01B Purpose

Lodge Secretary’s How To Guide

and

HOW IT COMPLEMENTS

the

Secretary’s Administrative Guide of the Grand Lodge of Florida

Purpose:

Information contained in the Digest of Masonic Law and the Lodge Secretary Administrative Guide focus primarily on ‘WHAT’ the Secretary is required to do and to a limited extent, explain and outline the required routine business procedures of the Lodge.

The PURPOSE of the SECRETARY’S HOW TO GUIDE is to provide examples and instructions on how to perform certain Secretarial duties, which are often repetitive, such as:

Identify specific software to facilitate the record keeping of membership information

Provide instructions in the use of Standard, off the shelf software, for correspondence and other record keeping for particular Lodges, using Word and Excel

Provide instructions and examples of how to setup and maintain accurate financial records for the Lodge using Quickbooks

Provide instructions and examples on how to use ‘mail merge’ for letter and form templates

Provide an electronic file reference along with printed versions of templates to facilitate quick and easy access stored on electronic format

Provide instructions and samples for any Lodge interested in adopting a proven and easy method of implementing the Secretary’s day-to-day, routine activities

Provide templates that will facilitate and ease the committees and Lodge Officers in the discharge of their duties

Provide checklists to assist the Secretary in the discharge of specific duties

Provide a detailed description of the duties and responsibilities between the Secretary and Treasurer

Provide a Lodge specific calendar at the Lodge level to ensure all ‘Must Do’ activities are not overlooked

IMPORTANT-----------------------------

When a template file from the Secretary’s How to Guide is opened, immediately SAVE AS with new file name in the appropriate Lodge folder in your documents directory. This will avoid over writing the original How to Guide template file so that the template can be used in the future.

When saving a file, ALWAYS use the SAVE AS function so that the save screen will request the new file name, unless you are just updating an existing file, in which case you will just SAVE AS using the name displayed in the ‘file name’ line of the screen. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT to maintain the integrity of your original files.