Effective Virtual Board Meetings
In-person board meetings offer more opportunities for conversation and non-verbal signals that aren’t easily replicated in a virtual environment. With a little planning and effort, nonprofits can maintain an effective meeting environment when they change to a virtual format.
Adopting proven best practices allows virtual board meetings to be as productive as in-person sessions. Use these tips to ensure that your meetings are productive and engaging:
Comprehensive Preparation
Virtual meetings require more extensive preparation than in-person sessions. A detailed agenda, including clearly defined read here discussion topics and time limits for each topic, should be distributed prior to the meeting to ensure directors can conduct research on any information they require and prepare questions or suggestions prior to when the meeting begins.
Share Meeting Materials Early
When you can check your social media or email it’s easy to forget about the meeting. Make it a point to provide all important meeting materials, information and documents at least one week prior to the session. This will to ensure that participants don’t waste valuable meeting time and will allow more time to participate with discussions and participate in the decision-making process.
Use a virtual board administration software platform, like OnBoard to provide your board members with access to all necessary items and resources ahead of the meeting. In this way you will avoid the common distractions caused by technical issues and connectivity problems that can delay or disrupt meetings. To avoid issues like this, ask your board management software provider to test all equipment and links for every participant prior to the meeting.