detailed minutes
This article describes the benefits of action minutes. It was first published on the MRSC blog. MRSC is a private nonprofit organization, formerly known as “Municipal Resources and Service Center,” serving local governments in Washington State. The insights described here apply to local governments across the nation. If your council, commission, or committee takes detailed…
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Our faithful readers know that Jurassic Parliament advocates for action or summary minutes, not detailed minutes. This article, Meeting minutes record what is DONE, not what is SAID, explains our reasoning. We thought it might be helpful to provide a real-life example of each kind of minutes, so here they are. Robert’s Rules of Order…
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The biggest problem we encounter in meeting minutes is too much verbiage. Striving to do justice to their job, secretaries sometimes include the arguments that are made, what people say in response, and all the minutiae of discussion. There is a better way! According to Robert’s Rules of Order, minutes should record what is DONE,…
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Do you include what directors say in the minutes of your nonprofit board meetings? Jurassic Parliament strongly recommends that you stop immediately. Detailed accounts of “who said what to whom” in your minutes are dangerous. In the worst case, they provide fodder for your opponents should your board ever be involved in a lawsuit. In…
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Over the years Jurassic Parliament has been a strong supporter of “action minutes.” We agree with Robert’s Rules of Order that the fundamental purpose of minutes is to record official actions taken by a governing body. Minutes are a legal record and document what the body has done. This is true for elected councils, appointed…
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