Cohousing-L Mailing List: Decision logs

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

At RoseWind Cohousing, long-built in Port Townsend WA, for some years our 
decision "log" is mainly from the minutes of the monthly meeting. 

As secretary, I facilitate access to decisions in two ways:
a) In the monthly-meeting minutes, just after the date and who attended, is a 
section called Summary. This includes the text of any proposal we adopted, 
copied out of the more-detailed notes that follow. 
b) In the minutes, any agreement we reach is prefaced with 
* Agreed: 
This makes it easier to scan for decisions. 

Another member periodically copies from those summaries into a Google Docs 
document which lists the decisions made in a given year. 

We also track changes in our governing documents, as to what changes were made 
when. 

Some free advice from one who has kept records for much of our 26 years:
Date everything. Include the year!
Standardize your subject lines. Avoid notes with titles like "Tuesday's 
meeting" or "Finance Committee minutes". Choose something like 
RW minutes 8-8-15, Steering Notes 2-17-13. 
That way the notes show up together in your files. 

I'm also old-fashioned enough to also maintain a binder of paper copies of 
minutes. Not dependent on "cloud" or electronic functioning. And easy to pull 
out in a meeting and flip through, looking for something. 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing
Olympic Peninsula, Port Townsend WA