How to Write Meeting Minutes [Examples, Templates and Best Practices]

At any organization, meetings are the setting where most decisions take place. Whether you’re attending a board meeting or an executive goal review session, great leaders know that it is crucial to have a meeting agenda to guide the conversation. However, if you’re constantly attending meetings throughout the day — whether virtually or in a conference room — it can be difficult to plan ahead of all of them.

Holding employees accountable without accurate and organized meeting documentation is difficult, and losing essential details — like action items, key discussions, and decisions —can cause delays, strained client and team relationships, and project setbacks. Meeting minutes can prevent this.

In this article, you will find meeting minutes examples templates that can be easily applied to your meeting agendas or used as examples — so you can focus on having efficient meetings that move work forward.

The benefit of using templates for meeting minutes is that these can be easily shared across your organization. If you’re a business leader, using meeting minutes templates will set an example of organization and discipline for the rest of your staff.

How to write meeting minutes with AI: 6 best practices

Whether you use an AI meeting assistant like Fellow to automatically generate meeting minutes or prefer to type meeting minutes yourself, these 6 best practices will help meeting hosts at your organization establish a culture of better documentation.

1 Communicate the meeting purpose and objectives

Even with the best intentions, meetings can go off-rail due to unclear objectives. This wastes time and means you’re further from making important decisions.

To make good use of everyone’s time, include the meeting purpose in the calendar invite and at the top of the meeting agenda. When all attendees have a firm idea of why you’re meeting, it sets the stage for more efficient discussions, better decisions, and a clearer record of what happened.

2 Plan a meeting outline using an agenda template

Now that you’ve clarified the meeting objective, use an agenda template to ensure that you start each meeting with your goals in mind. This agenda is meant to keep everyone on track, particularly during long discussions with many talking points.

Steven G. Rogelberg, the author of The Surprising Science of Meetings, highlights the importance of meeting agendas:

“What matters is not the agenda itself but the relevance and importance of what’s on it, and how the leader facilitates discussion of the agenda items.” 

For more insights like this, listen to this interview with Steven Rogelberg, where he discusses how leaders can use well-structured agendas and positive energy to boost attendee engagement.

Using one of Fellow’s meeting agenda templates lets you structure a meeting instantly. You can also create highly customized agendas by editing the headings and discussion topics, embedding images, and adding color and highlights.

3 Record the date, time, and names of participants

Recording the meeting’s date, time, and attendees should be part of your meeting note-taking process. These seemingly minor details help meeting minutes accomplish their primary goal: encouraging accountability since absentees are well-informed. Jotting these details down also makes organizing your meeting notes easier, as you can quickly search your documentation by name or date to find items. 

If you use a meeting management software like Fellow, these details will be automatically recorded and added to the AI meeting summary. This relieves your notetaker so they can concentrate on the session.

4 Track key points and action items

No meeting should end without clear action items. When taking meeting minutes, write down the outcomes and decisions that come out of each agenda item, using your meeting agenda as a general outline. At Fellow, we recommend taking notes in bullet point format under each Talking Point in the product.

Reviewing open action items at the beginning of every meeting is another great way to increase accountability and remove roadblocks, but keeping tabs on them all can be frustrating. Include a section reminding attendees to review action items from past meetings as part of your meeting minutes.

With Fellow, action items automatically carry forward from the previous meeting’s minutes to your next meeting’s agenda. This ensures that meeting participants keep track of their to-do lists.

5 Leverage AI tools to create a summary and transcript

Meeting transcription tools are the best way to take meeting minutes that are reliable, unbiased, and easily shareable. They’re cost-efficient, speedy, and save hours of admin time. This technology quickly assesses your transcripts and generates minutes with details like:

• Date, time, and attendees
• Discussion topics
• Decisions
• Action items
• Agenda items covered

Some companies do this for free using ChatGPT, but this platform wasn’t designed for meetings, increasing the risk of error and security issues. 

Fellow’s meeting minutes app automatically records, transcribes, summarizes, and centralizes meetings, syncing meeting notes to your calendar for easy access. Managers can edit these notes to ensure they’re accurate and focus on the right items.

6 Share the meeting minutes promptly

If you’re manually taking meeting summaries, share them soon after the call via email to offer guidance on the next steps, loop in those who couldn’t attend, and make sure information is fresh in your mind as you craft your summary.

