Meeting minutes are important. They capture the essence of a meeting – decisions made, actionable items and next steps. This means that the minutes-taker or Secretary plays a key role on any committee or Board of Directors. But preparing minutes doesn’t have to be a daunting task.
In fact, meeting minutes newbies shouldn’t be intimidated by the term “minutes,” since it’s actually a little misleading. After all, your committee or Board doesn’t want or need a minute by minute record of your meeting proceedings! You simply want to summarize key details and record decisions.
But for the staff or volunteers who are new to taking meeting notes and preparing minutes, this task might seem a little overwhelming. So we’ve created an article that offers tips for those just getting started:
How to Write Effective Meeting Minutes.
This article, now available in Wild Apricot’s Membership Knowledge Hub:
- explains why meeting minutes are important
- outlines the five steps involved with meeting minutes:
- Pre-planning
- Record taking – at the meeting
- Minutes writing or transcribing
- Distributing or sharing of meeting minutes
- Filing or storage of minutes for future reference
- suggests tips for note taking
- outlines tools for minutes preparation and sharing
- offers additional posts and resources about meeting minutes
It’s a worthwhile role and one worth doing well
As I noted in a post on “Improving Board Effectiveness,” I know from personal experience that preparing meeting materials and minutes can be a time-consuming but important task. But it's a rewarding role too. Effective minutes and materials help keep meetings on track and ensure that the efforts of Board or committee members are well documented and the volunteers' valuable time is well-spent.
You can read the entire article – How to Write Effective Meeting Minutes – here.
Do you have any tips for meeting minutes newbies? We hope you'll share them in the comments below.
Image source: Board Meeting - courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com