Why is Taking Minutes Important?
Taking minutes is a great way to keep track of different details from your club meeting. Information such as decisions made, topics discussed, future plans, and questions and comments from members are stored in the minutes. It is important to have this information accessible for the future to reference and learn from.
For example, if you have new leadership who is unaware how meetings work, you can refer them to documents such as the meeting minutes, which give an overview of everything that happened on that date. You can also give minutes to someone who missed the meeting and wants to know details about what happened.
How Do You Take Minutes?
- Ask for a copy of the meeting agenda to use as an outline.
- During the meeting, summarize the important details of the meeting in the outline you created from the agenda. Make sure to include decisions made and notes on different topics on the agenda as the meeting is happening to make sure that you don't miss anything.
- Review the minutes after the meeting and add any details you were unable or forgot to write earlier.
- Share meeting minutes with your club leadership to have them review what you wrote.
Template to keep minutes of your meeting
Tips for during the meeting
- Don't be afraid to ask for clarification during the meeting if something is unclear.
- Record the meeting so that you can reference it later. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with taking notes while lots of information is being given, so this assures that you won't miss anything.
- Don't feel like you have to write down every minute detail, but rather relate the premise of what happened.
What Do You Do with Completed Minutes?
Before following any of these suggestions, check in with your club leadership to see if they already have standards in place about what to do with the completed minutes. These are just some suggestions if your club does not already have anything in place or is looking for a different way to do things.
Sharing/Storing Minutes
- Consider keeping minutes in an online file-sharing program such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft OneDrive through your Cal Poly Account so that it can easily be shared with others.
- Organization is important! Folders can help declutter information. Here is a sample file path that you can follow: Club Name > Meetings > MM/DD/YY > ClubName_MM/DD/YY_Minutes.
- Place all meeting information in a file with the minutes and any other documents pertaining to the meeting.