You can also automate this process with technology and ask a tool like Fellow to automatically share meeting recaps with all attendees after the call. Having a recap on hand from a previous meeting helps attendees plan for the next meeting.

Sharing the meeting minutes immediately after the meeting will not only help you look very professional and organized. It will also create a culture of accountability where meetings are settings where employees come together to make decisions and leave inspired to get work done.

4 Top Meeting Minutes Examples and Templates for Effective Discussions

Here are our top four meeting minutes examples and templates that, when used with Fellow, are automatically populated with information like the date, attendees, and talking points.

1 Formal Board Meeting Minutes Template

Board meeting minutes serve the important purpose of guiding high-level decision-making and setting the tone for the next board meeting. The Board Meeting Minutes Template helps you quickly create an official record of your board of directors’ discussions. It’s similar to the formal meeting template above, helping you track and approve decisions, but it doesn’t use formal language.

Board meetings typically involve critical decisions and policy updates, so notetakers must pay keen attention to detail so their minutes are correct. This template offers a clear structure so your minute-taker can track essential information in bullet lists under each header.

2 Staff Meeting Minutes Template

This Staff Meeting Template includes sections for a brief check-in, the meeting purpose, discussion points, and key decisions made during the meeting. It can be used as a base for taking meeting minutes for any meeting.

This template isn’t for a highly formal type of meeting, so it’s perfect for any organization looking to organize key points and next steps. It’s also an excellent foundation for companies that want to get creative and build a custom meeting minutes template.

3 Board Meeting Minutes Template

The Board Meeting Minutes Template helps you quickly create an official record of your board of directors’ discussions. It’s similar to the formal meeting template above, helping you track and approve decisions, but it doesn’t use formal language.

This meeting notes example lets your notetaker track old business, new business, and action items, including an estimated timeframe and who’s accountable for what.

4 David Sacks’ SaaS Board Meeting Template

Entrepreneur and investor David Sacks designed the SaaS Board Meeting Template for rapid efficiency. This agenda template encourages board members to stay focused on key topics and tasks assigned —and the result is meeting minutes that cover the progress of your whole business, including sales, hiring, and admin.

Improve the quality of your company’s meeting minutes and takeaways with Fellow

Crafting and sharing concise meeting minutes post-session ensures your team is in the know about their responsibilities. But the last thing everyone needs is another to-do on their list. Automate this administrative task with Fellow. 

Fellow offers an AI meeting recap interface that works like a table of contents. It includes time stamps, edit functions, and topic suggestions for upcoming sessions. Fellow also allows chosen portions of the recording, summary, and transcript to be permanently redacted for an added layer of security and privacy. Plus, your team can use the Ask Fellow feature to find out what they missed in calls and whether they have any outstanding action items.

Onboard Fellow as your dedicated notetaker and enjoy more focused, productive discussions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who should be appointed to take meeting minutes?

Many roles can craft meeting minutes, like administrative assistants, project managers, and team leads. For small teams, you might make notetaking a rotating responsibility so everyone gets a chance to practice this skill (and, alternatively, to focus on the conversation). 

But you can also offload this role to the Fellow AI Meeting Copilot and let everyone attending contribute to the session. The Copilot automatically shares a complete transcription plus quick meeting minutes, encouraging employee accountability and productivity. This also means the whole team is well-informed—even if they miss a meeting.

Why are meeting minutes important?

Whether a board meeting or a sprint planning meeting, meeting minutes are a written record of meeting details, such as discussion topics, decisions, and next steps. They include key details, like the time and attendees, so employees can quickly gain context on each session.

Some sectors, like government organizations, require meeting minutes to keep official historical records. These notes also provide legal protection because they often capture due diligence, confirming an organization’s ethical, fair practices.

However, every good meeting offers a concise summary to create documentation, keep employees informed, and clarify responsibilities. This summary also helps you better prepare for the next meeting.

Meeting minutes can also make your meetings more productive. According to a McKinsey study, 61% of executives say that at least half of their decision-making time is ineffective, mainly due to inefficient, poorly planned meetings. Thoughtfully creating meeting minutes is one way to better plan these meetings so they’re more effective.

One final (and fun) note: Yes, meeting minutes save you time, but this isn’t why they use the word “minutes.” The term comes from the Latin word “minutia,” meaning details, directly referring to the little notes you make after a meeting.