#Board meeting agenda template professional#

That seems like plenty to remind you that there aren’t too many surprises in the annual trajectory of a nonprofit organization. I bet you might have some big annual event that you need to plan for that demands all hands on deck.

#Board meeting agenda template professional#

What else? You want to build in some kind of professional development opportunity each year – I’m thinking a fundraising training, a messaging training – something that helps them become more effective in their roles. Then you need some kind of kick off to the year to level the playing field – what are your goals for the year, how do you plan to get there, and what are your respective (board and staff) road maps for success? And of course you want quarterly or mid-year budget vs. You want to have that complete with a reasonable timeframe after the close of the fiscal year. You have a fiscal year and you need budget approval far enough in advance of the start of the year to give the staff run room to plan for revenue increases, staff increases (hopefully), new initiatives, etc. You’ll probably find it fairly predictable.

THERE’S AN ANNUAL CYCLE TO THE ACTIVITIES OF YOUR ORGANIZATION The big benefit for me as the leader was that I saw the presentations together and was able to then craft my comments to help create a real overall narrative for the weekend. In the rehearsal, a senior staffer would give a presentation and the rest of us would play the role of different board members – especially the board members who asked the toughest questions and the ones you could count on to ask a question where the only possible response was, “huh?”Īdjustments were made accordingly and we were all ready to go. In order to keep things organized, all presentations were due early the week of the board meeting and on the Friday of a board meeting weekend, we would spend 2 ½ hours in a “dress rehearsal.” Yes, we took board meetings very seriously. We would build work plans around those dates so we could get the board everything it needed to make key decisions for those particular dates. I tried to think about all four board meetings in the aggregate and tied milestone dates to the annual goals we had as an organization. Some nonprofits meet monthly, some every other month, and some once a quarter. They were all volunteers and I had an obligation to respect their time.Īnd the fact is, board meetings are worth every minute you spend planning for them. It didn’t matter if I thought they were rock stars or if I wished they’d consider joining a different board. The biggest reason? I wanted to be sure that I used board members’ time well. It was one of my five-star board chairs that prodded me to develop the habit. When I was the Executive Director of GLAAD, I always tried to think a few board meetings ahead. WHY SET THE BOARD MEETING AGENDA SO FAR AHEAD? His process is enormously useful and he has generously agreed to let me share it with you today. He showed me the approach he uses to plan out the board meeting agenda for the entire year, well in advance. In our last session this client was of substantive value to me – illustrating to me yet again that I get as much as I give in the work that I do. (Note: If you want to learn more about my coaching services, click here.

They sure don’t sneak up on another one of my coaching clients.

Can you help me tweak it a bit?”īoard meetings should not sneak up on anyone. Not a big problem… I’ll just pull up our last board meeting agenda and work from that. She looked at her calendar and raised an eyebrow. Right up until my question, she was a bundle of enthusiasm. We had been discussing her relationship with her board and had just started to develop a plan for how she could collaborate with her board chair to design a great board meeting. “ When is your next board meeting,” I asked one of my Executive Director clients.