The 3 Best AI Tools To Take Meeting Minutes For Your Club

One of Member Jungle’s guiding principles is to make things easier for administrators and members. And we seriously mean easier. Easier than lounging on a tropical beach at sunset, drinking an Easy Tiger cocktail, while listening to easy listening music.  

 

 

In summary I need a holiday like a politician needs a soul. Oh, and also, we at Member Jungle do our best to make things as easy as possible for you.  

Now, Member Jungle can make a whole lot of things easier for your club or association, such as communication, renewals, marketing, and more. However, there is one thing our system can’t make easier yet. That is taking easier meeting minutes for your club.

So, today, in the interest of continually making things easier for you, let’s look at the top three AI-powered programs you can use to take meeting minutes for your club more easily and efficiently. As AI is an online tool, we will be looking at tools that allow you to take minutes for online meetings.

1. Use Gemini Or ChatGPT To Turn Transcripts Into Meeting Minutes For Your Club

To kick things off, let's explore a method I use for taking meeting minutes. Record a transcript of your meeting using platforms like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Zoom, then feed that transcript to an AI assistant like Google Gemini or ChatGPT. Then, simply ask the AI to generate meeting minutes from the transcript. 

When I've done this, I've gotten really nice, concise meeting minutes that capture all the important details of the meeting, structured in an easy-to-comprehend way. 

This option is likely your best bet for using AI to take minutes at in-person meetings. Whether you use Google Meet, a phone app, or one of those fancy boy digital recorders, capture the meeting audio, transcribe it (either by editing an auto-generated transcript or manually transcribing), and then feed it to your AI assistant to generate the minutes. While some time may be needed for transcription, this method ultimately leverages AI to efficiently create meeting minutes for in-person meetings. 

Pros

1. Using this method, you only need to record your meeting in the program you are already using for online meetings, then push it to your choice of AI assistant. 
2. It’s free; you do not need a paid version of any of the online meeting platforms or any of the AI tools to make meeting minutes this way. 
3. The best option for in-person meetings. 

Cons:

1. This method requires using two different programs to record your transcript and then turn it into meeting minutes. It's not a big problem, but it is not as streamlined as other methods.   
2. Limited functionality compared to specialised note-takers.     

2. Use Otter.ai To Record Meeting Minutes For Your Club’s Meetings

Otter.ai is a free or paid program that can record meeting transcripts and generate AI-powered meeting minutes for any online meeting. Its paid versions go up to $20 USD a month. 

I used it for the first time while writing this article to ensure it worked okay before recommending it. It is an AI program that is designed to record transcripts of online meetings and then create meeting notes from that.

Otter.ai can record your meeting's transcripts, automatically take screenshots of anything that is presented during the meeting, and then turn all of that into nicely formatted meeting notes. 

Compared to the previous method, where I used Google Meet to record the meeting and then got Google Gemini to turn the transcript into meeting minutes, there are a few pros and cons to Otter.ai. 

Otter.ai Pros: 

1. The formatting of the meeting minutes was really nice and you could even click a button to add in new action items and tick completed action items off. 

 

 

I release that by redacting that screenshot makes it look like we’re up to some top secret black ops business, but I promise you it’s nothing that exciting. Mostly just protecting the names of customers and businesses who were mentioned during the meeting. 

1. Otter.ai has the ability to automatically share the meeting minutes doc at the end of the meeting with any attendees you choose.  
2. Automatically takes screenshots of any presented screens during the meeting and adds them to the meeting notes. Which is super helpful for added context when going back over notes. 
3. The best formatting of meeting notes for the options is here. 

Otter.ai Cons:

1. Otter.ai's transcription isn't as accurate as Google Meet's, leading to more mistakes. It also didn't capture all the key points as effectively. When I put Otter.ai's transcript into Gemini, I preferred Gemini's version of the meeting notes, as they were more comprehensive. 

Though I'm splitting hairs a bit, Otter.ai still performed well, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially if you value having your recording, transcript, and meeting notes in one place. 

3. Using Fathom.video To Take Meeting Minutes For Your Club

Now let's talk about Fathom.video, a free or paid AI note taker with a depth of features that lives up to its name. Fathom has a free and paid version for up to $19 USD per month. Just like with Otter.ai, the first time I tried Fathom was when I was researching this article. 

