Step by step

1. Open the Committees list

   In the left-hand navigation, find the Membership group and click Committees. The CMS takes you to the Committees list, which shows each committee's name, year, chair, and active status. You can search the list by name or description.

2. Click Create New to open a blank committee form

   On the Committees list screen, click the Create New button. The CMS checks that you hold the lodge-admin or secretary role before allowing the form to be reached.

3. Enter the committee name

   Type a name for the committee in the required Name field. This field must be filled in before the record can be saved. The name also appears as the document title in the list and in the breadcrumb trail while you are editing.

4. Optionally add a description

   Use the Description field to explain what the committee is for or any other context that is useful. This field is optional and can be left blank if you do not need it.

5. Choose a chair and set the year

   Pick one member from your organisation as the chair using the Chair field. In the Year field beside it, confirm or change the year — it defaults to the current calendar year. Both fields sit side by side on the same row. Year is required and must be a number.

6. Add committee members

   Use the Members field to select one or more members to enrol in the committee. You can add as many members as needed. The field draws from the member records that already exist in your organisation.

7. Set visibility and active status

   Choose a visibility setting: Private keeps the committee visible to leadership and members only, while Public means it may appear on the website. Visibility defaults to Private. The Active checkbox, which defaults to ticked, indicates whether the committee is currently running.

8. Save the committee

   Click Save. The CMS confirms your role once more and ties the record to your organisation before writing it. Once saved, you land on the saved committee document and the record appears immediately in the Committees list.

9. Edit or delete an existing committee

   From the Committees list, click any row to reopen that committee's edit form. Change any field you need and click Save to update the record. To remove a committee, use the delete action available from the list. Both actions require the lodge-admin or secretary role.

What happens next

Once saved, the committee record lives under your organisation with its name, optional description, chair, year, enrolled members, visibility setting, and active flag all stored together. It appears straight away in the Committees list and can be found by searching on name or description.

You can return to any committee at any time to update its chair, swap members in or out, change the year, toggle it between active and inactive, or adjust whether it is public or private. All changes are protected by the same role check, so only lodge-admins and secretaries can make them.

Good to know

If no member records exist in your organisation yet, the Chair and Members fields will simply be empty and you will have nothing to select. The form will still save, but it is worth adding your members first so you can fully populate a committee in one pass.

The visibility setting controls whether a committee may surface on a public-facing website, but setting it to Public does not guarantee it will appear — that depends on how your site is configured. When in doubt, leave it set to Private until you are ready.