Trustee meetings, minutes and the action log
The agenda before, the minutes after, and what everybody agreed to do in between.
In The Charity Office: Governance → Meetings → New meeting
Before the meeting
Create the meeting with its date and build the agenda on it. Each agenda item has a "Beforehand" note for anything circulated with the papers, and a "What was said" box to fill in on the night.
Papers - the accounts, a quote, a draft policy - are picked from your Documents, so they are the same file the rest of the charity can see.
Who came
Attendance is recorded against trustees, not against logins, so somebody has to be on the Trustees list before they can be minuted. Each row has "Was there" and "Sent apologies".
Draft, circulated, approved
Minutes start as Draft. Circulated means sent round to be read. Approved means the board agreed them at the following meeting - and at that point they are the record.
Approving seals them. The title, the kind of meeting, the date, the place and the minutes themselves stop being editable, and an attempt to change them is quietly refused. That is the point: approved minutes that can still be edited are not minutes.
If the board agrees a correction, put the status back to Circulated, make the change, and approve them again. Attendance, papers and actions stay editable throughout.
Any trustee can write up a meeting while its minutes are a draft or circulated, so whoever took the notes can type them in. Marking them Approved, or taking them back, is for the secretary, the admin or the owner.
The action log
Actions written onto a meeting turn up under Governance → Action log, along with anything agreed between meetings. "An action nobody owns is an action nobody does" - give each one a trustee and a date.
An action is overdue when it is still To do or In hand and its date has passed. Done and No longer needed both count as closed, so a dropped action stops nagging.
Chasing is by dated progress notes on the action, each with its author. "Two quotes in, third promised for the end of the month" is worth more at the next meeting than a status that changed silently.
Worth knowing. The Action log hides finished actions by default. Turn off "Still open" to see what the board actually got done last year - which is the most useful page in the product at an AGM.
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