Responsibilities

Hi, I’m Rachel and I’ll be running you through secretary training. First of all, let me say a massive congratulations and well done on being elected to the role of secretary. If you’re in this role, there’s a good chance you’re probably already well organised, but I’ll give you a few tips and pointers to get you off to a good start.

My top tip for secretary is to have systems set in place early on and don’t leave it too late to get the minutes typed up after meetings. Best of luck and I’ll see you in the next video.

Responsibilities

A good, well-organised secretary is a cornerstone of any club or voluntary society. The secretary is responsible for keeping accurate and accessible records of the club, including meeting minutes and correspondence. They maintain the club’s official documentation, which includes a club constitution, bylaws and officer lists.

And within Toastmasters, the club secretary will also be the Base Camp Manager.

Club Business

Hi, it’s me again and here are my top tips on how to become a minute keeping master. I’ve carried out the role of secretary for many organisations including my local Toastmasters club and let me tell you there’s one thing they all have in common and that is that the longer you leave it to type up the minutes after the meeting the harder it gets. But the good news is that the flip of that is also true in that the faster you do the minutes after the meeting the easier it is to put them together and often the quicker you can do them as well.

So my top tip for anyone taking on the role of secretary is to take about 20 to 30 minutes as soon after the meeting as possible preferably the same day if not certainly the day after to make a start on the minutes. Often you’ll be surprised at just how much you can get done in that amount of time and if it’s not enough you certainly can come back to them and make revisions at a later date but it does make things so much more easy if you can make a solid start on them at the time and it also means that if there is something you need to go back and double check the winner of an award who agreed to do something at a meeting it’s much easier to go back to another committee member and check those details sooner rather than later. One thing I often get asked by new secretaries is what to include in the minutes.

There are a few tips which will really help you. First of all include a list of who attended the meeting. Think of the five W’s who, what, where, why, when.

That’s the that’s the basis of any good report. You want to know who was there, when it happened, where it took place and what the outcome was. Keep your minutes simple and factual.

We don’t need a book and we don’t need a word-by-word play on who said what and what debate took place. We really need to know the discussion that took place, the outcome and if there was any kind of proposed motion. So who proposed it and who seconded it and if at any point you’re not clear it’s okay to ask the president or the chairman of the meeting, excuse me, can we just recap who proposed that, who seconded that, has that been proposed, has that been seconded.

Perfectly fine to make sure you have that information in your minutes. When I’m writing my minutes often I use the subheads that are on the agenda as topics. So say you had a talk about say membership, that could be a subhead.

Then you’ll have the discussion about that, then say you had another discussion about venue hire costs, that would be the next subhead and that just allows everything to be nicely organised so if someone wants to read through the minutes quickly to find the outcome of a certain topic they can get there without having to read the whole thing. Another really good pointer is to not be afraid to use bullet points for readability and aim to circulate the minutes within a week, maximum two weeks of the meeting having taken place. Like I said practise makes perfect and the sooner you make a start on it the easier it gets.

Communicate with Toastmasters International

Club officer lists. Yes, I told you you needed to be well organised to be a good secretary, so here’s another list for your records. There are many good reasons why you need to keep the club officer list up to date with Toastmasters International.

As you know, because you’ve just been elected, each club has its own election of incoming club officers by the end of the term in June. So once you know who the new club officers will be, it’s your responsibility as club secretary to report that to Toastmasters International. The deadline for submission is June 30th, so that’s one key date to add to your diary for next year.

Now the club secretary who had held the role up until now should have already done it for this year for you coming in, but it’ll be your responsibility to do that for next year for whoever comes in after you. It’s very important for your club’s operation to submit the club officer list on time. If you miss the deadline, your club will lose access to the club central portal on Toastmasters International website, and that means your club will not be able to carry out a lot of its essential business.

Things like registering new members, education awards and so forth, so you don’t want to miss out on that. And as an added bonus, if you submit the list on time, your club will get one requirement of the DCP point for next term. By now you already know that as secretary you’re going to be the main point of contact for Toastmasters International for your club, but be warned, with great power comes great responsibility, and there’s a few things you need to keep in mind.

First of all, make sure that the find your club information is up to date on the Toastmasters website. This is critical because it’s often how new members will find out about your club, where it meets and how to get involved. Now that you’re taking on the role for the first time, it’s a really good time to take a second and just make sure that information is correct now.

Secondly, if your club wants to make changes, for example to club dues, meeting time, duration, frequency, you’re going to need to update the standard addendum of club options. And finally, you need to review any Toastmasters International policy proposals and board candidates with members, and decide how your club wishes to use its votes. And also ensure that online proxy form is completed by the set deadline to make sure that your club’s votes count.

No pressure.

Maintain correspondence and the club’s records

As secretary, there are various ways that you can choose to store your club minutes. And I know of some secretaries who swear by their old school analogue systems of physical files and pages. As long as you’re super organised, can stop stray bits of paper from going AWOL, there’s nothing wrong with that.

In my club, and in many others however, they’ve opted to go digital, and we use a Google Drive. This allows minutes to be ordered by date, meeting type, and topic, and can be easily searchable as well. The other added benefit is that new committee members can be added in just a few clicks, and as each year passes, new committee members can be brought on and old ones taken off, and continuity is kept as the file is passed on intact together.