How to Have a Great Board Meeting

A successful board meeting offers an opportunity for discussions of the most important business issues and decisions and also for establishing the policies of the company. To get the most value from every board meeting requires careful planning ahead and managing expectations about the amount of discussion feasible, and ensuring that the meeting is in line with the agenda.

The best method to avoid boring meetings is to establish specific goals for meetings and then refer to them regularly to ensure that the meeting is on the right track. Overly focused on technicalities or reports that could have been reviewed prior to the meeting can hinder the chance to allow the board members to discuss strategic business issues that cannot be easily resolved by your management team on its own.

Consider setting up a consent agenda to items that require no discussion (like minutes or financial reports) to cut down on time during the meeting. This allows the board to quickly approve any reports/documents that don’t need more discussion and keep the meeting from becoming too long.

Distribute board packs three to four days prior to the meeting so that the attendees can go through google for nonprofits them prior to the meeting. This reduces the amount of time at the meeting reading reports and gives attendees a an opportunity to ask questions before they become more complicated.

Make sure to include a “parking lot” at the end of the board packet to ensure that items that are not relevant to the meeting can be left for a different meeting and not distract from the most important agenda items. This will also help to reduce the risk that most important agenda items are put off until into the meeting later and might not be discussed in any way.