This section provides a selection of references to books, pamphlets and online documents which may be helpful to meetings and their officers as they set about the tasks involved in conducting the business of the meeting.
Managing Quaker Business Processes
- Mathilda Navias, Quaker Process for Friends on the Benches. Quaker Publishing Corporation, 2012. This is a comprehensive account of the most basic practices and procedures involved in the conduct of Quaker business. Available separately, as a pdf, is Sample Forms, Letters, Minutes and Reports to accompany Quaker Process for Friends on the Benches. This includes: sample letters for an application for membership, a transfer of membership, and a request to be married under the care of a monthly meeting; and forms to be used to simplify end-of-life planning.
- Barry Morley, Beyond Consensus: Salvaging the Sense of the Meeting, Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 307.
- Principles of Good Practice for Boards and Every Trustee of Quaker Organizations, 2005. This publication is adapted from Principles of Good Practice for Friends School Boards & Every Friends School Trustee, written by Arthur Larrabee in consultation with the Board of Directors of the Friends Council on Education.
- Rosalie Bond, Treasurer’s Guide Manual. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 2008. This is available as a pdf from pym.org.
- Elizabeth Muench, Friendly Audits: Guidance for those asked to review Quaker accounts and for those who keep them. QuakerPress of FGC, 1990. This is available as an eBook from quakerbooks.org. An online bookstore with books and pamphlets on such topics as: meeting for business, meeting roles (clerk, recording clerk, elders, and archivists), meeting finances, meetinghouses, and properties.
Nurturing the Spiritual Needs and Gifts of Members and Attenders
- Pastoral Care Newsletters. Between 1993 and 2012, the Pastoral Care Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting published some 76 editions of the Pastoral Care Newsletter. These are available as pdfs from pym.org. In addition, a collection of articles from the first 10 years of the Pastoral Care Newsletter has been published under the title Grounded in God: Care and Nurture in Friends Meetings, edited by Patricia McBee and published by QuakerPress, 2002. This is available as an eBook from quakerbooks.org.
- Quaker Aging Resources at quakeragingresources.org is a collaborative project of Philadelphia and New York yearly meetings
- Spiritual Care Committee. A pamphlet prepared by the School of the Spirit Ministry.
- Friends General Conference has many resources to help meetings with outreach and welcoming: https://www.fgcquaker.org/resources/transforming-quaker-welcoming-advice-greeting-newcomers
Answering Questions about Quaker Faith, Practice, and Witness
There are numerous websites that can be used to find answers to a wide range of questions that meetings or their members and attenders may have about all things Quaker. Many answers can be found at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting website, pym.org, or the Friends General Conference website, fgcquaker.org. Other online sources for information about Quakers include:
- quakerinfo.org (Quaker Information Center)
- quakerinfo.com
- quaker.org
- quakerquaker.org
There is a list of current Quaker blogs available at Planet Quaker: planet.quaker.org.
Online glossaries may be found at:
In addition, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting library (located at 1515 Cherry Street in Philadelphia) is an important resource for books and other materials relating to Quakers, particularly in the Philadelphia area.
Preservation of Records
Historical records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and many of its constituent monthly meetings have been deposited with Friends Historical Library and housed at either the Haverford Quaker Collection or at Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. These two institutions work together to maintain the records for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and other Friends groups and individuals. A third partner, Bryn Mawr College, maintains a guide to the three libraries, including these archives:
trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/pymcomm.htm
Friends meetings are encouraged to deposit monthly meeting minutes and reports with Friends Historical Library; these records remain the property of the originating meeting or its sucessor(s) and are carefully stored and available for research. Questions about the process of depositing meeting records should be directed to the Curator or Archivist at Friends Historical Libary.
In 1989, the Records Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting first published a Handbook on Records: their Creation, Maintenance, and Preservation in the Meeting. trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/bym/Handbook%20on%20Records3.htm