11 things to include in the Minutes of Meeting

Congratulations on being appointed the Club Secretary. It’s an absolute honor to hold the office and yes you have earned the rights to brag about it.

Let’s get to business now. As the Club Secretary, the one main task you are entrusted with is preparing the Minutes of Meeting, popularly nick named as MOM. By now, you should have a rough idea what a MOM is. In simple words, it is a document that records events that happened in a club meeting so that they are available for future reference.

One obvious question that arises is what all should the MOM record? In other words, how detailed should the document be.

It’s important to note here that Toastmasters International does not have a strict protocol on this. While its website does have a template that club secretaries can follow to prepare MOMs, we believe MOMs should be more creative than what the template envisages.

So here are some pointers to help you create MOMs that are better, yet not too demanding.

1. Record the date, time, meeting number and venue of the meeting (whether it was online or offline. If offline, address of the venue.)
2. Record names of all role players.
3. Record names and contact details of guests if any. This can especially come in handy when the club conducts membership drives.
4. A brief description of meeting theme as set by the TMOD.
5. Name of prepared speakers, title of their speeches and a brief summary in no more than 50 words about the content of the speech. If the speech had a memorable quote or fact, highlight the same.
6. It’s a good idea to include adjacent to each prepared speech, commendations and recommendations made by evaluators.
7. With regards to the Table Topic Session, merely listing the name Table Topic Speakers and the topics given to them should suffice. Since Table Topics are barely 2 minutes long, it’s neither feasible nor advisable to give a summary of each speech.
8.  Important observations made by the General Evaluator.
9. No of times the word of the day was used.
10. The names of winners in each award category.
11. A few photos from the session, especially a group photo.

There is no bar to making your MOMs more detailed. However, removing any of the above details may compromise the relevance of the document. Hence all efforts should be made to record each one of them. As is evident, it is not all that difficult a task.

We hope you have a wonderful time serving as the Secretary of your Club. Wish you luck.