Form with which the board of directors of a corporation records the contents of its first meeting.
Form with which the board of directors of a corporation records the contents of its first meeting.
Typically, the responsibility of taking minutes during a meeting falls to a designated person called a minute-taker or a meeting recorder. In formal meetings, such as a board of directors' meeting or a shareholders' meeting, this person is often a professional secretary or an administrative assistant.
They are legally required to include these details: Date, time, and location of the meeting. Record of notice of board meeting provision and acknowledgment. Names of attendees and absentees, including guests. Approval of previous meeting minutes.
Who should be responsible for taking these notes? At a board meeting the answer is the company secretary. Taking minutes doesn't just mean summarising the meetings, as minutes provide the board members with an understanding of actions to be taken from the written records.
There is no general requirement that board minutes be public – though some countries have laws that they must be available to members. However, not-for-profit organisations earn trust by being open about how they handle the public trust that has been granted to them.
As a member of the company, you may ask the company in writing for a copy of the minutes of a meeting of members, or an extract of the minutes, or the minutes of any resolution passed by members without a meeting.
Who is responsible for taking minutes for a meeting? The corporate secretary generally takes notes and prepares meeting minutes. If there is no specific role for this in your company, the job should rotate between people who know how to take notes for a meeting.
Robert's Rules (Section -16) state that “the minutes should contain mainly a record of what was done at the meeting, not what was said by the members.” Minutes are not transcripts of meetings; rather, the document contains a record of actions taken by the body, organized by the meeting's order of business (agenda).
Include the name of the organization, date and time of meeting, who called it to order, who attended and if there a quorum, all motions made, any conflicts of interest or abstainments from voting, when the meeting ended and who developed the minutes. The secretary of the board usually takes minutes during meetings.
Board meeting minutes are an objective record of what took place during a board meeting. The minutes are typically used for internal purposes like record-keeping and for posterity. Minutes can serve to inform future meetings and recall what was discussed, agreed upon or dismissed by a company's board members.