville Mixer, it should be an experience.:)

Hi James,

Excellent post. Our chapter has had "challenges" in getting our minutes out in a timely fashion. Your tips are great and I will be passing the text of your post along to the chapter. Well done!

Jen

Our meetings are structured a very specific way that actually makes the minutes super easy to organize. Unfortunately, I can't say what the structure is. But, make sure meetings are conducted in the same order every time and everyone will appreciate it!

I know our secretary always would go home after meeting, type it up on the p/c and email it to all members and advisors w/in an hour. That way every member knows what's going on even if they missed meeting for some reason. :)

Post Minutes?
 

In our house, if you don't come to the meetings and don't have a valid excuse, it's YOUR job to find the secretary or someone who attended and get the minutes. Only the exec. and alumni board need minutes on paper or online. I think if you take part in an organization and want to participate in the fun, then you have to show a little effort and initative on your own.

As for structure, ours goes a little different, old business, reports, new business, it's usually an informal setup, sometimes chaotic:D

RUgreek

Re: Post Minutes?
 

Mine is much the same.

mINUTES OF A MEETING MAY BE BONE DRY TO SOME! bUT IT IS TRUE, THAT IT IS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS GOING ON AND THE VOTE THAT WAS TAKEN! ( Oops did not realize big boy key on )?

We expulled a member who was our IFC Rep. and told him to vote a certain way and he did not! It changed the vote to what we did not want! I fought to keep him as a member but the only time I lost! In LXA wording, expulsion is, He is no longer recorded as being a member of our Fraternity! A Non entntity!
He stated in the hearing that that is the way he thought the vote was to be set! Minutes came out and he was wrong! He also was a ledgend in his own mind! Not! As I will never call him my Brother!

Minutes, ha that is the HISTORY OF YOUR CHAPTER! Boring as it may seeem, go back later and try to find history!

It may depend on what minutes you are talking about. Some meeting minutes might not be available for "inspection" due to chapter room secrecy. Some organizations may have rules that if you weren't in the meeting, too bad! That way, people who only read the minutes and didn't hear the original discussion may get a wrong impression and spread the disinformation.

But, I do agree that from a historical and legal standpoint, the minutes must reflect any action discussed, esp. if a decision is made, lol.

Our school rules here are that meeting minutes of any campus organization are subject to immediate inspection and can be used against us once the minutes are approved by the brothers at the next weekly general meeting.

I've had to constantly remind brothers NOT to mention "party", "alcohol", "drugs", and other stupid little things in their reports. The secretary normally could edit things out, but then the next meeting we either have someone get upset that their reports were edited, or makes a motion to correct their report and THAT still ends up in the minutes!

However, I do like the historical addition that James brought up, and our current minutes are structured as follows:

Roll Call
Minutes Corrections
Executive Reports
Committee Reports
Advisor Reports
Old Business
New Business
Announcements
Commencement

I know I usually have minutes in my in-box when I wake up the next morning.

Our meetings are sooo structured.

Roll Call
Committee Time
Executive Board Reports
Old Business
New Business
Announcements
Commencement/Ceremony

At my chapter, we didn't do formal minutes for chapter meetings, only for Executive Council meetings. Instead, we always sent out an e-mail reminder after business meetings with dates of events and important reminders, and we also had a giant dry-erase calendar hanging in the hallway of the house with all of the month's events listed. This way, everyone always had a way to find out what was going on even if they missed a meeting. I was VP Operations for a year, so I got all of the excuse notes, and it always made me so mad when people said they missed something because they didn't know about it because there is no way that you cannot know about something in advance unless you're living under a rock. Anyway, I don't think that a formal structure for minutes is as important as making sure that everyone knows what's happening.

DW I'd disagree with that...

If you don't have minutes of meetings... How can you know what's happening? You can't expect people to actually agree on what happened last meeting 100% of the time.. and when they do, how do you resolve that conflict?

If you don't take minutes, the only part of your meeting that matters is announcments. And that's only if everyone is there.

I guess Roberts Rules isn't really followed any more!!
 

Minutes should record attendance, votes/actions taken and assignments made, but not all of the detailed discussion - also it is better to have committee chairs submit written reports to be incorporated into the minutes (just like the fiscal officers should be doing) rather than the secretary recording his/her account of what was said regarding events and issues. Minutes should be a history of your business not your organization - each committee/event chair needs to summarize the year's goals, achievements, etc. seperately because your history can be kept more confidential than your minutes and your secretary shouldn't control your history, your historians or past presidents generally have that task.

Meeting Minutes
 

Perhaps, then james, I am in need of some serious help.


Our meetings are secret, therefore our minutes are not distributed. We record our minutes and they are read at the following chapter meeting.

It depends on what the different parts of the meeting are about.

Usually the minutes aren't secret, its certain topics that are secret. Topics like Ritual etc. So you exclude those.

Or if the sorority is ultra-paranoid you can still make the scheduling part of a document that is distributed.

Usually when someone trots out the idea that minutes are secret and shouldn't be distributed it goes back a couple of generations to a minute taker that really didn't t want to do the work (not that I blame them).

In order for reading the minutes to be very effective the chapter would have to take copious notes. Practically writing down everything the recording officer says and then have some time to digest it. Otherwise the attention span and memory for something read like that is not great.

In order to make that effective you would have to break the minutes down into sections and vote on each section.

We have our chapter secretary jot down what is said at our meetings. She does an excellent job. After the minutes are read at our next meeting we make the necessary changes, or leave it the way it is.
We have never had a problem.

