How to Have Effective Board Meetings
Nonprofit directors can discuss a range of topics during board meetings. These topics can range from assessing the performance of an organization to discussing the future strategies. Nonprofits frequently rely on guidance of board members with different backgrounds and experiences to help steer the organization toward success.
To ensure a successful board meeting, it’s important that everyone is well-prepared and has read the relevant documentation ahead of time. The agenda should be developed in collaboration and shared with the board members prior to the meeting to allow participants time to review the materials and prepare for discussion. Nothing renders a meeting ineffective as a scramble of people trying to comprehend the key points simultaneously, so it is crucial that agendas for meetings contain sufficient information that allows participants to take part in the discussion.
By setting clear criteria for decision-making and communicating the criteria to all participants the board can direct discussions around an agreed-upon objective. This can prevent divergent discussions that eat up precious meeting time and prevents the board from achieving consensus or even voting on key issues. Technology tools that allow real-time collaboration make it much easier for board members to communicate with each others and share documents, regardless of whether they are geographically separated.
The ideal mix of board member can create an atmosphere that is more productive and help in energizing meetings. It is crucial to choose an equal amount of optimism and pessimism. It is also important to select a combination of both experience and youth. Additionally, changing the meeting location and/or time of day can also energize discussion by energizing the environment and drawing attendees out of their regular routines. It is crucial to assess the quality of meetings each year. To do this, provide each board member two sticky notes and ask them to assess their overall satisfaction with the meetings on a scale of + (what is good)) to -(what requires improvement).