Our executive meetings are held right before our general meetings. We discuss general meeting agenda items in our executive meetings and hear from committee heads so that we can report on progress of programs/events and know what items we need to vote on at the general meeting. Decisions as to what programs will be done and how money will be spent are all made at the general meetings. Individual committees review choices and make recommendations, the board reviews those recommendations and then they are presented to the general membership for final decision.

We do use the minutes of previous board meetings during the next meeting to make sure we cover any items that were held over for more information or given actions that needed to be taken.

How do you document board appointments, approve fundraisers and committee workplans? Have you never needed documentation for any of these things that are done in Exec meetings or are they all redone in general meetings?

Like Critter's group, we don't review and vote on our executive board meeting minutes. We're less formal there. It's more of an idea session-we present items that need voting at general meetings.

The Recording Secretary keeps the minutes at Regular (monthly) PTO meetings. This year we will provide them formally written for attendees to review before the meeting. During the meeting the RS will read a quick excerpt, then we will vote to accept the written minutes as official. (We saw this in a thread from last June - we hope it will cut down on meeting time a bit.)

The RS also takes minutes of the Exec Bd meetings. At the next Regular PTO meeting, the RS is also required to detail any actions (votes) taken by the Exec Bd on behalf of the organization.

Minutes from board (executive) meetings are approved by board members at the next regularly scheduled board meeting.
Minutes from general meetings are approved by the general membership at the next regular general meeting.
Minutes should be taken at both kinds of meetings. If it's a special meeting (of either board or general), those minutes should be approved at the next regular meeting. Special meetings are not the place to have minutes approved.
Each type of minutes (exec and gen.) are approved by the group that created them. A committee of exec. members CAN be appointed to approve exec. minutes. A committee of gen. members CAN be appointed to approve gen. minutes. These committees are useful when lots of time passes between meetings (3 or 4 months) or when the membership of the group changes dramatically.

Our exec board minutes, while typed and filed, are less formal than our general meeting minutes. The exec minutes record ideas we're considering, alternatives we've discussed, and more detail on issues than would normally be in the general minutes. We do not formally approve them at the subsequent Exec meeting, but our secy does distribute them to all the officers as soon as she has them done so we have a good record (and reminder) of what we're discussing.