How to be the Secretary

Introduction

This document is mostly reproduced from guide written by a previous Secretary wanting to pass their knowledge onto subsequent secretaries. Some of the procedures have changed sligthly but it's interesting to see how they have changed in some respects.

They began by stating that it's a role that has a clear beginning and a very hazy end point somewhere in the far distance of I’m doing too many things aarggh!

I’ve tried to list here the bits I think sit at the core of the role, though as with most very prominent co-op positions, there is a very probable likelihood that you will be consulted by other working groups, drawn into larger scale or one off tasks, and possibly lumped with covering some of the work of working groups that aren’t functioning fully. This is not an ideal state of affairs, and will likely be made easier by having a vice-secretary/ies and/or members of the secretarial group to spread out the more regular tasks so the irregular ones don’t become insurmountable.

That said, it is also a role which places you at the heart of co-op community, allows a lot of learning and skills opportunities in administration and co-ordinating, and can be greatly rewarding feeling part of helping people’s ideas come to fruition and helping the community meet and discuss together.

Meetings

The job that will take up most of Secretarial time is organising meetings and ensuring they are advertised, recorded and reported out to the members.

A full guide to each step of organising the monthly GM is available. I would highly recommend the secretary and vice-secretary alternate organising to make the workload less constant.

Outside of GMs, you will also occasionally get requests for EGMs from members. These follow most of the same steps as a GM, with a lot less of the steps to put the agenda together as the issue to be discussed is usually one or two things.

The only other role secretarial has with meetings is being a point of help with drafting agenda items. Members and group co-ordinators will often ask for help wording a proposal, or just in how best to get an item usefully discussed and implemented via a meeting. Some notes on agenda items follow.

Agenda Items

There is a folder on the side of the shelves in the office with agenda item forms, these are a pretty handy guide to the kind of information that is useful for an agenda item to get fully discussed at a meeting and any decisions made.

Individual members will quite often have a broad idea of what they would like to accomplish with the idea they have, feel free to put them in contact with appropriate group co-ordinators or staff to research or cost the idea, or help out yourself if you have time.

The majority of the work involved in agenda setting will be in editing, adapting and chasing up half formed or vague agenda items.

Admin Responsibilities

Most of the administrative tasks of the secretary are divided up as suits you between the office staff and the secretarial group. These tasks include:

Managing and keeping on top of the agendas and minutes folder, physical and on computer Agendas and minutes need filing both on computer in the meetings folder on the network, and in a folder containing physical copies on the office shelves. The physical copy is useful as a reference point and tends to get inspected by the auditor after the close of each financial year as the primary check of our reasonable management of the co-op.

Managing and keeping on top of the policy folder, physical and on computer Similarly, policies need filing in up to date form on computer in policy section on the network and in a physical folder in the office. When meetings agree changes to policy it is usually secretarial who does the filing and updating. On computer, we have three sections to each policy folder, archive, drafts and current policy. It’s really important to move older versions of policy into the archive, so we can look back on changes if necessary, and to keep any unagreed policies in drafts so they aren’t mistakenly taken as gospel before we’ve been through a meeting.

Managing and keeping on top of the signed confidentiality policies folder All committee members, and anyone involved in tech or welfare need to have signed a confidentiality agreement. These are all kept in a folder in the office, and more forms are usually available at the front of that folder.

Keeping the committee database up to date, and making sure a current list of committee members is on display in the office, plus working group email forwarding The committee database is located on the network in the secretarial working group folder. It is important to keep an up to date copy printed out near the shortlist and voids signs on the office noticeboard. It is important when people step down to log them in the leaving committee members file, as we need to provide this information in our end of year return to the regulator, this saves time hunting through for this info later.

All working groups now have @ash.coop email addresses, and nay new co-ordinators need to be added on to the list being forwarded those emails so that they can give a non-personal email out for members to contact them. The staff or tech group should be able to access the software to update this forwarding.

Administrating the discuss email list (this also gets done by the tech group sometimes) The Secretary has a login for google groups and is an administrator of the discuss and committee email lists. I tend to about once a month check in with new members and leaving members, and add or remove emails from the list. There is a spreadsheet in the tech folder that also outlines any emails of long term members that we have who aren’t on the discuss list, I reinvite this list every now and again and one or two join here and there.

Administrating the committee email list The committee list is fairly unused, you can update it whenever you add or remove anyone from the committee list. It can be a useful place to ask for any support, or not, up to you!

Signing share certificates The secretary signs all the shares we issue. Usually when things are running well this is as simple as signing some bits of paper, but if any right to rent checks have been missed out it can be a case of chasing people up for a bit of ID before you sign their share.

Reporting

It is also the secretarial group's role to ensure that groups are regularly reporting back to meetings. This is really important in keeping a dialogue open between the working groups that perform much of the day to day work of running the co-op, and the general meeting which is the ultimate decision making body. groups with minimal active members are usually stretched thin just doing the task of the group, and so usually can use some assistance and nudging in telling the co-op what they've been up to and how to help out!

Policy

The secretary and the secretarial group are nominally in charge of liaising with other groups and helping out with any changes to policy that members and co-ordinators would like to propose.

As we have very little committee organisation in current practice, reports from working groups are also a chance for the general meeting to act as a backstop for any group that has less involvement or is struggling to make sure everything that needs doing gets done.

Magazine/Newsletter

The co-op magazine is one of the most time intensive, most rewarding, and most forgotten about aspects of secretarial work. If you have the time, by all means go for it, in my view it is one of the most immediately positive pieces of community work we can accomplish together.