Approving Minutes at the Next Meeting

[DerKatze]

Ever since I was introduced to Robert's Rules of Order, I have always wondered why minutes are approved at the beginning of the next meeting, instead of the end of the session in which the minutes are for.

 

You can always move to change the minutes after they are adopted, and the secretary should take notes and write the minutes during the meeting.  I doubt every member (or very many, for that matter) are going to remember exactly what happened at the meeting.  And some members could have been at the first meeting, but could not be in the next meeting to object to minutes.  Also, some societies might have terms for members - especially a board of directors of something of the sort.  What should be done about the last meeting in which a person is a member.  How would they move to change the minutes when they are no longer a member?

 

Wouldn't it be more effective to have the secretary read the minutes at the end of a meeting in regular societies, or provide several options for bodies to choose from?  There are 5 methods for election, and there should be multiple methods for adopting minutes.  The minutes could be read and adopted at the end of a meeting, at the beginning of the next meeting, or in a running journal made accessible to all members that is automatically adopted and an objection within a certain timeframe would warrant the standard procedures of approving minutes?

 

This is not related to any specific case, I just think there is a more effective way to approve minutes.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The assembly could adopt a rule on when to approve the minutes.

[Shmuel Gerber]

Have you read what RONR, 11th ed., says about the approval of minutes on pages 473-475?

[Richard Brown]

Ever since I was introduced to Robert's Rules of Order, I have always wondered why minutes are approved at the beginning of the next meeting, instead of the end of the session in which the minutes are for.

 

Wouldn't it be more effective to have the secretary read the minutes at the end of a meeting in regular societies, or provide several options for bodies to choose from? 

Well, perhaps the secretary of the organizations you belong to is a stenographer or is a speed writer with beautiful handwriting and writes unbelievably fast or is an excellent typist (or better yet, a stenotypist) and brings a laptop and a printer (or at least the laptop) to every meeting and is able to keep up perfectly with what is going on and compose a perfect draft on the spot without missing a beat so that the minutes are in perfect shape with perfect grammar and punctuation (or at least near perfect) at the instant the last item of new business is finished so that they can be distributed (or at least read) to the members immediately upon the conclusion of the last item of business. 

I'm not sure what the minutes would say about the time of adjournment since they are prepared prior to adjournment, but, heck, with such a super duper secretary I guess something could be figured out.

 

In the organizations I belong to and those whose meetings I attend, that just ain't gonna happen.  In a large, well funded convention with a secretary with multiple assistants, maybe, on occasion, but not in your ordinary monthly membership meeting or board meeting.

 

I'm not aware of any parliamentary authority that suggests the minutes of an ordinary meeting be prepared and approved prior to adjournment.  Are you? 

 

Have you really given much thought to exactly how this process of preparing the minutes on the spot before the meeting adjourns would work out in practice?   I can't imagine it.   Maybe in a few years with better voice recognition software, but not right now.

 

btw, in post # 3 above, RONR co-author Shmuel Gerber refers you to the provision in RONR where some alternative methods of approving the minutes are discussed.  A minutes approval committee is one of them.

 

Edited to add:  And, as Hieu Huynh mentioned in post # 2, an organization can adopt its own rules regarding approval of its minutes.

[Josh Martin]

Ever since I was introduced to Robert's Rules of Order, I have always wondered why minutes are approved at the beginning of the next meeting, instead of the end of the session in which the minutes are for.

 

Because it usually takes a little bit of time to prepare the minutes.

 

You can always move to change the minutes after they are adopted

 

You can, but it's much easier and cleaner to change them before they are adopted. See FAQ #16.

 

the secretary should take notes and write the minutes during the meeting.

 

The secretary should take notes during the meeting. It is not required to actually write the minutes during the meeting, and depending on the bulk of business the assembly conducts, this may be rather difficult. The secretary will often write the minutes based upon his notes, after the meeting.

 

I doubt every member (or very many, for that matter) are going to remember exactly what happened at the meeting.  And some members could have been at the first meeting, but could not be in the next meeting to object to minutes.  Also, some societies might have terms for members - especially a board of directors of something of the sort.  What should be done about the last meeting in which a person is a member.  How would they move to change the minutes when they are no longer a member?

