NEW MEMBERS
1. Website – Upon reviewing the applicants who have submitted applications to join APBCo under the Applicants section, if the board approves the applicant, the Secretary should update the applicant’s status in the right-hand side bar to “Accepted.”
2. Chatter – The Secretary will need to manually invite a new member to the APBCo Chatter platform. Please review the instructions for doing so – http://www.apbco.org/resource/apbco-website-chatter-tips/.
NOTE TAKING
1. Minutes – It is a requirement from a corporate governance perspective for DE, NY and the IRS that at least once per year APBCo holds an official board meeting during which it creates official meeting minutes. Such minutes are “public” to APBCo members, to any auditors, to the government and others who request a copy of APBCo’s formal meeting minutes.
APBCo has always held this official meeting during January and at this meeting have historically voted to approve new board members or extend board terms, and handle other voting business and make a treasurer’s report.
The Secretary prepares and posts such “official minutes” on the APBCo website in the corporate governance folder, and they are viewed as part of our official documentation for the governance of the organization.
Such minutes should look similar to the following link (http://www.apbco.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/2013- APBCo-Board-Minutes.pdf). As noted, they should be formal (using language like RESOLVED) and should be brief, focusing the key voting issues.
2. Confidential Meeting Notes – For APBCo’s weekly EC/board calls, the Secretary should generate confidential meeting notes. Colloquially, the board has referred to them as minutes, but it is best if it refraining from doing so, and instead, call them “notes” or confidential meeting notes.
Each week, the Secretary should post the notes in the APBCo Board group in Chatter for the board’s eyes only.
At the end of the year, the Secretary shall create a single PDF file of all weekly notes, and then post the PDF on the website in the board-only section as a means of ensuring APBCo has a record of issues discussed/decided re business operations – please see http://www.apbco.org/resource/ confidential-meeting-notes/.
3. Member Summaries – During the October 2014 board meeting, it was agreed that APBCo wanted to keep the members more engaged/”in the know” and improve transparency by providing short/scrubbed summaries of APBCo’s weekly board meetings. It is planned that such summaries will be posted in the APBCo Membership group in Chatter.