Annually you should clarify the time commitment expected of the board members. One way to get better attendance at board meetings is to create a board meeting calendar for the year and stick to it. To create this type of document you should do the following:
- Revisit the time of day for the meetings. Are evenings still convenient? Would you have more luck getting trustees to attend if the meetings were in the early morning?
- Revisit the day of the week. Is the standing day still a good fit for the majority of trustees? Should you meet on a different day?
- Next, sketch out the significant milestones for the year. You can complete this exercise as a group—it can serve as a great board education exercise—or have a smaller group (committee chairs and the CEO) take a stab at a draft and then seek input from the rest of the board.
The exercise:
- Either use a blank calendar or hang up 12 pieces of flip chart paper around the room to represent each month.
- Label each month and mark the date of your recurring board meetings.
- Start with the area of the board’s work that is the most time-bound such as finances.
- Try mapping backward: What month will you approve the final budget? Record that on the calendar page. That means the month before the board agenda should include “discuss final draft budget”; two months before that the board should discuss the financial projections, etc.
- Take all of the key topics and plot them out month by month.
This process will provide a roadmap for a year of board meetings that include the key topics you will need to cover at each month’s board meetings so nothing important falls through the cracks.
If some months look overloaded see if you can move around the timing for some of the key tasks – some tasks tend to be very time-bound, others are more flexible.
In addition, it will help you answer the question “Do we really need to meet every month?”
Then for bonus points, ask yourselves, “What are the big strategic issues we need to discuss? When will we have time to discuss these issues?” Try to find some months when you can shrink the basic board business time and free some time up for deeper strategic discussions.
You can download an editable version of our recommended annual board calendar (below) that you can use as a template.
Related to
Updated