Student society meeting minutes are the secretary's job in most clubs and societies, and they matter more than they look. A committee meeting needs a short record of who came, what was decided and who does what next. A general meeting, above all the annual general meeting (AGM) where the next committee is elected, needs a fuller one, because the students' union may ask to see it, and some unions will not accept an election without it.
EdCitation publishes this guide. Every union and university rule in it was read on 26 September 2026 on that body's own pages; your own union's guidance and your society's constitution come first, and its student groups team is the place to ask. EdCitation never writes anyone's minutes. Two of its free tools help around them: Check your paper reads a constitution or a union handbook into a list you can tick off, and Cite a source builds the reference when a minute names a by-law or a policy. We ran both and quote what came back.
Note-taking in general is in how to take meeting minutes; general meetings of any organisation will be in our coming guide, agm-and-general-meeting-minutes.
What does a society secretary do?
A society secretary keeps the society's records: agendas, minutes, notices of meetings and, often, the paperwork for elections. Not every union requires the role. The University of Manchester Students' Union (n.d.) makes a President or Chair, a Treasurer and an Inclusion Officer compulsory, and strongly recommends a secretary for gatherings, minutes, admin and record keeping. City St George's Students' Union (n.d.) requires at least a President or Chair, a Treasurer and a Welfare Officer. In Australia, the University of Melbourne Student Union (2026) goes further: every affiliated club's constitution must provide for a Secretary, or a combined Secretary and Treasurer.
The secretary's year, in order
- Collect agenda items from the committee and send out the agenda before each meeting; Sheffield Students' Union (n.d.) gives this job to the secretary in most groups.
- Take the minutes, or arrange a stand-in: Sheffield asks that someone else on the committee can do it when the secretary is away.
- Send the minutes out soon after, and bring them to the next meeting for approval.
- Give notice of the AGM and any extraordinary general meeting (EGM) as the constitution requires.
- Record the AGM: attendance, quorum, reports, motions, votes and election results, and send the union what it asks for.
- Hand the records to the next secretary.
The University of Miami's handbook adds that a good secretary can judge what needs recording and what does not (University of Miami, 2023).
Committee meetings or general meetings: what is the difference?
A committee meeting is the elected officers; a general meeting is every member, and its minutes carry more.
Committee meetings
The committee runs the society week to week, so its minutes can be brief: decisions, money agreed and actions. The University of Melbourne Student Union's standard constitution sets a committee meeting's quorum at three members, one of them from the executive, and lets any executive member call a committee meeting (University of Melbourne Student Union, 2026).
General meetings: the AGM and EGMs
A general meeting holds the committee to account. Under the same standard constitution, a general meeting can overturn any committee decision, and 15 members, or a third of the membership if that is fewer, can force one. The AGM hears the year's reports, adopts the accounts, deals with changes to the constitution and elects the new committee. Cardiff University Students' Union (n.d.) notes that an EGM needs neither the annual report nor the financial report. Some unions call an EGM a special general meeting (SGM).
What do students' unions require from a society's records?
Most unions ask for the AGM's record rather than every committee meeting's. What they want, and how fast, differs widely:
| Union or university | What it requires the society to record or submit | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Sheffield Students' Union (UK) | Accurate minutes of meetings, including AGMs and EGMs, as evidence of meeting democratic and constitutional obligations; the page sets no deadline for sending them | Sheffield Students' Union (n.d.) |
| Cardiff University Students' Union (UK) | An AGM with at least half the membership present, votes on the annual and financial reports, a vote to approve the constitution, and the updated constitution sent to the union | Cardiff University Students' Union (n.d.) |
| University of Manchester Students' Union (UK) | At least two weeks' notice of an AGM; a record of the election, including the minutes and proof of the AGM, passed to the new committee; for an online election, the voting form and results spreadsheet kept | University of Manchester Students' Union (n.d.) |
| City St George's Students' Union (UK) | Minutes, an attendance record and the results with the number of votes; new committee details by 31 May 2026 | City St George's Students' Union (n.d.) |
| Students' Union UCL (UK) | Membership data used only to run the group, never shared without express written consent, and deleted when someone leaves | Students' Union UCL (n.d.) |
| University of Melbourne Student Union (Australia) | Within two weeks of a general meeting: agenda, minutes, attendance list showing quorum, constitution and reports; after an AGM also accounts, bank statements and the new executive's contact details | University of Melbourne Student Union (2026) |
| University of Miami (US) | Minutes listing meeting type, time, attendance, reports, motions with seconder, a summary of discussion and the vote, actions and adjournment | University of Miami (2023) |
| Tulane University (US) | At officer transition, agendas and minutes compiled for the incoming officer, with the constitution, roster and budget | Tulane University (n.d.) |
The stakes are real: Manchester says a committee that cannot produce its AGM minutes and proof of the AGM after a complaint may be dissolved and the election re-run. Check dates with your union, too: the Manchester page we read still gave 13 April 2025 as the handover deadline, beside 2026 election dates.
