The role of the secretary in the branch is much more than just being a good administrator. The secretary has to manage the plans of the Party and to make sure that they are turned into action. This means that all the processes in the branch have to work properly.
The secretary must have an overall picture of all the different meetings of subcommittees, executive and branch and how they fit together and of the different plans and records of subcommittees. The secretary should manage how the different committees communicate to the executive and to the branch as a whole. Here are a few tips for your work:
Communication with the executive
The secretary is responsible for convening executive meetings and for making sure that everyone is well informed of the date, time, venue and the issues on the agenda. It is not necessary to send documents to BEC members before meetings but they should be aware what the key issues are that will come up for discussion at every executive meeting. It will simplify your life if your BEC agrees to have its meeting on the same night so that people can book the dates long in advance.
Monitoring role in the executive
It is very important that the secretary follows up on BEC members who are absent without apology or who miss a few meetings even with apologies. You must also follow up if BEC members do not report back on events they have attended.
The secretary is also responsible for communicating with BEC members in between branch meetings about the tasks that they took on. It is not good enough only to deal with reports at the BEC meeting when people may just report failure or simply not attend to avoid admitting that they have not done their task. The secretary should follow up on the task list from the last meeting before the next meeting happens so that he or she can assist if people are failing to do their work.
Communicating with members
The secretary must see to it that members know where and when the regular branch meetings are. The branch meeting is the most direct form of communicating with our members.
If your branch can afford it, it is very useful to have a branch newsletter that goes out once every few months. Many of our members never attend branch meetings but still wish to know what is happening in the Party, in the branch and in the community.
Another way of communicating with members is to call special general meetings once every quarter or so where you organise a more high profile activity than the official branch meeting. This is a way of re‐involving old members or members who do not like attending branch meetings.
Communicating with supporters
It is very important that we maintain contact with our supporters on a regular basis so that they can never feel or say that we just use them when we need them.
Regular communication means that we keep our supporters up to date with the most important developments in the area.
Make sure that the meetings or communications with supporters are about things that they will really be interested in and do not waste their time. It is also our role as the CPA to inform our people about their rights and about developments in the area. This is something we must do to the whole community and not just our supporters because we can win new support through this work.
Deploying members and making sure they get involved
The branch secretary should manage the human resources of the branch and make sure that members get involved in activities and sub‐committees. Develop a form and a data base for members to volunteer for areas of work that interest them. Ask all new members to fill in forms and then set up a data base on computer or in a book. Write each type of work or subcommittee on a separate page and then put the details of all the members who are interested in that type of work on that page. Give the list to the coordinator or BEC member responsible for that work.
Good agendas
It is your task as the secretary to draw up the agendas for BEC and branch meetings.
It is best to do this together with the chairperson since he or she has to chair the meeting. Here is a sample agenda for the BEC meeting. Please remember that the BEC meeting should discuss most of the administrative issues and many of the reports. Only key things should be reported back to the branch meeting.
AGENDA FOR BEC MEETING
- Welcome and introduction
- Review tasks set at last meeting (Matters arising from the minutes ‐list of the tasks)
- Reports on tasks and meetings attended by BEC members
- Discuss problems/difficulties the branch is facing
- Share information from other related committees and any correspondence
- Political and news update ‐a brief discussion on local or national issues
- Plan the way forward and new tasks (Summary of the tasks that have arisen from the meeting)
Keep all your minutes in a minute book that is brought to every meeting. The minutes must record:
- The date of the meeting
- Who attended and who sent apologies
- The main points of discussion and reports
- The decisions and action plans that were taken on each of those main points
- Who must do those tasks and by when
- The date of the next meeting
Filing
The
work of the BEC is becoming more and more complex because of all the
information available to us and all the correspondence and documents
that the branch receives. Filing is easy if you don’t let it pile up,
but do it on a regular basis. The branch secretary should have a filing
system that has at least the following files:
• Correspondence received should be filed in date order with the latest date in the front of the file
• Outgoing correspondence should
be filed in date order with the latest date in the front of the file.
In the Correspondence received file there should be a cross reference to
the outgoing correspondence file so, for example, if you received a
letter and wrote a response to that letter write on the received letter
“Received date, replied date”
• Minutes of meetings
• Reports of branch activities
• Document file for each of the subcommittees
• Useful information:
here you keep records of things like venues (with prices, contact
people for the venues, addresses) caterers (their addresses, prices and
contact people) taxi and transport services, printers and so on. You can
use file separators to make this an easy file to use.
Records
The
secretary should make sure that branch membership records are kept in
order. These should be updated regularly to take lapsed members out of
the records and to make sure that they are followed up and encouraged to
renew their membership.
It is also useful to analyse your records and categorise members in terms of sectors or interests. This you can do in a separate book where you have one page for every sector or interest and you write down the member’s name for that. So, for example, you should have a page headed Teachers and write their names on it, or Business People on another page and so on. You record useful information in the Useful Information file described above.
Databases
Databases that you should have in the area are on:
• Organisations that do useful work
• Emergency services for crisis situations
• A Phone book with: phone and contact numbers of key individuals, phone and contact numbers of regional and constituency offices, BEC members’ phone numbers and so on. You can keep this in one book with separate pages
for each category.
• Relevant government departments in your area
Report Writing, Correspondence, Filing and Other Necessary Capacities