How to Conduct a Successful Remote Board Meeting

The pandemic has made it more difficult than ever for nonprofits to operate and garner community support. Many are relying on remote board meetings to make critical decisions and ensure their continued existence. However, it can be challenging to conduct an effective remote board meeting without the physical presence of all the board members.

A clear, well-defined agenda will help keep your board meeting remote and on-topic throughout the entire meeting. Include your board members in the process of establishing the agenda. This will help you decide on the topics should be covered. Then, send the agenda in advance as possible to all attendees to allow them to prepare. This will ensure that the attendees are aware of the topics that need to be discussed and they can add any additional items to the agenda prior to. Using an online board portal secure to distribute boardgreenroom.com/who-is-a-data-engineer the agenda and other materials will also help to reduce security risks.

Utilizing video can improve engagement during remote board meetings, by adding the essential face-toface component to discussions. Video also allows participants to be aware of the body language of others and take note of nonverbal cues such as frustration, impatience, or boredom.

Meeting in person may be difficult to plan for busy boards with many professional and personal commitments. Finding an appropriate time for everyone is easier with remote board meeting software. Tools such as SavvyCal’s polls for meetings allow you to propose multiple times for your meeting and let participants vote on the times that work best for them. This removes the need for re-inforcing emails and could save you a lot of time and effort.