Deeper Dive - Creating Your Board Meeting Agenda - November 15, 2022
Every good meeting begins with a solid agenda
Scripting Your Playbook
In football, one of the techniques many teams use is to “script” the first few plays of a game or a half. This is especially helpful if you have new personnel and you are looking to execute plays with a high degree of success; i.e., a quick screen pass might only pick up a handful of yards, but it’s odds of getting completed are a lot higher than a fifty-yard bomb down the field.
Scripting these plays gets the offense in a bit of a flow; it quickly works through the basic fundamentals and shows who is going to play well that day. The coaches the script these plays know how these plays will be executed and know how the game will played before opening kickoff.
Your Meeting Agenda
Did you know you have the same power to script your own playbook using a meeting agenda? It’s true. So few people I talk to fail to understand the power of the meeting agenda. It can clearly outline what will be discussed at the meeting, what decisions will need to be made and what information will be shared. Pretty darn powerful stuff.
Let’s take a look at a solid meeting agenda.
Minutes of the Previous Meeting
Committee Reports
Old Business
New Business
Director Reports
Minutes of the Previous Meeting
This is pretty self-explanatory; these are the record of the official actions of the Board taken at the last meeting. These should be approved at a subsequent meeting and the minutes held as part of the permanent records of the organization. I am also seeing the increased use of a “consent agenda” at this point of the meeting. A “Consent Agenda” are those items which the Board must approve, but are rarely controversial, have no conversation and must be approved. Some organizations may want to put formally required status reports or other information in their “consent agenda” and this is where I would put it.
Committee Reports
If you read previous “Tools, Tips, and Tricks” you know how much I love a strong committee structure for a nonprofit board. It’s at this point in the meeting where the committee chairs report on previous meetings of the committees and what decisions these committee are recommending the board to make. Unless it is an emergency measure, very few items should come up directly to the board for a vote or a decision without having gone through the committee process first.
This is the place for your committee members to shine, have them (not you, the ED) report out on the meetings on what was discussed and what the recommendation to the full board should be.
Old Business
Old Business should be items that were meant to be voted on/decided on at the last meeting, but were tabled. Perhaps the board wanted more information or the committee wanted to research the topic more in-depth. Whatever the reason, items gets tabled sometimes and this is where those tabled items get discussed again for action.
New Business
New Business are those recommendations made by committees that need to be voted upon by the full board. The option that board has is to adopt the item, defeat the item or table the item. That’s it.
Director Reports
This is where you, the Executive Director, put forward reports for the board to keep them informed of the status of the organization. For the nonprofit I run, there are six basic reports I provide: Six Month Finance Scorecard, Finance Report, Aid Summary Report (basic numbers on services provided), Satisfaction Survey Reports, Strategic Planning Progress Report and Organizational Pulse Survey Report.
These reports aren’t voted upon and sometimes there are discussion points that come out of the reports, but I have found that the reports themselves speak for themselves.
Other Information
Future meeting dates of committees and full board meetings are always helpful. I also put down our board attendance record as well. Our board has a goal of having 75% attendance. I simply put down the percentage of how many board members attended our meetings. If we are above the percentage, that’s good. If we are below, well, board members can quickly see if they are doing what they can to help meet this goal.
What do you want to work on?
Is there a piece of information you want to know that maybe I can help you? Shoot me an email at pinnaclestrategiesltd@gmail.com and let’s talk. We can sit down and talk and figure out where we can take you and your organization, including a deeper discussion on logic models!
Onward and Upward!
Bill