Your board minutes are evidence — five things I check as a governance professional

After years as a Board Secretary and Chartered Governance professional (and now teaching Boardroom Dynamics), I've reviewed a lot of charity board minutes. The same five issues come up every time, so I thought I'd share them here in case they're useful — especially for small charities where minute-taking lands on whoever is least able to dodge it!

1. They're a transcript, not a minute. A minute is a considered record of decisions, actions and rationale — who agreed what, why, and who's doing it by when. Every word said is not the record; it's the raw material.

2. Decisions you can't find. If someone challenged a decision a year later, could you point to the exact minute that made it — with the options considered? If not, the record won't protect your trustees.

3. Actions with no owner or date. "It was agreed the policy would be updated" — by whom? By when? An action log with owners and deadlines is worth more than pages of discussion.

4. AI doing the writing unsupervised. Transcription tools can be a helpful drafting aid (with consent), but they can't tell challenge from decision, and board discussions are exactly the confidential material you don't want flowing through consumer AI tools unchecked. Assistant, yes; author, no.

5. Minutes approved as a box-tick. The approval at the next meeting is trustees confirming the record fairly reflects their deliberations — it deserves two minutes of real attention, because once approved, that minute is the charity's formal evidence.

Happy to answer any questions on minutes, clerking or trustee meeting procedure in the comments — genuinely, ask away. It's a corner of charity life that gets little love until something goes wrong.