 

Many assemblies have the secretary send out a draft copy of the minutes in between meetings, and encourage members to submit any corrections they see to the Secretary. This could address some of these concerns. As for assemblies where there is a periodic change in membership (such as a board of directors), RONR recommends that at the last meeting before such a change in membership, the assembly appoints a committee to approve the minutes.

 

Wouldn't it be more effective to have the secretary read the minutes at the end of a meeting in regular societies, or provide several options for bodies to choose from?  There are 5 methods for election, and there should be multiple methods for adopting minutes.  The minutes could be read and adopted at the end of a meeting, at the beginning of the next meeting, or in a running journal made accessible to all members that is automatically adopted and an objection within a certain timeframe would warrant the standard procedures of approving minutes?

 

I do not think that, generally speaking, it would be prudent to attempt to approve the minutes of a meeting at the end of the same meeting. RONR only calls for such a procedure in one very particular circumstance (when the assembly enters executive session for the sole purpose of approving the minutes of a previous executive session). This might also be doable in other circumstances, such as at a meeting without a quorum, or if for any other reason the assembly conducts very little business. In most situations, however, I think this is asking a bit much of the poor secretary.

 

With that said, however, there are multiple methods for approving minutes. Some of the differences between them are based on the characteristics of the assembly, and others are based on the assembly's preferences (such as whether to submit a draft copy of the minutes, which is sort of like your "running journal" idea).

 

In the organizations I belong to and those whose meetings I attend, that just ain't gonna happen.  In a large, well funded convention with a secretary with multiple assistants, maybe, on occasion, but not in your ordinary monthly membership meeting or board meeting.

 

I actually think that this would be more difficult in a large convention, since such minutes are frequently lengthy and complex, and the Secretary of such a convention often has other duties to attend to. The OP's suggestion seems most workable in a small assembly which conducts very little business and which actually follows RONR's recommendation of "what was done, not what was said," and where the Secretary has a laptop handy, so he can copy a previous version of minutes and make only such changes as are necessary.

[Shmuel Gerber]

I do not think that, generally speaking, it would be prudent to attempt to approve the minutes of a meeting at the end of the same meeting. RONR only calls for such a procedure in one very particular circumstance (when the assembly enters executive session for the sole purpose of approving the minutes of a previous executive session). This might also be doable in other circumstances, such as at a meeting without a quorum, or if for any other reason the assembly conducts very little business. In most situations, however, I think this is asking a bit much of the poor secretary.

Surprisingly, RONR actually says this:

"In sessions lasting longer than one day, such as conventions, the minutes of meetings held the preceding day are read and are approved by the convention at the beginning of each day's business after the first (and minutes that have not been approved previously should be read before the final adjournment)—except as the convention may authorize the executive board or a committee to approve the minutes at a later time." (p. 475)

 

The surprise is not that RONR says this, but that Josh Martin seems to have said something different.

 

Edited to add: And, of course, if there is no quorum present, the minutes (no matter how brief) cannot be approved by the assembly.

[Ann Rempel]

Well, at least, page 475 is a bit nicer to the secretary by allowing him or her time to write the minutes during the night for the next morning's reading!

[Shmuel Gerber]

Well, at least, page 475 is a bit nicer to the secretary by allowing him or her time to write the minutes during the night for the next morning's reading!

... Except on the last day.

[Richard Brown]

Well, at least, page 475 is a bit nicer to the secretary by allowing him or her time to write the minutes during the night for the next morning's reading!

 

... Except on the last day.

And it's the last day that I had primarily in mind with I made this statement in post # 4:  "In a large, well funded convention with a secretary with multiple assistants, maybe, on occasion, but not in your ordinary monthly membership meeting or board meeting."

[g40]

I am a Board member of an organization where our Board meets monthly. Our meetings typically last less than an hour and the minutes are usually only two pages. I cannot see how minutes could be done properly "on the fly" to be approved at the end of the meeting.

While it is true that the "approved" minutes can be amended at a future meeting, that would result in not having a "clean" copy of the actual approved minutes for the meeting.

[DerKatze]

 

You can, but it's much easier and cleaner to change them before they are adopted. See FAQ #16.

 

 

There should be an easier way to amend the minutes after they have been adopted. 

[Edgar Guest]

There should be an easier way to amend the minutes after they have been adopted. 

 

Feel free to write DerKatze's Rules of Order.