editing minutes after approved

[marymartha]

Hello:

I am the newsletter editor for my club. We usually have the minutes for a previous board meeting approved at the next board meeting. A draft goes out, and people make amendments as needed. AFTER all the amendments have gone in, I do the editing of it for the newsletter. Editing NEVER involves changing what is recorded as happening, but other grammar editing, chopping dead wood when possible to condense wording, save space. Once a street name was put in erroneously, and I made the correction based on my knowledge from attending board meetings and knowing what the street name should have said.

The question is...after the minutes have been approved, it is sometimes then that I do the newsletter editing.

For example, we had our Annual General Meeting. The notes from this meeting, being extremely lengthy, were emailed out to the board for any corrections. Then at the next board meeting, they were approved, but I had not edited them. They get published in the newsletter next year just prior to our AGM 2012.

I said at the board meeting that now that all corrections were made from various board members, I will edit them and store them away for next years pre-AGM newsletter. I was told by another board member that once they are approved, I could not "edit" them.

I did find somewhere that board minutes are not a record of "phrasing," but a record of subject matter discussed. So, I'm thinking that editing for grammar, terseness, and so forth, is not illegal as it does not change the record of what was discussed.

Please give me your feedback on this subject. Any quotes from Robert's Rules of Order will be appreciated. I need to solve this problem.

Thanks for anything feedback you can offer.

Mary

[David A Foulkes]

The question is...after the minutes have been approved, it is sometimes then that I do the newsletter editing.

So, as I understand it, when you "publish" the minutes in the newsletter, it is sometimes prior to their approval, and thus since they are not yet in fact THE minutes (not yet having been approved), how is it you indicate this in the newsletter? That is, do you include something like "draft of minutes" or "(unapproved)" so that your readership understands they could be different upon approval?

Once the minutes are approved, and if that is the version you are working from for the newsletter, I'd be inclined to say you should not do any editing at all. I'm assuming the purpose here is to give the readership their own copy of the minutes, and not just a summarization of them. By altering them in any way, even in such manner as you deem as correct and appropriate as editor (such as noting the correct street name), it could be (mis)interpreted that you are altering the historical document to fit some unknown agenda.

That said, and as you slightly hint at, the minutes should be a record of what was "done" at a meeting, not what was "said." Thus, the editing of the minutes (perhaps even including typos and grammatical mis-steps as well as removing unnecessary jibber-jabber) should be handled at the meeting at which they are approved, through the offering of corrections, so that the final version of them is appropriate for publication.

[jstackpo]

Your organization's system of working over the minutes departs quite substantially from what RONR recommends (p. 451 ff.), so it is a bit difficult to comment.

But a couple of specifics: once the minutes text is approved in a meeting, then hands off! You do not get the edit them (again?). Only the members, in a meeting, can make further changes.

It sounds as though your secretary is writing FAR too much; a recapitulation of what was said -- debate, etc. -- does not belong in minutes, only the text of motions and their disposition -- adopted, defeated, postponed, whatever -- should be there. You wrote: "I did find somewhere that board minutes are not a record of "phrasing," but a record of subject matter discussed." -- not so. Where did you "find" that? Not in RONR, that's for sure.

Finally, if you are writing a "newsletter", then you are free to include whatever you, and the association, wants. But the (adopted) minutes are not the same as your articles.

Read RONR p. 451 ff. for more details about minutes -- for "newsletters" you are on your own.

[Sean Hunt]

It also sounds like it would be useful to both you and the board to have you edit the draft minutes before approval as a regular occurrence so that the approved versions are more technically correct.

As others have noted, what you publish is up to you, so it might be worth using square brackets to indicate any editorial changes you make - that way people know that they are not looking at the official text of the minutes, and they can ask for the official text if they'd like it.