Taking minutes

I have been asked to take minutes at certain High Council meetings. I know nothing about taking minutes. Any suggestions? Thank you.

When I was a ward clerk, I often would use a legal
pad to take notes (minutes), and basically record
the items discussed and use the left column of the
legal pad to write down who was assigned which
task. Leaving this column blank except for the
name of the person to follow-through, made it
easy to quickly read back the minutes the next meeting.
The purpose of minutes, in my opinion, is as an aid
to help the leadership stay focused on the tasks
necessary to minister to the people of the ward/stake.
These notes are not a historical record, but merely a
means to insure that important matters are addressed
in a timely fashion.

- Atticus Ewig

erniekuhn wrote:I have been asked to take minutes at certain High Council meetings. I know nothing about taking minutes. Any suggestions? Thank you.

My advice:

• Don't try to capture everything that happened in the meeting
• Focus on issues that will require some followup, and make sure that it is clear who is to do what by when.
• Make sure all important business is captured (e.g., the High Council approved the ordination of Brother John Doe to the office of High Priest)
• It's easier and often better to just capture bullet points -- don't spend a lot of time and words making a long narrative.
• Be careful not to capture more than is needed -- no one wants to sift through lengthy minutes to find the essential information.
• Always record the date and who is presiding. It may be helpful to note who was present (or who was absent).
• Before you follow any of the above advice, ask your priesthood leader (probably the stake president) what he expects the minutes to contain.
• Find out who is to receive a copy of the minutes, how they are to be distributed, and stored (electronically and/or on paper, and how long they are to be retained), and followed up on.

I personally use a laptop to take minutes at meetings. Our church building has internet access now, so by the end of the meeting - the minutes are already sent to all the participants via email - saves time that you'd normally spend later typing them out if the minutes of a meeting are desired to be sent via email.

I always did it like this:


Who was Present.

Assignments from last meeting:

Assignment - Who has the responsibility - Deadline
Bake cookies - My mother - 5 mins from now.


And then I listed up which topics we went through, and which there was key notes, I would write that.

Topic: Elder Holst is hungry.
It is very important that he is being fed.


And then I would have a table for new assignments, who was responsible for it, and the deadline for it to be done.

All done on the laptop.

Another vote for taking the laptop. I can type just as fast and much more legibly than I can write, so I save the hassle of interpreting my scrawl later on and sit in the meeting with the laptop typing them straight in. Also means if anyone needs info from a website (recentry, tes, cdol, luws) or from previous meetings' minutes, I have it all right there in front of me. I have also hooked our photocopier up to the wireless as a network printer, so I can print anything we need and one of my assistants will pop it in for us. A quick msn message to him in the next room will point it out to him if he doesn't notice it. Ah, I love technology.