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Secretary

Responsibilities

On paper, your responsibilities as Secretary are as follows:

  • Create the agenda for each of your committee meetings.
  • Take minutes during meetings.
  • Create a list of topics your PRO should talk about when they are sending out your weekly emails.
  • Upload minutes onto Wolves.
  • Chair committee meetings.
  • Keep up with your club or society's emails.
  • Some clubs require you to help organise events with clubs and societies outside of UL.
  • Send emails regarding events involving clubs and societies outside of UL.

However, each club and society handles certain things differently.

For example, some societies have the Secretary sending out the weekly email instead of the PRO, and some societies have their President or Chairperson chairing committee meetings.

Don't be afraid to delegate responsibilities.

For example, in Computer Society, we have an Intercommittee Officer who is responsible for communication with other Clubs and Societies within UL, and within other colleges.

Minutes

Formatting

Every committee chooses to format its minutes differently.

Computer Society uses a platform called Nextcloud so that each Committee member can add topics they would like to discuss before the meeting.

They are also able to add their apologies to the minutes document. They don't need to add a reason for this, but it is appreciated.

If a member of the committee does not attend at least 50% of the Committee Meetings, they can be removed from the committee. However, if they send Apologies, that does not count towards the 50%.

In Computer Society, we use Typist because we have a program that automatically turns our minutes into PDFs, and it uses Typist for the formatting.

Committee Meetings

For regular Committee Meetings, the layout I would recommend is:

  1. Present
  2. Apologies
  3. Following up on jobs assigned in the previous meeting
  4. Notes from:
    • President
    • Treasurer
    • HSO
    • PRO
    • Secretary
    • Non-core committee members
  5. Standing Items

Not all non-core committee members need their own sections.

Standing Items

Standing items are items that are always on the agenda.

Things like training, and what type of training is on this week, would be considered a standing item because it changes each week.

Other examples include:

  • Sponsorship.
  • Events you're planning on hosting.
  • Cleaning, if your society has its own room in Student Life.
  • Collaborations you're organising with other societies.
  • Council notes.

Council notes aren't always relevant. If your club or society has brought something to the attention of Council, like Archery and Windsports with their storage containers, this would be a standing item.

Events you hosted the previous week should also be a standing item.

Committees should learn from what went well and what can be improved upon from previous events.

What to Put in Minutes

When you're assigning jobs to committee members in the minutes, do your best to make sure the member has a specific goal to work towards.

Make sure it's specific, achievable, realistic, and has a clear timeline.

Specific

Putting "Adam following up with the merch people" is too vague.

If you're looking back on this the next week, you likely won't remember what he was supposed to be following up on.

Put something along the lines of:

"Adam talking to the people in the merch shop about T-shirts and hoodies on Wednesday."

This is better because it tells you exactly what he was supposed to be talking to them about, and when he is planning on doing this.

Timeline

When you're assigning someone a job, you need to give them a deadline to have this job done by.

This ensures the task gets done before it's too late.

Normally in Computer Society, the deadline is the next committee meeting. However, we can adjust this to sooner or later depending on how time-sensitive the task is, and how much time and effort the task is going to take.

Achievable and Realistic

When you're assigning someone a job, you need to make sure they will realistically be able to achieve the job you're assigning them by the deadline.

If someone is in 4th year, you wouldn't ask them to organise and run a hardware event because of the amount of preparation, organisation, and work associated with this.

You also wouldn't want to assign this job to a first year, because they likely won't have the relevant experience.

AGMs and EGMs

For AGMs and EGMs, the formatting is slightly different.

Electing New Committee Members

If you are electing new committee members, I would recommend making tables with the following information:

  • The role.
  • Who is running.
  • Who nominated them (this can be the person running).
  • Who seconded them.
  • How many votes they received.

If the committee is changing during an EGM, you should take note of who the previous person to hold this role is.

Amending the Constitution

If you are amending the constitution, you need to make sure that the members of your club or society are able to understand what they are voting for.

I recommend having a PDF of the changes you are planning on making to your constitution, with an explanation of what each change means in plain English underneath.

Also note what change is occuring, and why the constitution is changing.

When you are writing this in the minutes, I recommend the following format:

  • Headline of the amendment
  • What it means in simple English
  • Votes

Uploading Committee Meeting Minutes to Wolves

Part of your job as Secretary is to upload PDFs of your committee meeting minutes onto Wolves.

This is used for budget points at the end of the year.

You need to have at least two PDFs uploaded by the end of the year, but having proof of consistent meetings is a good idea.

To upload minutes onto Wolves:

  1. Click into the Committee Panel.
  2. Scroll down to Documents on the left-hand side.
  3. Near the bottom, there is a section called Committee Minutes.
  4. Select this, and click the green + New Minutes button.

You should then see a screen with the current academic year, your name, and the society you are uploading minutes for, along with: - A space to enter the date the minutes were taken. - A space for the name of the minutes. - A button to upload a PDF of your minutes.

When naming the minutes, make it clear when they were taken and what they were taken for.

For example: - AGM minutes 16/09/2026 - Committee meeting minutes 09/11/2026

Events Involving Clubs and Societies Outside of UL

This applies to clubs for the most part, but can apply to societies as well.

If your club or society is hosting a competition, you are responsible for sending out schedules and invoices to all participating clubs.

Make sure to include information such as:

  • Entry fees.
  • A map of the location, with parking marked out.
  • The event schedule.

Emails

As Secretary, you are responsible for keeping up with your emails.

This means you need to read through the emails your club or society receives, and relay the information in them to the relevant people.

You are also responsible for responding when you have the relevant information.

If you don't have the information needed, you mark it as unread and make the President, or the relevant person aware of it.

For example, if there is an email about an event a subcommittee is running, and you don't have enough information on the event to respond, you should bring the email to the attention of the person running the subcommittee.

You need to write a list of topics for your PRO to talk about in the weekly email. This includes the following points: - What events are you hosting this week? - Does an event you're hosting cost money? - Are you doing a collab with another club or society this week? - Are there any competitions this week?

Some clubs and societies also require you to send out the weekly emails.

If you open an email and do not reply to it, mark it as unread as a reminder to do so.