The club secretary is in charge of maintaining all club files and creating the minutes for the Club's Executive Committee meetings.

Meetings of the Club's Executive Committee

As a Secretary, you're responsible for preparing the agenda of the Club's Executive Committee's meetings, as well as organizing the meeting itself and notifying all officers of the details in advance. For details and timings, please see the Club Officers chapter.

Meeting Minutes

One of the main tasks of the Secretary is keeping accurate Meeting Minutes.

Meeting Minutes are a fundamental book in the club's life that records all the important meetings of the Executive Committee,  decisions made, voting outcomes, considerations, and discussions, etc.

Meeting Minutes may be kept physically or electronically, depending on the club's capabilities. The decision of where to keep those is left up to each club's Executive Committee.

Good Meeting Minutes should include the following, for every meeting:

• Meeting venue name, place, and time
• Initial Agenda of the meeting
• List of participants
• For each item discussed during the meeting (whether it was originally on the agenda or not):
  • The initial summarized viewpoint of the member putting forward the item or the context of the discussion.
  • A summary of other participant's viewpoints (only those who intervened in the discussion).
  • Decisions made, alternatives considered, and the rationale for the decision. For example, don't just say, "it was decided to change the meeting venue to the new location X. ". Instead, you could say something like "Due to the closure of our current meeting place in one month, we need to change the meeting venue of the club. We considered options X, Y, and Z. Option Y was discarded as the price requested from the owner of $25/hour was too steep, and option Z had some serious quality issues such as bad chairing and terrible acoustics. Hence, by a vote of 6-0, option X was selected"
  • Voting tally.
• The meeting venue, name, place, and time of the next meeting
• Any annexes or documents entered into the session for supporting the discussed items

Other Club Files

Another task of the Secretary is to keep all club files and make sure they're properly preserved and have an appropriate backup to prevent their loss.

Club files include:

• Club charter and bylaws.
• Guest books.
• Lists of cooperating organizations, events, or venues where members have speaking or leadership opportunities.
• Membership rosters.
• Officer Meeting Agendas and Minutes.
• Member or guest complaints and their resolution.
• Disciplinary procedures.
• Club contracts or agreements with other entities (media, other clubs, or other public speaking organizations).
• Any other files

Restricted Files

Although most of the club's documents should be accessible to all members, there are some sensitive files that the club needs to keep private and provide only for audit purposes or to the affected people. These are the following:

Club Audits

For ensuring the proper and consistent functioning of all Agora clubs worldwide, officers and members of the Board of the Agora Speakers International Foundation ("Agora Auditors") may request that a club provides a copy of any club files.

Requests for such copies will be made electronically to the club's contact addresses and/or the registered EMail addresses of the Secretary or other Club Officers. All the requested club documents need to be sent back electronically within two weeks (14 calendar days) from the day of the request.