Many leisure-time music groups are required to hold a general meeting (AGM, SGM, or EGM) under the terms of their governing document. This resource looks at what these meetings are for and how they are run, including holding them online.
The minimum requirement for many groups is usually an Annual General Meeting (AGM), a yearly meeting at which members together will:
- hear reports from trustees about activities and future plans
- consider and accept an annual financial report
- elect trustees and officer roles
There will also be provisions within the governing document for a Special General Meeting (SGM) or Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) to be called.
Why have a general meeting?
AGMs are an important part of membership organisations. They allow trustees to report on activities and important issues, and give members a chance to have a say in how their organisation is run. Members can ask questions, scrutinise plans, input into the future direction of your group and vote on key matters. It is also the time of year when the trustees for your group are voted into office, and a chance to publicly thank the trustees who are standing down.
Additionally, a general meeting – whether annual, special or extraordinary – must be called in order to approve any changes that you wish to make to the governing document.
The word 'general' in the titles of these meetings means that anybody who is a member of the organisation is entitled to attend and vote in most cases.
A Special General Meeting (SGM) and Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) are basically the same thing, just two different ways of naming it. S/EGMs must have a specific purpose as they are only called when an important discussion needs to happen and the next AGM is too far away. The most common reasons to call an S/EGM are to consider changes to the constitution or to consult with members on significant organisational change between AGMs.
Calling a general meeting
Your governing document will have specific information about:
- When you have to hold your AGM by (usually within a certain number of months after the end of your financial year or previous AGM)
- How much notice you need to give members of a general meeting, and how you should inform them
- How members can request that you call an SGM or EGM
- How many people need to be in attendance at your general meeting for it to be quorate – this means the minimum number of people that need to attend for the meeting to be valid and for decisions to be taken
- What to do if your meeting is not quorate
AGMs have special requirements in terms of the period of time for which notice of the meeting has to be given and often also, the nature of information that must be provided in advance – financial reports for instance. If you are inviting members to stand for election as a trustee at a general meeting there may also be notice periods or deadlines for receiving nominations, and for opening and closing the voting, that are different to the notice periods for the general meeting. You need to be aware of all these different notice periods and deadlines, and coordinate them.
An S/EGM has exactly the same powers as an AGM and must meet all the same requirements such as a minimum period for notice of the meeting. The main difference is that your members can request that you hold an S/EGM if there is something specific they want to discuss – your governing document will have information about how they can do this, but once you have received a request you are obliged to call the meeting and follow the correct procedures to do so.
Planning your general meeting
There are things you will need to think about in advance to help your general meeting run smoothly:
- Where and when will you hold it? As well as choosing a date, you need to choose whether to hold it in a physical space, or online. It is important to make general meetings as accessible as possible for all members.
- Will you attach it to another activity, such as a social or rehearsal, in order to ensure or improve attendance? If you do this, how will the meeting affect the timing of the other activity?
- How long should you allow for the meeting? It’s important that members can have their say and ask questions - so don’t rely on getting it done and dusted in a short amount of time. If the items to be discussed are contentious or involve difficult decisions, allow plenty of time for discussion.
- Who will do what during the meeting?
o As far as possible all trustees should attend a general meeting.
o You need to have a chair of the meeting: this would normally be the organisation’s Chairperson - but it doesn’t have to be.
o You need someone to take minutes of the meeting – usually the secretary.
o You might like to have a separate person taking the attendance register.
o You might want to invite other key (non-trustee) personnel such as your Musical Director (MD) and give them the chance to report on their activity.
o Consider if non-members are welcome to attend. It’s fine if you do want them to – but remember only members can vote, so you will need to have a system in place to manage this.
You should also plan your agenda in advance. A typical agenda for an AGM might consist of:
- Apologies for absence
- Declarations of conflicts of interest: for example if a trustee is also a trustee of another music group or works for an organisation whose services you use. It is important to declare and manage conflicts of interest so that you can ensure that decisions are taken without prejudice. See our resource on conflicts of interest for more information.
- Approval of minutes of the previous meeting: to agree that the minutes are a true representation of what happened at the previous meeting, and to follow up on any outstanding action points.
- Reports from key personnel such as the chair or MD: detailing the group’s achievements and challenges in the previous year, and sharing any plans for the future.
- Presentation of the accounts for the previous financial year (normally by the treasurer or key finance person): a chance for members to see how their subs have been spent, and to understand how they contribute to the financial health of your group. These normally have to be approved by members at the meeting.
