Proper place to record actions between meetings

[Guest Danburry Dave]

Our Committee meets monthly. When urgent issues arise and a decision needs to be made between meetings, the Committee often takes action (votes) on these issues by email. Should these decisions be recorded on the Agenda of the next monthly meeting, on the Minutes of the next monthly meeting, or both?

[Guest Edgar]

Our Committee meets monthly. When urgent issues arise and a decision needs to be made between meetings, the Committee often takes action (votes) on these issues by email. Should these decisions be recorded on the Agenda of the next monthly meeting, on the Minutes of the next monthly meeting, or both?

Do your bylaws permit "meeting" (because that essentially what you're doing) via e-mail? If not then you can't do it and any such decisions are null and void. So you'll either prepare minutes for the e-mail meetings (if they're legitimate) or you won't (if they're not).

If it's a true emergency (e.g. the clubhouse is on fire), individual members can take action and hope that, at the next meeting, their individual actions will be "ratified" by the group. But the group (in this case your committee) can only act as a committee at a legitimate meeting of the committee.

[Rev Ed]

I am with Edgar, if there is an issue that truly requires an immediate action, getting the okay of some (if not a majority) of members through e-mail might be okay. However, the final decision should be made at the following meeting when the issue is formally approved.

[Guest Danburry Dave]

Thanks for your advice. I will check to see whether e-mail meetings are permitted in our by-laws. Assuming they are, I will “ratify” these decisions in the next regular meeting. To do this, these items should probably be on that meeting’s Agenda and, if “ratified” (or not), on that meeting’s Minutes as well. (Alternatively, we could prepare minutes for each of these email “meetings,” but this might be cumbersome. The members would prefer just one set of minutes per month to keep things manageable.)

[tctheatc]

Thanks for your advice. I will check to see whether e-mail meetings are permitted in our by-laws. Assuming they are, I will “ratify” these decisions in the next regular meeting.

If e-mail meetings ARE permitted in your bylaws, then what was done was proper and the decisions don't need ratification. But you'd need to produce minutes for that e-mail meeting.

If e-mail meetings are NOT permitted in your bylaws, THEN you need to ratify those emergency actions at your next proper meeting.

Read again what Edgar wrote in post #2.

[Guest Danburry Dave]

Got it - thank you for that important point of clarification!