Include the mission of the organization to keep board members mindful of their purpose. Start with a good template for your agenda that you can use for every meeting. Here are some things to keep in mind to keep your nonprofit board meeting focused and effective: Efficiency Try to imagine how your agenda will play out in the boardroom. Board meetings should be less about updates and general discussions and more about decisions and actions. When preparing for a nonprofit board meeting, it’s a good idea to give the task before you a little scope. What Makes an Effective Nonprofit Board Meeting? It might be time to tweak a few other issues, too. These are all indicators that your agenda needs some tweaking. Are any of your fellow board members discreetly sending text messages under the table? Can you detect anyone mindlessly doodling on the agenda document? Are members of the board silent, or do they appear to be zoned out? Are you noticing that the agenda items continually go off topic? Do the discussions seem to be about everything except fundraising? If you want to gauge whether your nonprofit board meeting is productive, take a look around the boardroom. Risks of Having a Poorly Run Nonprofit Board Meeting Agenda When an agenda item is not ready for the board to take action, it signals the board chair to remove or table the item from the agenda, or move it to a committee for further discussion and exploration.Ī well-planned agenda helps the board chair keep the meeting focused on the strategic planning of the mission and prevents members from derailing the meeting with tangents and disruptions. An experienced board chair knows that items on the agenda signal some type of action from the board. When a non-profit board meeting agenda is written well, it helps the board chair to make fast decisions about managing agenda items. The agenda is the board chair’s most important tool. What’s the difference between an unproductive nonprofit board meeting and an effective nonprofit board meeting? The board meeting agenda and the board chair who uses it.

Nonprofit agenda template