Meeting Minutes Template
With a wide variety of meetings ranging from informal to formal, our Meeting Minutes Templates are a great place to start. Choose the template that best fits the needs of your organization. One template focuses on following the formal Roberts Rules of Order. The others are more general and focused on the common items you'll want to include in your record.
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This Page (contents):
- Formal Meeting Minutes Template
- Basic Meeting Minutes Template
- Detailed Meeting Minutes Template
- Tips for Using Robert's Rules
Meeting Minutes Templates
The Vertex42 meeting minutes templates can be downloaded for free, but you will be subject to the license agreement below. Each of these templates is theme-enabled, meaning that you can go to Page Layout > Themes and choose a new color scheme or font combination.
License: Private Use
Required: Microsoft Word® 2007 or later
Formal Meeting Minutes Template
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For: Word 2007 or later
Description
This version includes elements called for in the 11th edition of Robert's Rules of Order [1]. The manual is widely used to govern the meetings and interactions of parliamentary organizations. This template makes it easy to include all the information that should be preserved for each meeting. See the tips below for more information about using this template.
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Basic Meeting Minutes Template
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For: Word 2007 or later
Description
If your meetings are not as formal or you are just looking for a simple tool for taking minutes, this template is a good place to start. It does not include any special table-based formatting, so it is easy to customize to meet your specific needs.
Detailed Meeting Minutes Template
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For: Word 2007 or later
Description
If you want to keep track of more details about your meeting, this version allows you to fill in the essential information while keeping it well-organized, using a table-based layout.
Tips for Keeping Minutes Using Robert's Rules
- Typically, the secretary keeps the minutes as a record of what was done at each meeting. In each meeting, the previous meeting's minutes are approved (and corrected, if necessary). Then they are added to the organization's Minutes binder, to maintain a record of what was done at each meeting.
- If a motion is adopted through a roll-call vote, you can list the names of each person who voted for and against the motion (rather than totaling the number of yea's and nay's). (According to RONR [1], p. 470, ll. 29-32).
- The secretary signs and dates the Minutes when they are approved at the next meeting. (According to RONR (11th ed.), p. 474, ll. 28-35)
- Minutes that will be published will often include more detail, such as a summary of the statements by each person who speaks on either side of an issue. (According to RONR [1], p. 475, ll. 27-34)
References and Resources
- [1] Robert's Rules of Order: RONR (11th ed.), pp. 468-480. The fourth edition of this book can be found online at http://www.rulesonline.com/rror-10.htm#60
- [2] How to Write and Keep Meeting Minutesvia NancySylvester.com - Especially for parliamentary procedure, based on the Robert's Rules of Order.
- Taking Good Meeting Minutesat businessproductivity.com
