Meeting: agenda, actions and minutes
The meeting's purpose, roles and agenda with the clock time of each item, the action list and the minutes. Seeded from your setup.
Essential on a first pass for a meeting: the meeting lines (purpose, roles and how you will decide), the agenda and the action items. The minutes lines are essential for whoever takes the notes. A reader who skips this sheet usually runs a meeting without a stated purpose and ends it without a list of who will do what. Running a meeting and Decisions and minutes explain the steps.
The meeting
One line per heading is enough. The purpose, the roles and how you will decide are the Start here part.
Agenda
One row per item. The clock times print in the box above this sheet. The example rows are fictional.
Action items
One row per action: what, who and by when. Read them back before the meeting ends. The example row is fictional.
Minutes
Record what was done, not what was said. Your bylaws or a law that governs your group may require more.
How to use this sheet
- The meeting. Fill the purpose in one sentence and name the chair, the note-taker and the timekeeper. "How we decide" is a decision: pick the way before the first item, not during it. "Quorum" comes from your bylaws; ask the secretary if you do not have them.
- Agenda. One row per item: its kind (information, discussion or decision), who leads it and the minutes you give it. The box above the sheet turns the minutes into clock times from your start time and flags the total against the end time.
- Action items. One row per action: what, who, by when. Read them back before the meeting ends and check them at the next one.
- Minutes. Record what was done, not what was said. For each motion, write the motion as it passed and the result, with the count. The default comes from the Robert's Rules Association's FAQ; your bylaws or a law that governs your group may ask for more.
- Outcome column. Fill it during or just after the meeting. It holds the result, not the discussion.
These lines follow Howard Lin's case: the Maple Street Garden Club, 22 members, a Tuesday meeting from 7:00 to 8:00 pm in a church hall. Purpose: hear the guest speaker and vote on spending $400 from the treasury on the spring plant sale. How we decide: a vote under the bylaws, which name Robert's Rules. Quorum: eight, from the bylaws. The starter agenda row, "Plant sale budget," is a decision item led by the treasurer, ten minutes. With his draft agenda the clock showed 62 minutes against an hour, so Howard cut the treasurer's report to three. The starter action, ordering tomato seedlings, is Marta's. The minutes line for the vote records the motion as passed and the count.
This sheet records a meeting. It does not make a record legally sufficient. Your group's bylaws, and any law that governs it, come before this sheet; for a public body or a homeowners association, the notice and minutes rules vary by state, and the group's officers, its parliamentarian or its attorney are the people to ask. The quorum and the way of deciding come from the bylaws, not from this page.