As Secretary of our Club, I do not maintain a minute book. All minutes are held electronically and circulated to the committee and to any other member who requests them.
For events, we have an authorisation form which is completed by the organiser or leader for the event, and this is signed off on behalf of the committee by our events organiser. The event is then announced to the club at large at the next meeting by the Chairman. We feel this is sufficient to deem any event to be a "club event" or to use the new language, a "club activity".
There are plenty of good PL insurance offers out there- the best one is from Zurich co-incidentally, which covers around 30K market traders. Ideal if you are doing events under your own steam and not as a club. Zurich and about 9 others will quote for PL cover so plenty there for people to research.