Church Admin Corner: Archiving Minutes

Finishing our series on paper records and archiving of records, we want to reinforce the importance of sending meeting minutes to be archived. Meeting minutes for Vestry and various parish committees often contain key decisions that some parishes may need to refer back to decades later. Over the last month, the Synod Office had a project that required combing through 22 years of meeting minutes to create a record of discussion that led to a specific answer. This work could not have been done without being able to access the meeting minutes over that time span.  

In looking through the list of holdings at the archives, we found that there are some parishes that have never sent their meeting minutes to be archived and some that have not archived anything for 20+ years. Many parishes no longer print and keep meeting minutes. But all parishes should make a plan to print such minutes annually or send digital versions to the Synod Office for printing and archiving.

If you are unsure of when you last submitted meeting minutes for archival purposes, please contact RJ in the Synod Office at churched@edmonton.anglican.ca. He can confirm which of your parish records are currently archived and assist with a plan to get up to date on your archiving. And, as always, to see how to properly prepare items for archiving, please see the summary sheet HERE.