Fathom can record, transcribe, and take meeting minutes automatically, which can be sent to you and all of your meeting attendees after the meeting. There are also several templates for the notes that Fathom sends post meetings, from the standard meeting minute format, to Q&A, to candidate interviews and much more. 

Fathom also has several more advanced features on its paid version, including naming your notetaker bot, integration with a bunch of popular tools, and automatically recording all of your team's meetings even if you're not in them, which feels a little dystopian surveillance state to me. Still, I'm sure it would have its uses. 

Out of the three options, Fathom definitely produced the best meeting notes. 

Fathom.video Pros

1. As you can rename your notetaking bot with Fathom, I decided to have a bit of fun and named my bot "Tony Hawk." Everyone at Member Jungle was quite surprised to see Birdman join our meeting.

 

 

Okay, on to actually useful pros and cons. 

2. Choosing what meetings Fathom auto-records and who it sends the recording and meeting notes to is super useful. Whether you are sharing it with all attendees in the meeting or keeping it just for you. 
3. Multiple different meeting note formats and customisable note formats make it a highly adaptable tool. 
4. Best meeting minutes of the options I’ve tried. 

Fathom.video Cons:

1. Poor transcription. Despite having the best final results of the lot, Fathom’s auto-transcription was not great. It made many mistakes and often confused who was speaking. 

Here are just some of the bad translations from the first meeting we used it in:  

• “Yeah, I'm a tiny checklist,”
• “Jeff, challenges the sucks. No, it's just not having a jelly,”
• “Brought to you by Jungle Vegan,”
• “Well, I've got brought to you by Google's generation within me,” 

Despite this, Fathom's end result was really good and it is probably the best option for meeting minutes here.  

Which AI Meeting Minutes Tool Is The Best Option For Your Club?

Honestly, all three options we have talked about here today have their pros and cons. Using Google Meet and then Gemini is best for accurate transcriptions. Otter.ai has the best formatting and Fathom.video has the best meeting minutes. 

After seeing the results, I’d say that we at Member Jungle will start using Fathom.video to take meeting minutes during our big meetings. Personally, when I conduct interviews where the transcript is more important than notes, I’ll stick to Meet and Gemini.  

Which is the best option for your club will really depend on your needs, but I have used all three, and there are no bad options here. 

AI Meeting Minute Tips 

Finally let’s go over some general tips to get the most out of AI meeting tools. 

First, don’t just record a transcript of your meeting; record video and/or audio. This is because as good as auto-transcription features are these days, they do still occasionally drop a clanger, and you need to have the recording to refer back to fix any issues in the auto-transcript.  

Here are just some of the odd things an auto transcript has written during interviews I’ve conducted in the past year. 

• “Did you want to ask questions or drum in the blood?”
• “Yeah, sorry, having a little snake attack,”
• “Baffling with b*tches,”
• “So yeah, we are a protein in the jungle,”

Now, obviously, none of these are what I or anyone I was interviewing said during our meetings, so I was able to refer back to the video recording and work out what they actually said. So, record your meetings and use them to check over your transcripts for any mistakes and mistranslations before you give your transcript to the AI. 

Secondly, be specific with your AI when you give it the transcript. Give clear goals and guidelines on how you want it to translate your transcript into meeting minutes and how you want those meeting minutes to be formatted. Giving your AI assistant clear guidelines will improve the overall quality of your final meeting minutes. 

Thirdly, the laws vary from state to state, but generally speaking, in Australia, it is illegal to record audio of someone without their knowledge and consent. Now, we are talking about recording club and association meetings here, so I highly doubt that this will ever be a problem, but it would feel remiss of me not to mention it.  

The best practice is to ask for permission to record, turn on the recorder, and then ask again to ensure you have their positive consent on tape. Again, I probably didn't need to include this, but I figure it can’t hurt to know, and maybe one day it could save you from a disgruntled former committee member looking to cause trouble. 

Finally, as we have been talking about online meetings and online meeting programs, can we please take a moment of silence to reflect on the fumble of the century? Skype. Skype was the leader in terrible online meetings for so long, only to completely and utterly disappear when we were all locked inside, relying on online meetings to do pretty much everything. 

 

How Else You Can Improve Your Club’s Meeting Minutes

Those are three of the best AI tools you can use to take meeting minutes more easily and effectively for your club. 

For more tips on how to take better meeting minutes, check out How To Take Better Meeting Minutes For Your Club (+ Free Template).

For more ways to use AI to help your club, have a look at How To Use AI To Generate Content For Your Club’s Website.