As is true of so much of the writing in our lives, there are no absolute rules for agendas, or how they are created. The chair of a committee or the president of an organization usually sets the agenda, although the group's secretary often does the typing and mailing of the agenda. The agenda's main use is to help the group conduct its business in a timely, effective, and democratic way by delineating the tasks under discussion and thus, by implication, what is off topic for the meeting. But most groups will also make the agenda a permanent record in the minutes book, a record that the group keeps as a kind of memory more reliable than the recollections of participants. Records can save time for groups by allowing them to follow prior successful procedures rather than constantly inventing new ones.
Groups vary, too, in when they give their members a copy of the agenda.
When agendas are distributed depends at least partly on when and how the agenda is set. Some of the agenda will represent tasks, which were not completed before or at the last meeting. New topics for discussion or actions to be taken, though, may come from group members as well as the president, and members may think them up after the last meeting. This has led some groups to follow a procedure of asking members to phone, fax or e-mail agenda items to the president or secretary a week or two weeks before the next scheduled meeting. In this way, the agenda is another reminder of the date of the next meeting and of any work members still need to do.