For various reasons (ahem), a number of folks have recently been interested in reviewing the minutes of previous Board meetings, but unfortunately the recent replacement of the Society’s “member portal” means that those archives are currently unavailable.
As it turns out, I have been collecting Board minutes for some time and figured I’d share my collection for those who are interested.
Document Types
In each of these archives you’ll find several types of files:
- Quarterly Minutes: The official record of the Board’s four meetings every year, held in January, April, July, and October. These have traditionally been held in person, but shifted to online video conferences following the Covid outbreak. The quarterly minutes are generally not published until they have been reviewed and approved at the subsequent Board meeting.
- President’s Report: The President’s Report is also published after each Board meeting, and generally contains most of the same material as the minutes, but it is published within a week or two of the meeting because it is “unofficial” and doesn’t need to wait to the next meeting for approval.
- Meeting Agendas: The Board prepares agendas before each meeting outlining the topics it intends to discuss — actually, it prepares two versions, one for their own use and a public version for other attendees, which excludes things like the contents of the executive session. In recent years, the public version of this agenda have been posted online.
- Conference Minutes: The Board typically holds several telephone conference calls every year.
- Subsidiary Minutes: The Board also holds parallel meetings for affiliated organizations such as wars or state-level corporations.
Sources
These files were aggregated from several sources:
- The President’s Reports from 2018 on are available from sca.org.
- The current Members Portal includes Board minutes from 2022 forward, although access to older records are promised for the future.
- For most of the last decade, the SCA published its Board minutes using the same web platform as the kingdom newsletters. In late 2020 I downloaded copies of all of the files they had published this way. This service was discontinued in 2023.
- From 2002 through 2010 the SCA published Board minutes on its main website, until the practice was suspended for “technical review” and the files were permanently removed. However, third parties had preserved snapshots of the website during this period which I was able to to download.
- Several years ago, someone who knew of my interest in the Society’s history sent me a copy of their personal archive of the minutes from the 1970s and 1980s.
The Board minutes are published for general review as part of the public record and are not considered secret or confidential.
Missing Material
These above files are incomplete, and if you’re able to fill any gaps I’d gratefully accept any contributions you can make!
In particular, I know that I’m missing the minutes from the following quarterly meetings:
- April, July, and October 2021
- April 2013
- July 2010 – July 2012
- All of 1990 – July 2002
Additionally, while the above zip files do contain the “President’s Reports” from 2018 forward, I know that similar reports were also issued before then, most of which are not represented in the above collections.
[Update April 30:] My thanks to Þorfinnr Hróðgeirsson for providing copies of the minutes from two quarterly Board meetings that were missing from my archives around the fall/winter of 2020–2021, as well as from eight conference calls from the same period. These have been added to the zip file available above.
[Update April 30:] My thanks to Oliver Dogberry for sharing a dozen copies of public meeting agendas from the Covid era.
Detail of print by J. C. Woudanus, dated 1610.
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