Hot Ideas for Nonprofit Board Meetings
Seven Emerging Best Practices for Better Board Meetings

James C. Galvin, Ed.D

This article provided by the Engstrom Institute

As I work with the boards of faith-based organizations across the nation and talk to CEOs of leading ministries, I have the opportunity to learn from what they are doing right. Here are seven of the hottest ideas I've seen lately. These are all emerging best practices that your board can immediately implement to get more done in less time, hold down costs, stay informed, make better decisions, and be more effective as a board of directors.

#1 … Go Paperless Now

If all of your board members have an email address, why spend money duplicating thick reports and shipping them by ground or air? All of your board communications can be sent exclusively through email starting today. Many board members would prefer to file and store all of their information about your ministry electronically.

How is it possible to have a board meeting with no paper? If all reports are sent ahead of time by email, board members can bring their laptop or print out copies they would like to keep at hand. A printed agenda can be replaced by a list of agenda items on a whiteboard or flipchart. Instead of handing out paper during the meeting, use PowerPoint to display any visual information or key points during presentations. Board chairs and CEOs who already use email to communicate with board members are only a short step away from going paperless. But you don't have to go overboard and strictly ban anything that uses paper and ink.

This is a no-brainer for boards that are geographically dispersed. The board of one international mission, the Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies (www.caspari.com) is located in Jerusalem and has members scattered across the US, Europe, and Israel. They rely extensively on email to send reports ahead of board meetings, correct minutes after, and communicate with each other in between. They still use handouts from time to time, but nobody wants to go back to waiting anxiously for packages to arrive by international mail before driving to the airport for the next meeting.

Boards of local churches and community-based organizations can also benefit by going paperless. The board of my church in Carol Stream, Illinois, decided to go paperless a few years ago. To the pastor's surprise, it only took about three minutes to make the decision. Every board member preferred receiving email over hard copy by mail. Board members either print what they want to have on hand during the meeting or, like me, simply bring their laptop. A photocopy machine is readily available in the next room if we need to print out something we did not receive ahead of time. Even the board secretary is paperless, recording the minutes on her laptop as we go.

#2 … Launch a Private Website for the Board

This is easier than it sounds. If you have a website, simply add pages that are password protected. The private website can provide all the information a board member could wish for and then some. For example, some essentials include constitution and by-laws, the absolutely up-to-date board policy manual, minutes for all past meetings, organizational history, new board member orientation materials, and board member bios. You could also include links to other helpful websites such as BoardSource (www.boardsource.org) and John Carver's website on Policy Governance (www.carvergovernance.com). Don't you think your board would want a private website?

The Acton Institute of Grand Rapids, Michigan (www.acton.org), has a well-developed section of its website for the board. Acton is an internationally-recognized think tank that organizes seminars aimed at educating leaders from all walks of life in economics principles and the connection between virtue and economic thinking. Their website includes monthly balance sheets, previous year's audit, list of current and past board members, scorecards on every program area, current strategic plan, calendar of events, and monthly management dashboards. The website is expertly executed and I wish I could show it to you, but, it is private.

#3 … Begin With a Consent Agenda

Some boards feel compelled to discuss every item on the agenda, even routine reports received ahead of time by email. Every report and routine item on the agenda does not deserve equal deliberation. To save time, put all reports received ahead of time in an early agenda item called the consent agenda. This includes the ministry report, budget report, advancement report, and other routine information. If any of these items require additional discussion or board action, any board member can ask that it be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for further discussion. The rest of the reports can then be received with one motion and one vote.

The consent agenda requires that board members receive information ahead of time. This means CEOs and board chairs will need extra discipline to get information out earlier. It also requires that board members actually take time to read and study the ministry and financial reports they receive. Board members who prepare will have better questions and raise the quality of discussion while those who habitually arrive unprepared will have fewer opportunities to ask questions as they scan the reports for the first time during the meeting.

Some board chairs allow simple questions for clarification on any report and others allow no discussion at all ahead of the vote to accept the consent agenda. Either way, this is a best practice proven to save time and allow the board to deal with more important issues and stay focused on board work. Organizations of all kinds have adopted this best practice and use it near the beginning of every board meeting.

#4 … Display Graphics Instead of Numbers

Most financial reports come in the form of spreadsheets, usually several pages in length. Instead of printing long columns of numbers, use charts, diagrams, and graphs as much as possible. People can grasp complicated statistical information more quickly if presented in visual form.

