Free guide · no email required
You were voted in, not trained. This is the one page nobody hands the new secretary: how to prepare for a meeting, how to write the minutes, the five things to record when somebody makes a motion, and what to do when you realize you missed something.
One page · US Letter · Free, and there’s nothing to sign up for
Nobody expects a transcript. Meeting minutes are a record of what was decided, not what was said. Once somebody tells you that, writing them up gets a lot smaller than it looked.
It takes about fifteen seconds. Someone moves it, someone seconds it, hands go up, and the room has already moved on while you’re still writing. Catch these five, in this order:
And the first motion of the night is often yours: approving last meeting’s minutes. You move it, somebody seconds it, and you write yourself down, which feels strange exactly once.
You will. Every secretary does. Here’s the whole recovery:
I was the secretary on a PTA board. Here’s what that job was like from the inside.
What did you take minutes in? A laptop. I started by deleting the notes out of an old copy of the minutes and filling in the blanks, and it didn’t work. I needed an actual template, with a guide.
How did your first meeting go? My first meeting was fine, but I felt like I was working really hard to keep everything accurate. I was making up the whole motion thing as I went, and not very good at it, since no one explained it to me.
How fast do motions really happen? So fast. It is so hard to see who seconds, usually. I just started asking, and people grew to appreciate my carefulness.
What surprised you about the job? The notes are public and have to be filed perfectly, so they need to have all the right info in them.
How long does writing them up take? Not that long. Maybe 10 to 15 minutes.
Did anyone ever correct your minutes? I think they edited my notes a lot at the beginning to clean them up. Sometimes they would make corrections or ask for changes, and it was actually super helpful for my learning.
What’s the annoying part? The annoying part of the job is worrying that you will mess something up.
That template problem is what the Secretary Kit solves, and more: every piece of a motion gets its own box, so you fill in blanks instead of remembering.
Other officers on your board might feel just as lost as you are. There’s a free one-page guide for taking over as treasurer, and one for taking over as president. Same deal: one page, no email.
Keep it beside you
Everything above, on one sheet of US Letter. No second page, no filler.
Download Getting Started as Secretary ↓Free, no email, nothing to sign up for.
When you want the rest
The minutes template with its guide, the agenda, and a motion box for every vote. A Google Doc, a spreadsheet, and a printable binder in one download.
See the Secretary Kit →This one-pager is included, and stays free here either way.
Questions
If you want the rest of it
Everything they should have handed you on day one, in whichever form you actually work in. This guide comes with it, and stays free here either way.
If you like paper
Agenda, minutes, the motion and vote record, attendance log, board roster, spine labels. Three-hole punch and go.
If you’d rather type
The same agenda and minutes on tables, not fill-in lines. Click a yellow cell and type. Nothing shifts.
If you want it counted
Quorum, vote results and the overdue list work themselves out while you listen to the meeting.
One purchase, no subscription · Made by a former PTA secretary and treasurer, who answers her own messages