How do you record motions, votes and elections?
Write each motion in its exact words, who proposed it, whether it passed, and the count if votes were counted; City St George's Students' Union (n.d.) asks for vote numbers in AGM minutes. Miami's list adds the seconder.
Voting rules come from the constitution
Know your constitution's voting rules before the meeting. In the Melbourne standard constitution a simple majority carries a motion, a tie is lost, and proxies are not allowed; a constitutional change also needs five academic days' written notice and the union officer's prior approval (University of Melbourne Student Union, 2026). If your society uses Robert's Rules, the form of a motion in the minutes is set out in our Robert's Rules guide.
Quorum: count it before any business
Quorum is the number of members who must be present for decisions to count, and it varies widely. Cardiff says at least 50% of the membership. City St George's accepts either 10 members or half the membership plus one. Melbourne's standard constitution sets 20 student members for an AGM or SGM. Your constitution wins, so write the figure it sets and the number present near the top of the minutes. At Melbourne the returning officer must check quorum against the membership register, or declare the election invalid.
Elections
Record each position, the candidates, the result and, where counted, the votes. Manchester and City St George's both require "reopen nominations" (RON) as an option for every position, and Manchester wants in-person votes by secret ballot, counted by an election administrator who is not standing, possibly the secretary. Melbourne requires a returning officer who is not a candidate and who keeps the election records for a month after the AGM.
How short can society minutes be?
Short. Sheffield Students' Union (n.d.) says minutes need not be word for word: capture the main points, stay neutral and leave out the "he said, she said, they said". Miami's list asks for a summary of discussion; Robert's Rules asks for what was done rather than what was said. Where your union has guidance, follow it. In our view, a committee item needs no more than a sentence of discussion, and an AGM needs the reports, motions, votes and results in full.
Sheffield also asks for speed: minutes sent within a few hours if possible to anyone absent and anyone with a job to do. Approval then comes at the next meeting, as our guide to approving minutes explains, and actions that get done are covered in writing action items.
Our committee meeting minutes template for a society
This template is ours, written for a student society's committee meeting. Change it to match your constitution. It is shorter than our general meeting minutes template, and leaves out members' contact details on purpose.
[SOCIETY NAME], affiliated to [students' union]
Committee meeting, [date], [start time], [room or video link]
Present: [names and roles] Apologies: [names]
Quorum: [number set by constitution, clause x]; [number] present, quorate
Chair: [role] Minutes: [role]
1. Minutes of [date]: approved / approved with corrections: [what changed]
2. Actions from last time: [each action: done / carried forward]
3. [Item]: [one-line summary]
Motion: that [exact wording]. Proposed [name]. [Carried / Lost], [x for, y against, z abstaining]
Action: [who] to [do what] by [date]
4. Treasurer's update: [balance, spending agreed]
5. Any other business: [items]
6. Next meeting: [date, time, place]
Approved at the meeting of [date]
A worked example (invented)
The society, the meeting and the figures below are made up for this guide, and people are named only by role.
Harbourside Astronomy Society (an invented society), committee meeting, 14 October 2026, 6 pm, Room 2.04
Present: President, Secretary, Treasurer, Events Officer. Apologies: Welfare Officer. Quorum three; four present, quorate.
- Minutes of 30 September approved.
- Stargazing trip. Motion: that the society spends up to £180 on a minibus for the 8 November trip. Proposed by the Events Officer. Carried, 4 for, 0 against. Action: Events Officer to book the minibus through the union by 21 October.
- AGM date. Agreed to hold the AGM on 3 March 2027, subject to room booking. Action: Secretary to check the constitution's notice period and draft the notice.
- Next meeting: 28 October, 6 pm.
What happens to the minutes after the meeting?
They go to members, then to the next committee. Send committee minutes to the committee and, if your constitution says so, to members; send the AGM minutes to the union in the form and by the date it sets. Tulane University (n.d.) asks outgoing officers to gather agendas and minutes for their successor, with the constitution, membership roster and budget, which is a good checklist wherever you study.