To dig deeper as to why this is true, the classic book on this subject is The Display of Quantitative Information (2nd edition) by Edward Tufte (www.edwardtufte.com). Graphical displays of information allow for quicker, more effective and more precise analysis of data. So instead of reporting the number of volunteers this year compared to last, prepare a bar chart showing change over time. Instead of listing expense categories, prepare a pie chart with amounts by each slice. Draw a graph of income this month compared to the income month-by-month for the last three years. Once you have it set up on a spreadsheet or drawing software, each report only takes adding a few more cells of the most recent data.

#5 … Create a Dashboard

Boards are sometimes handed budget reports twenty or more pages in length. This is usually done with good intention so that the board "knows what's going on." But the budget is a management tool, not a governance tool. Giving line by line budget detail can invite board members to advise the CEO on line item basis and pull them into micro-managing the organization. Some boards prefer to receive their financial information in a form that fits on one side of one sheet of paper. You can do this by creating a "dashboard" of key indicators.

To achieve this, the board and staff first need to determine the key indicators of the organization. For example, for many ministries the key indicators of organizational health would include at least revenue from donations, expense compared to budget, operating cash flow, number of volunteers, and some ministry quality measures. Each organization will want to track a unique set of key indicators.

One proven process for unearthing these key indicators is the balanced scorecard method. The details of this process were developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, explained in the books The Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps. This provides a rigorous approach. A simpler version is simply asking the board to determine what numbers they want to see met; then construct a dashboard for them by displaying the results graphically for them on one sheet of paper.

If you can't get it down to a few numbers, then you have not yet discovered the key indicators. I worked with one major ministry that carefully tracked 200 numbers in their large, international ministry. We eventually carved it down to about 20 key indicators, about one-third of which they had not been tracking at all. Tyndale House (www.tyndale.com), publishers of the Left Behind series, is a multi-million dollar operation yet board members are able to track financial performance and stay on top of wild sales swings with a handful of ratios.

#6 … Use Hand Signals

If your board is using good governance principles, the members will strive to make sure conversation stays on a board level and does not digress to irrelevant subjects or staff level topics. As real issues arise, it's not always easy to differentiate ends from means. Like moths drawn to light bulbs, some board members are instinctively drawn to staff-level issues. Hand signals can help keep the board on track.

Cut out a small red stop sign on card stock. You can add a question such as, "Are we sure we should be discussing this as a board?" Or, "Should we really be using our time discussing this issue?" Whenever someone starts taking the board off track, anyone can hold up their sign. Another simple technique is to hold up your hands in a "T" like the timeout signal in basketball. Conversation immediately stops until the board can agree that this is an issue they should be discussing. This is especially effective for boards with CEOs who keep pulling them into ministry issues that are far too detailed.

In any organization working hard at being more disciplined in their deliberations, no board member will want to be embarrassed by getting the timeout signal. Peer pressure is a powerful motivator for board members too.

#7 … Build a Caring Community

A board meeting of any Christian ministry should not be a business-only affair. The board will function more effectively if you take time to build a caring community. Board members should get to know each other including family, occupations, and hobbies. Board meetings should start and end in prayer and include a devotional thought or Bible study. No board engaged in Christ's work on earth should be too busy to pray. Every board should have occasional social activities or a chance to share recreational time together.

I was invited to lead a planning session of a national organization with board members dispersed across the country. As we gathered for the meeting and I met board members for the first time, I quickly realized that many of the board members could not remember each others' name. The previous board meetings had been all business and tightly scheduled. The staff assumed board members did not want to waste time on personal sharing or prayer for one another.

Mike Gibson, a pastor in Milpitas, California, often arrives early to board meetings of his church to start up the popcorn machine normally used for VBS and other church events. He told me, "The smell of fresh popcorn when they arrive does something special to remind board members that we are a community and we should care for each other as well as the business of the church."

A highly effective leadership training ministry, Pastoral Leadership Institute, Santa Ana, CA (www.pli-leader.org), has an official board policy to build in an afternoon of golf or some other form of group recreation at every annual board retreat. They want to make sure they are recreating together and getting to know each other deeply.

Building a caring community requires time in the board meetings for prayer, personal sharing, and occasionally social activities or retreats. Better coffee also helps.

Leveraging Technology to Get More Done

Hopefully, one or more of these seven hot ideas will be immediately useful for you and your board. However, some boards will not be able to implement any of these specific suggestions. If this is the case for you, the larger principle behind these promising practices is leveraging technology to help your board get more done in less time, hold down costs, stay informed, make better decisions, and be more effective as a board of directors.

James C. Galvin, president of Galvin & Associates in Winfield, IL, is an organizational consultant specializing in releasing the potential of faith-based nonprofits. Visit his website at www.galvinandassociates.com or contact him directly at jim@galvinandassociates.com.