- Appointment of auditors: if your governing document requires you to have your accounts audited members can approve your choice of auditor to ensure there is no bias.
- Discussion and acceptance (or otherwise) of any resolutions e.g. changes to the governing document: this allows members to offer their opinions on significant changes and helps ensure their support and understanding in the implementation of any changes. For some changes, consulting the members is required under the clauses of your governing document. Also be aware that some changes require permission from the regulator before you ask members.
- Election of trustees and officer roles: in accordance with the terms of your governing document, some trustees may need to step down if their time in office is ended, others may have resigned. Members vote on who will fill these vital roles.
- Any other business: a chance for your members to raise any issues not on the agenda or ask any questions which have not been answered earlier in the meeting.
Note that this is not a prescriptive list: some of these items may not apply to your group, and you may wish to add other agenda items that are not included above.
It is also useful to prepare and circulate the reports and accounts in advance, so that people have a chance to look through them, think about them and prepare any questions.
Holding a general meeting online
The COVID-19 lockdowns meant many groups had to hold a general meeting online. The charity regulators put special rules in place to facilitate where a charity’s governing document did not allow this. These rules have now been removed, but many groups have found that online meetings worked well for them.
If you want to hold a general meeting online, you should refer to your governing document to see if they are allowed. If they are not, you could make changes to you document to allow them. You could also consider holding a general meeting by telephone, and/or allowing postal or email voting in advance
Read our blog to find out more and if you have any questions you can contact us.
Approval processes
For some agenda items, your governing document will require that approval is explicitly gained from the membership – and for other agenda items, it is sometimes good practice to do this even when it is not required.
Approval is usually gained by a vote from those present, and is required for acceptance of the accounts, acceptance of significant changes to the group (such as changes to the governing document, fees structure or membership criteria) and for the election of trustees and officer roles.
The usual procedure for approval is:
- the chair asks someone to propose that the motion, nomination or report (or whatever else is under discussion) is accepted: a member indicates that they are proposing by raising their hand and their proposal is noted in the minutes.
- the chair asks someone to second the proposal in the same way.
- the chair invites the membership to vote to approve the proposal via a show of hands: usually a majority approval is required (check your governing document to be certain!).
- the motion is carried and this is noted in the minutes.
If you are holding your AGM online, your platform may have a voting function (such as the ‘polls’ option on Zoom) that you can use rather than scrolling through all the screens to count the number of raised hands.
First you need to set up the polls in your account on the Zoom website.
1. Make sure you have allowed polling in your meetings.
- Go to settings
- Under ‘In meeting (basic)’ ensure that polling is turned on
2. Next set up a poll for a specific meeting.
- Go to meetings
- Click on the meeting you want to add the poll to
- At the bottom of the screen, click ‘poll’ then click ‘add’
- Enter a title for the poll (e.g. ‘approval of minutes’)
- Type the question for the poll (e.g. we accept these minutes as a true record of the previous meeting)
- Decide whether you want people to be able to choose one answer only (single choice) or more than one answer (multiple choice)
- Add your possible responses to the poll (e.g. ‘accept’ and ‘don’t accept’)
- Save
3. You can add another question to the same poll (‘edit’ and then ‘add a question’) or you can add another poll for each separate question (click the ‘add’ button above the list of polls already created).
4. To launch the polls during the meeting, you need to be the host of the event.
- Click the poll button in the menu bar, this opens the poll management window
- Your first question is displayed on screen, to start the poll click ‘launch polling’
- You can see how many people have voted as the votes come in
- When you are ready to end the voting, click ‘end polling’
- If you wish, you can share the results on screen
- To launch another poll, click the drop down arrow in the black bar to select the one you want
5. Afterwards, you can download a report of how all the participants voted. This is available for one month after the date of the meeting.
- Sign in to your account on the Zoom website
- Go to account management, then select 'reports' from the list of options which drops down
- In the Usage Reports tab, click on 'meeting'
- Select 'Poll Report' in the report type
- Now find your meeting in the list (you can filter by date if you need to)
- Click 'generate' to create your report
- When the page reloads, click 'download' to open and/or save it
Read more about Polls on Zoom and find out more about downloading a poll report
Further information
You can find further information about holding a general meeting, as well as other types of meeting, on the Charity Commission’s website.
We hope you find this Making Music resource useful. If you have any comments or suggestions about the guidance please contact us. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the content of this guidance is accurate and up to date, Making Music do not warrant, nor accept any liability or responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of the content, or for any loss which may arise from reliance on the information contained in it.