Our methods work fine for us.

Also, as stated before, people should be attending there meetings to know what is going on.

Lets take the discussion out of your chapter setting for a minute.

Minutes for an organization are like Success Journals for people.

It has generally been found that when people keep journals that have their goals clearly listed, how those goals translate into action, timeliness of them etc, those people meet with greater success over time in the areas of their life that the journal covers.

The Journal allows feedback in the sense that you can see what you set out to do and what you actually did.

If you track enough things you get a very real view of why you may or not be succeeding to your expectations.

Also the Journal gives a person a base line of behaviors over time. So since you have a really good idea what you are doing (it is written down) it becomes very easy to just tweak certain of your habits to improve that area or many areas of your life. Sleep would be a big one.

A good success Journal dramatically increases your ability to respond to changing conditions rapidly.

So look at the context of my first couple posts from the perspective of creating a Success Journal for chapters.

Also, this should be the first post, I think the whole thread would be clearer, but honestly the analogy didn't occur to me until I ready Lady Pi Phi's response. Thank you Lady Pi Phi.

Also, the analog may not have occured to me back when I wrote the post lol. I have become enamored of Success Journals.

Reading Minutes
 

I'm a bit of a PP nut - Per Roberts Rules minutes are to be read aloud if they are not distributed to members in writing before the meeting. This can be time consuming even if the minutes are concise and it sometimes hard to note corrections to the minutes if one hasn't read them so it is a good idea to send them out and make sure folks get in the habit of bringing their corrections to the next meeting - preferably in writing as they should be doing their proposed motions.

Re: I guess Roberts Rules isn't really followed any more!!
 

Was going to say the same thing. :)

Suggest you run your chapter thru a short lesson on parliamentary procedure. Taking minutes is part of that. Some previous posters gave the generally accepted format for meeting, and thus mintues:

Opening
Roll Call
Reading of last meetings minutes
Treasurer's Report
Officer/Committee Reports
Special Orders (as needed)
Unfinished Business
New Business
Good of the Order
Closing/Adjourn

Suggest your secretary send out the minutes via email 2-3 days after the meeting. This way everyone knows what happens. ALSO, if everyone has had the chance to read the minutes themselves before the meeting, you don't actually have to 'read the minutes', but ask if there are any corrections and move on.

CrucialCrimson covered very well what does go in the minutes. Your secretary should have a hard copy and this goes into your groups permanent records.

(I'm also a Parliamentarian and a member of NAP and AIP, the 2 main parliamentarian groups in the US).

Actually your chapter has a pretty effective way to do things DWAlphaGam.

I am countering ktsnakes criticism a bit . . .

Minutes are important recollections of what happens during meetings.

However, GLO's are supposed to be action orientented, so the most important thing is to make sure people are updated on upcoming plans and events. Most of the stuff in minutes is drivel.

Re: Re: I guess Roberts Rules isn't really followed any more!!
 

This should be the standard.

However let me give a word of warning:

Do not let the structure outweigh the function!

My chapter has our minutes on our website as well. That way alumni or other people can see what is going on.

Just remember to edit it so no "sensitive" or esoteric information gets published for the whole world to read about.

As I am scribe of our chapter I know all about minutes !! We have a standard national form for our minutes since all chapters run their ritual meetings in the same structured manner. So all I have to do is go home, type into the blank spots on the form and E mail it to the chapter and national and voila minutes to everyone ! The minutes have to be done with in 48 hours of the meeting. This was kind of a problem since my computer is, shall we say a hunk of junk.... to put it politely and wouldnt' read the disk the form was on for a while or E-mail attachments... but we've got that covered and everything is cool now !

Meeting Minutes
 

For those struggling with meeting minutes might want to look at a recent booklet published by the American Institute of Parliamentarians. Title is _Complete Minutes Manual_ and can be obtained for $12 from their on-line bookstore. Their website is at http://www.parliamentaryprocedure.org/ Its a good booklet, giving info on taking minutes, correcting them, and even gives templates to take minutes with.

Hope this helps

bump

We follow a similiar format to most of you - we take the minutes, then email them out, then read them at the next meeting. The email is great because that way we can see all the changes, and we'll have a concrete listing of dates.

Also, there really is NO excuse to not have the minutes within a week. Our RecSec types them all up right after the meeting and we usually have them by Wednesdays. (we meet on Sunday)

Actually, if you are emailing out the minutes you don't have to read them at the next meeting, just approve them. It would go something like this:

Chair: Our next business in order is approval of the mintues. Has everyone had a chance to read over the minutes that the Secretary sent out. [hopefully everone nods their heads].

Chair: Are there any corrections to those minutes?

* If there aren't any:
Chair: Since there are no corrections, the minutes will be approved as distributed. [secretary signs official copy that is placed in minutes book]
Chair: the next business in order is...

* If there are:
Members state mistakes. Group agrees. Secretary notes these on official copy.
Chair: Any additional corrections? Then the minutes will be approved as corrected. [secretary signs now corrected official copy that is placed in minutes book]
Chair: the next business in order is...

Michael, I think we still have to read them for some sort of bylaws/standing rules reason. It really takes minimal time - our minutes aren't extensively detailed. I think it takes maybe 3 minutes out of every meeting...and not every sister is responsible enough to check her email every two weeks. ;)

That's fine and that's your orgs choice. But some groups might have longer minutes and doing this is an option that they can use to move things along. My parliamentarian org does that. We used to send them out by hardcopy, now we use email (which means we save postage).