How to run a club AGM (UK, 2026): the full committee guide

An AGM is two things at once. It is the legal meeting required by your constitution (and, if you are incorporated or a charity, by statute) where the committee accounts for the year and the members exercise their formal authority. It is also a cultural moment. It is the time members have a structured say, hold the committee to account, and decide what the next year looks like.

Get the legal mechanics right and the cultural side becomes easier. Members feel respected when the meeting is run properly. They tend to disengage when the committee treats the AGM as a chore to get through.

The first job is the notice. Your constitution should specify the minimum notice period and how the notice has to be served. Typical UK club constitutions require between 14 and 28 days. If yours is silent, default to 21 days and document the choice. Companies House and charity rules apply on top if you are incorporated or a registered charity.

The notice must include:

• The date, time and location of the meeting (including dial-in details if hybrid).
• The full agenda.
• Any special resolutions that will be put to members.
• Nomination forms for any committee elections, with a deadline for nominations.
• Instructions for appointing a proxy if proxies are allowed.
• How to submit member-proposed motions, with a deadline.

Members must actually receive the notice, not just have it published somewhere obscure. An email that goes to the inbox the member never opens, or a noticeboard in the entrance hall that nobody reads, is technically published but practically useless. Use the channels members already check. A push notification through a structured notices system with read receipts gives you both the legal proof and the practical reach in one go.

The standard club AGM agenda is more or less the same everywhere, with local variation:

1. Welcome, apologies for absence, confirmation of quorum. Two minutes. The chair confirms the meeting is properly constituted.
2. Minutes of the previous AGM. Members approve them as a true record. Errors are noted and corrected.
3. Chair's report. The year in review. Highlights, lowlights, thanks.
4. Treasurer's report and accounts. A presentation of the accounts, followed by a member vote to accept them.
5. Election of officers and committee. Each role is voted on in turn.
6. Special resolutions and member motions. Anything that needed a member vote, including constitutional amendments.
7. Any other business and date of the next AGM. Bounded discussion only. Big issues go to the committee or to a special general meeting, not the AGM AOB slot.

Quorum is the minimum number of members who need to be present for the meeting to be valid. Your constitution sets this number. Typical small-club quorums sit somewhere between 10 and 20 members, or a percentage of the total membership.

Confirm quorum at the start of the meeting and again before any vote if attendance has slipped. A meeting that goes inquorate cannot make binding decisions. If you are likely to be tight on numbers, the secretary should chase RSVPs in the week before the meeting and make it easy for members to appoint a proxy.

Proxies

If your constitution allows proxies, the notice should include the proxy form and a deadline (usually 48 hours before the meeting). A proxy can be an instruction to vote a specific way, or a general appointment of another member to vote on the absent member's behalf. Record proxy votes in the minutes alongside the live votes.

If your constitution does not mention proxies, you cannot just invent them. Either amend the constitution at this AGM (with proper notice of the special resolution) or run without proxies for this year.

Three methods, used in different situations:

Show of hands

Default for routine motions. Quick, transparent, and good enough for accepting the accounts or approving the previous minutes. The chair calls for those in favour, those against, and abstentions, and a teller counts. Record the result.

Secret ballot

Required for contested elections of officers and for any motion where members might reasonably feel pressured by a public vote. Slips of paper still work. So does a poll inside the app members already use, which counts the result in real time and gives you an audit trail.

Online voting (live, hybrid or fully remote)

Increasingly common since 2020. Allowed unless your constitution specifically requires in-person voting only. If you are running a hybrid AGM, make sure online members can actually vote (not just listen) and that votes from both audiences are counted together correctly.

Thresholds

Most votes pass on a simple majority of those present and voting. Constitutional amendments and special resolutions usually require a higher threshold, often 66% or 75%. Your constitution will specify. Read it before the meeting, not during.

The notice should call for nominations with a clear deadline. Each role gets its own nomination, signed by a proposer and a seconder who are both members in good standing. If only one person is nominated for a role, they are usually elected unopposed (your constitution will say so explicitly).

For contested roles, run a secret ballot. Each candidate is given a brief opportunity to speak (two minutes is plenty), members vote, the tellers count, and the chair announces the result. Outgoing officers hand over after the meeting, not during it.

The accounts should be circulated with the notice, not handed out at the meeting. Members cannot meaningfully approve numbers they have not had a chance to look at. Send the full accounts in the notice pack, even if your treasurer also presents a summary on the night.

The treasurer walks members through the headline numbers, explains anything unusual, and answers questions. The chair then asks members to accept the accounts. This is a procedural vote, not an audit. Members are saying they accept the accounts as presented, not that they have personally verified every transaction.

If you are a charity or incorporated body, you will have separate statutory obligations on independent examination or audit, depending on your size. Your treasurer should already know which apply.

Anything that changes the constitution, or that the constitution requires a higher threshold for, is a special resolution. The exact wording must be included in the notice. Members cannot validly vote on a special resolution that was first presented to them at the meeting itself.

Read the proposed wording out, allow debate, and then put it to a vote with the required threshold (commonly 75%). Record the exact wording of the resolution and the vote count in the minutes. If the resolution amends the constitution, update the master copy of the constitution after the meeting and circulate the new version.

Minutes are the legal record of what was decided, not a transcript of what was said. They should capture:

• Date, time, location and confirmation of quorum.
• Names of those present, apologies received, and any proxies recorded.
• Each agenda item, with a brief summary of discussion.
• The exact wording of every motion and resolution.
• The vote counts for each (or note that a motion was carried unanimously).
• Election results, with vote counts for contested roles.
• Action points with named owners and deadlines.

Circulate draft minutes within two weeks of the meeting. They are usually formally approved at the next AGM, but the committee should sign them off internally well before then. Retain AGM minutes indefinitely, or at least for the life of the club. They are part of your club's permanent record.

On data protection, treat the minutes the same as any other member record. See our GDPR guide for retention and handling guidance.

Hybrid AGMs are now the norm for most clubs. The format works well when it is planned properly and badly when it is bolted on as an afterthought.

• Constitution check first. If your constitution says "a meeting at the clubhouse," literally, you may need to amend it before going hybrid.
• Use a platform you have tested before the night. AGM night is not the night to learn Zoom.
• Make sure online members can be seen and heard, not just present as silent thumbnails.
• Run votes through one system, not two. Counting a show of hands in the room plus a separate online poll plus emailed proxies is where mistakes happen.
• Record the meeting if your constitution allows, both as a backup minute and so absent members can catch up.

Notice template

Minutes template

An AGM is a governance event, not a software event. The chair runs the meeting, the secretary keeps the record, the treasurer presents the accounts. None of that changes whether your club uses Comnly or a clipboard.

What does change is the operational side. The statutory notice goes out as a critical notice with read receipts, so the secretary can prove the notice requirement was met. Elections and constitutional resolutions run as polls inside the same app members already check, which means online and in-person members vote through one system instead of three. The minutes sit in the document library alongside the constitution, version-controlled, where the next secretary can actually find them.

None of which replaces the work of running a good meeting. It just means the secretary spends the week before the AGM finalising the agenda, not chasing twenty people for read confirmations.