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Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 8:18 pm
by WOUC
Has there been any thought to, under Record Keeping, Storing and tracking Minutes & Motions that are made during Council or Congregational Meetings? I know I could simply create an MS Access Database to store them in. But that's what PowerChurch is, a Database, so it makes sense to use PowerChurch for these functions too. Has anyone found a way to maybe use one of the existing Record Keeping items to somehow do this?

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:57 pm
by NeilZ
WOUC wrote:Has there been any thought to, under Record Keeping, Storing and tracking Minutes & Motions that are made during Council or Congregational Meetings? I know I could simply create an MS Access Database to store them in. But that's what PowerChurch is, a Database, so it makes sense to use PowerChurch for these functions too. Has anyone found a way to maybe use one of the existing Record Keeping items to somehow do this?
Powerchurch is based on a database, but it is primarily a program to track membership, contributions and church accounts. The other record keeping functions are very rudimentary, to say the least. I'm not sure that any of them could be adapted for such a purpose.

That said, as a Clerk of Session I would never think of keeping such data in a database, since they are properly recorded in the official minutes of the meeting.

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 11:00 pm
by WOUC
I just re-read my original post, and I see that I forgot to mention the most important part of why I am looking for it to be in a database... :wall: It is to look up what was decided (Motions voted on) in the past when no one can remember, or when a whole new Council is in place, other than having someone re-read through all the old Minutes searching for the answers. Sorry about that! :oops:
How do other churches deal with this?

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 11:47 pm
by NeilZ
WOUC wrote:I just re-read my original post, and I see that I forgot to mention the most important part of why I am looking for it to be in a database... :wall: It is to look up what was decided (Motions voted on) in the past when no one can remember, or when a whole new Council is in place, other than having someone re-read through all the old Minutes searching for the answers. Sorry about that! :oops:
How do other churches deal with this?
Most Presbyterian churches go back into the Session minutes. ;) That said, we incorporate them into our Bylaws or Committee guidelines with references.

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 12:14 am
by WOUC
So... all done by paper filing then? Wow, our church staff doesn't even do that.
I'm from a United Church in Canada. I'm sure there must be 'By-Laws' or at least directions about this from the United Church of Canada head office, but I'm not privy to them. I'll have to start digging.

Thanks for your input.

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:12 am
by beas
I use Word (you could use something else) to keep the minutes from meetings and then store them in electronic folders by year. When I need to find something, I just do a search using something meaningful like "membership" or whatever. You can search in a file, in a folder or in all the folders by a word or phrase in the file name or in the document itself or both. I often do this and can go back at least 16 years. And the searches don't take long. It's a lot easier than looking through printed documents.

Of course, I always maintain backups both on-site and off-site.

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:04 pm
by WOUC
Thank you 'beas'! And, actually, at our last council meeting something like that was proposed using Word too. I understand what you say about the search ability inside of Word docs, and yes it sounds like A solution, but I wonder if it is THE best solution, being that it is such an important part of the life of the church. I've started looking at some commercial and free/share-ware software solutions, and there are some out there, I just thought PCp would be the natural place to keep this data too. Thanks again!

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 7:12 am
by ohbc
I know this is an old post, but this has always been a need of mine.
I keep minutes to church business meetings in Word on the computer... but....
I would love to be able to have this info within my powerchurch. Also be able to scan and attach a document such as legal documents or proposals or such relating to a particular business meeting.
Using church software, I would love to have all at one locatiin access.

Re: Tracking Church Council Minutes & Motions

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 8:09 am
by NeilZ
ohbc wrote:I know this is an old post, but this has always been a need of mine.
I keep minutes to church business meetings in Word on the computer... but....
I would love to be able to have this info within my powerchurch. Also be able to scan and attach a document such as legal documents or proposals or such relating to a particular business meeting.
Using church software, I would love to have all at one locatiin access.
I seriously doubt that you'll see this anytime soon. However, if you have the latest version of MS Office, it does include 'One Note' which basically does everything you're looking for.

As far as Scanning and Attaching a document, that is already available in Word, all you need is a scanner.