Members' details and data protection
Keep members' personal details out of the minutes and handle membership lists by your union's rules. Students' Union UCL (n.d.) is the fullest we read. It limits membership data to contacting members about the group's activities, bans sharing it without express written consent, requires deleting a leaver's data at once, lets only Presidents and Treasurers see the lists, asks for BCC on group emails, and wants any subject access request passed to the union within 24 hours. The Melbourne regulations offer memberships only through the union's website, so clubs can meet privacy and data security requirements. In our view, names and roles are enough in minutes; email addresses, phone numbers and student numbers belong in the union's systems.
Where does EdCitation help a society secretary?
EdCitation's part is the documents around the minutes: it takes nothing down and drafts nothing. Where it helps, it works from what the page or the publisher's record says, never composing an entry from memory as a chatbot does.
Check your paper, on a model constitution
We pasted the University of Melbourne Student Union's standard constitution (Appendix 1 of its regulations, about 1,430 words) into Check your paper. It found no rules and listed 27 sentences under "What it asks you to do, which no rule can test", among them the two-week deadline for AGM documents, the grievance time limit of 21 academic days, and the quorum with both of its parts: "A quorum will be: at a SGM or AGM, a minimum of 20 University of Melbourne Student members of the club; at a committee meeting, three committee members, at least one of whom must be a member of the executive." The AGM's duty to ratify the constitution and hold elections, and the voting clause (simple majority, ties lost, no proxies), appeared in neither list. Having found no rules, the page said a paper would be checked against the APA 7 student paper, which does not fit a constitution. A second run, with clauses 8 to 13 alone, returned 12 sentences and no rules.
So the list is a start for your AGM to-do list, not a complete one: read the constitution yourself too. The tool is built for assignment instructions with word limits and required sections, as our guide to reading a brief shows.
Cite a source, on a union's guidance page
Given the address of Students' Union UCL's data protection page, Cite a source returned the title as the author: "Data protection for clubs and societies. (n.d.). Students Union UCL. Retrieved September 27, 2026, from" the address. It found no author, read the site name without its apostrophe, and set the title in sentence case, as APA 7 asks. The tool shows what it read so you can correct it; APA 7 wants Students' Union UCL as the author, as our web page guide sets out.
For an academic society's reading group, Find sources searches about 300 million published works, and Verify references marks a list verified, doubtful or not found, and never shows a reference it could not check as not found. All of this is free with no account; Pro ($8 a month) and Max ($24) are on the pricing page.
Quick questions
Who takes minutes in a student society?
Usually the secretary. Unions such as Sheffield's suggest another committee member learns to do it too, for meetings the secretary misses.
Does a society AGM need to be quorate?
Yes, where your constitution sets a quorum, and the minutes should record the count. The figure varies: Cardiff says half the membership, City St George's 10 members or half plus one, Melbourne 20 students.
Do we have to send AGM minutes to the students' union?
Many unions ask for them, sometimes by a set date: Melbourne within two weeks, City St George's with the results by 31 May 2026. Others, such as Manchester, ask you to keep them and produce them if there is a complaint.
Should society minutes include members' email addresses?
No, in our view. Names and roles are enough, and union rules such as UCL's limit who may see membership data at all.
Can EdCitation write our society's minutes?
No. EdCitation never writes minutes; Check your paper, free, turns the constitution into a list to check your AGM against.
References
- Cardiff University Students' Union. (n.d.). AGMs. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.cardiffstudents.com/activities/resources/democratic-procedure/agms/
- City St George's Students' Union. (n.d.). Committee elections, AGMs, EGM. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://csgsu.co.uk/committee-hub/committee-elections-agms-egm
- Sheffield Students' Union. (n.d.). How to write agendas and take minutes. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://su.sheffield.ac.uk/activities/society-support/agendas-and-minutes
- Students' Union UCL. (n.d.). Data protection for clubs and societies. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://studentsunionucl.org/how-to/clubs-and-societies/data-protection-for-clubs-and-societies
- Tulane University. (n.d.). Recognized student organization officer transition. The Lavin-Bernick Center. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://lbc.tulane.edu/handbook/rso-officer-transition
- University of Manchester Students' Union. (n.d.). Societies elections guide. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://manchesterstudentsunion.com/how-to-run-a-group/group-democracy/elections
- University of Melbourne Student Union. (2026). UMSU clubs and societies regulations (Amended 12 February 2026). https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/pageassets/buddy-up/clubs/training-resources/UMSU-CS-Regulations-amended-12-February-2026.pdf
- University of Miami. (2023). Student organization handbook 2023-2024. Student Activities and Student Organizations. https://saso.studentaffairs.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/student-organization-handbook/student-organization-handbook.pdf