Writing an Agenda Item: A Short Guide

This document is a collection of some of the things you may wish to consider when trying to put an agenda item together for a meeting. There are some obvious basics in terms of information that is needed, and then it drifts into more of an art of thinking what the meeting might want or need, and laying out what you are asking the meeting to consider or decide upon.

Hopefully this will be useful to people in terms of thinking through and submitting your ideas to the General Meetings.

The Office, Secretarial and Working Groups can help with shaping an agenda item, often it helps to have several people thinking an idea through and asking questions.

Download the Agenda Item Word Template

Basic information

• What is your idea?
• Does it fit within one of our existing working groups?
• Are there any costs involved? the Co-op rarely agrees to anything without at least an estimated cost.
• Does it need volunteers to make it happen, how many?
• Who will co-ordinate the work?

What are you asking the meeting to do

• Is it a discussion item?
• Are you testing an idea for support before developing it further?
• Does the meeting need to make a decision on the matter urgently?
• Is it a one off project, or a commitment to start a process/offer something regularly?

Providing additional information/Pre-empting regular questions

Can we check in partway through, or review this a few months down the line to see if it is working and whether any adjustments are needed? Does the cost fit within annual budgeting, or if a large spend, how does it impact our long term financial planning? If within an existing working group area, have the group been contacted? Do they support the idea?

Of course help is available with your agenda item if you wish and there are literally countless historical examples of GM Agendas to get inspirtaion from. The co-operative value of self-help encourages you to try and do this for yourself. Below is an example of a GM Agenda item where there the meeting is being asked to choose from a list of contractors to do a thing in the co-op.