Board meetings are a great chance for directors of non-profit organizations to discuss a broad range of issues. They can cover everything from evaluating organizational performance to discussing how the company should advance its strategies in the future. Nonprofits rely on board members with diverse backgrounds and top article about how board portals can help you to reach your goals expertise to steer them toward success.

In order to have a productive board meeting, it is essential that everyone is well-prepared and has read the pertinent documents ahead of time. Agendas should be created together and shared prior to the meeting so that all participants have time to read the documents and prepare for discussion. There is nothing that makes a meeting unproductive than having participants scramble to understand key points at the same time, so it is crucial that meeting agendas include sufficient information that allows participants to participate effectively.

Making clear the criteria for decision-making and communicating them to all of the participants helps the board focus discussions towards an agreed-upon goal. This helps to keep tangential discussions off the table that eat the time of meetings and hinder the board from achieving a consensus or taking a vote on crucial issues. Technology tools that facilitate real-time collaboration make a lot easier for board members to communicate with one other and share documents even if they’re geographically separated.

A well-balanced mix of board members can energize meetings and lead to more productive discussions. It is important to choose a mixture of optimism with pessimism and age with youth, and experience with fresh ideas. In addition, changing up the meeting location and/or the time of day can encourage discussion by energizing atmosphere and getting attendees out of their routines. Additionally, evaluating the quality of meetings at least once a year is crucial to making improvements. Give each board member two sticky notes and ask them to rate their overall satisfaction of the meetings from + (what is working) to – (what could be improved).