If you’ve read through the previous section on Formalising the organisation of your group, our checklists are going to be really useful to help you plan your next steps.
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Our downloadable checklist gives you all the things you need to do to prepare for your first formal meeting and allows you to keep a note of who’s doing what and by when:
- Identify a proposed governing document and set of rules – use the advice we refer to in the Formalising the organisation of your group
- Discuss and agree all the clauses and make sure you have the skills, knowledge and tools to administer everything in the governing document – e.g. will you use a hard copy cash book to record financial transactions or excel, and how will you keep membership records while adhering to the General Data Protection Regulations?
- Choose interim committee members to take on the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer roles until someone can be officially appointed at your first general meeting.
- Do some research on which community bank accounts are available and what benefits they offer or costs are involved.
- Agree the date of the first meeting, making sure that all of the people currently involved in the group can attend, so you know you’ll have a good crowd!
- Advertise your first meeting well (see our Communicating in the real world and Online communications sections for some great tips and tools for advertising your event) and be ready to sign up members of the group – see our example membership form.Example Group Membership ApplicationDownload file
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- Organise a way to share the draft governing document with the people attending the meeting – this might be printing out some copies, or it could be having a laptop and projector available. It will be important that all your new members know what they are signing up to.
Now you’ve prepared for the first meeting, here’s a checklist of things which happen at the meeting:
- Agree who will take the minutes (written notes of what was discussed / agreed) of the meeting as these will be needed by the bank in order to open an account.
- Run through the proposed rules/governing document and agree a final version.
- As the governing document is agreed, for those attending who want to be members, they can complete the membership form – an example membership form is available here (see resources).
- Members vote for who will become the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer.
- Agree which bank to approach to open an account with.
- Agree who will be signatories to the bank account i.e. who will sign the cheques. This will normally be the Treasurer and one other committee member.
- Agree the date for the next meeting, ensuring it adheres to the frequency of meetings stated in the governing document.
- Write up the minutes of the meeting and circulate them to all the members.
In our downloadable checklist you can note who’s going to lead on which activity.
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We hope the checklists help you. As with all things Incredible, we’ve produced these lists to guide you – you know best your local context and group so tailor the lists to suit your needs. And this doesn’t mean you can’t have other meetings in between your formal meeting, it’s just that the formal meetings should be where significant decisions are taken, as per the rules in your governing document.
