Baffled

[Guest Christopher]

Our meetings are annual. We had a meeting and an issue was voted on.  At the next meeting, minutes were lost and could not be accepted.  Do we need to revote on  past voted issue?

[D_K]

No, you don't need to revote on past issues. The approval of your minutes has no bearing on the validity of the prior action. If the organization knows what occurred at the last meeting, it should write that down into a set of minutes that can be adopted.

Your situation illustrates why RONR says that if you meet less than quarterly you should authorize a board or committee to approve your minutes. Don't wait an entire year.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

5 hours ago, Guest Christopher said:

At the next meeting, minutes were lost and could not be accepted.

Your next step is to create a Minutes Reconstruction Committee.

From the agenda, have your committee draft the closest thing to minutes for your annual meeting.

Then, approve that document as your minutes.

Any gray areas or discrepancies are to be decided by majority vote.

If you discover new data which impacts your minutes (a month later, for example), you are free to re-edit (i.e., amend) your minutes.

***

Minutes are not like the Frank Sinatra song, "All or Nothing at All".

Minutes which contain gaps or errors can be corrected after their initial approval.

[Richard Brown]

This question comes up so often that I wonder if maybe the next edition of RONR should cover it a bit more explicitly.  Any comments from anyone on the A-team (the authorship team)?    (Actually, I thought it was already in RONR, but perhaps not. If it is, I cannot find it now).

[Guest Christopher]

Thank you all for your input it has cleared that up for us.