[Foundation-l] board minutes

Sun Dec 14 15:53:07 UTC 2008

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2008/12/14 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 5:49 AM, effe iets anders
> > <effeietsanders at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> From Sue's report, I understood that the current practice is to have
> board
> >> minutes approved only on the next board meeting. In practice that means
> a
> >> delay of several months. In a quickly changing world as ours, that is
> quite
> >> a long time span.
> >>
> >
> > That's a fairly standard practice.  How would you approve the minutes
> > without holding a meeting?  (Sure, you could do it using a unanimous
> consent
> > resolution, but that's certainly not typical.)
>
> It's also not typical to have a large group of very committed and
> interested volunteers wanting to know what's going on.

Maybe not typical, but it's fairly common.  Of course, organizations with
volunteers that are very committed and interested are usually membership
organizations, and members are invited to the meetings.

Approving the
> minutes by email would seem perfectly practical to me.

> > Publishing a draft of the minutes (or an informal summary of the meeting)
> > would be one thing.  Approving the official minutes is quite another.
> >
> > Are the meetings considered confidential?  If not, there's nothing
> stopping
> > any board member from providing a summary at any time.  If so, well, then
> > why publish the minutes in the first place?
>
> It may not be wise to publish unapproved minutes - if there are
> mistakes, the consequences could be rather unfortunate.

Yeah, an informal summary would be better.  Or just record the whole thing
(minus any "closed session" portions) and put it on the Internet.