I was curious as to how other railroad museums handle distribution of BOD meeting minutes.

A summary of our minutes is published in the newsletter.

Wesley

Branford Electric Rwy. Ass'n. - Shore Line Trolley Museum started publishing a synopses of the minutes in its newsletter a few years ago.

Since the beginning of our Museum in 1995, our minutes have been posted on our website for anyone to review. We periodically put a short notice in our newsletter reminding our members that they have full access to our BOD meeting minutes.

Thanks!

Can't vote. "Invalid Message"

OERM Board meetings are open to members (except during executive sessions regarding certain specified discussions). Summaries of board meetings are published in the Museum Gazette (newsletter), and as far as I know, the actual minutes may be inspected by any member.

"Invalid message" here, too.

Most of the museums I belong to publish their minutes as a condensed version usually labeled "not official"

Ira Schreiber

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David

I put "published in the museum newsletter" because for one of my affiliations, they used to be, and sometimes still are, usually whenever there's some sort of controversy afoot.

I consider doing so to be a complete waste of paper.

It's not that members don't have a right to know. It's that the interest is narrow, and that's precisely what the internet is for. Informally they can drop an email to the executive director. Formally you can set up private or public archives any of a number of ways, a private web site, private blog, Wiki, forum, with authentication any of a variety of ways (e.g. Yahoo Groups hitches onto the Yahoo ID that most people already have), Google Docs, LuLu or Wikia if they want it on paper or Cafe Press if they want it on a T-shirt.

Another group I belong to has monthly meetings, with reports from various officers and committees. The treasurer's report is usually "We're solvent", and that suffices for most members, who are railfans, not accountants.

The treasurer's report is not for them. It's for a tiny minority of members. Notably management, who must manage revenue and expenses; IRS, who must collect taxes or affirm nonprofit status; and donors, who must decide whether this organization is actually the best possible investment for their charity dollar.

Those few people who look at those documents have outsize impact on the future of the organization.

"None of the above" applies to the Cotton Belt Rail Historical Society
I shall paraphraise from the bylays current as of August 10, 2006.

Duties:
"The secretary (blah blah) Shall be responsible for minutes, and shall bring to each meeting of the general membership and the board of directors a complete set of written minutes for all previous meetings and make them available for inspection in the event a request is made of anyone who is a current member"

Note, as far as I can tell, the ONLY regular scheduled meeting of the general membership AND the board of directors, would be the yearly meeting where the BOD is elected.

Robert