Nonprofit organizations hold a lot of meetings. How do you know if your meetings are useful, necessary or mission-focused? Creating a review system for nonprofit meetings can transform the effectiveness of your organization’s meetings long-term. The purpose of this article is to help any non-profit that is striving to improve its performance and meet its goals.

Firstly, your meeting should focus on specific key areas. The focus of your meetings should focus on one or all of the following objectives: purpose, data, people, and strategies. By clearly articulating and communicating the purpose of the meeting, it provides focus and intentionality for those participating.

In addition to focus, expectations for the meeting must be clear. Those who participate in meeting rhythms need to know what they bring to the table by participating in the  meeting. Objectives are not enough, but accountability takes your meeting to the next level. Individuals will hold themselves and others responsible for what they do when expectations are clear. It helps individuals and organizations to continually evaluate how the organization is doing, the obstacles it is having or faces, and the strategies that are needed to accomplish the goals.

Consistency is another key to improving meetings. It is important to have regular meetings that are effective and that everyone is engaged. Creating a standardized time each week for departments and leaders to meet together provides accountability for the individuals who have been tasked with various benchmarks. Likewise, it provides a consistent mindset for stakeholders for what the expectations are of them in meetings. Consistency in when the meeting is vital, but so is what takes place in the meeting. Are you consistently reviewing the same metrics to ensure progress? While the experience of the meeting can vary, things like data and meeting regularity need to be set in stone for meetings over time.

Evaluation is the final key component to improving nonprofit meetings. Organizations should always evaluate annual meetings and measure the effectiveness of weekly meetings on a consistent basis. While this process may be organization-specific, the process of evaluation and should be simple, the voice of every person in the meeting should be considered and the following questions should be kept in mind:

• How did you spend the meetings that you went to? Was it useful? What would make the meetings better? What could be done to give people a feeling that meetings are productive? What could be changed to improve meeting effectiveness?
• What were the impactful things that were discussed? Were all participants listened to? Were all issues addressed effectively? We listened to what everyone said. We addressed the difficult issues that the members were facing.
• It was important that we addressed each person that we met with honesty and respect.
• Do you think that you got to that underlying cause of the problem that you were trying to address? Are you able to identify and resolve the underlying causes of the problem?
• It was clear that the meeting was necessary to accomplish what was on the meeting’s list. So, how do you know if a meeting was effective and necessary?

A simple way to evaluate meeting effectiveness is by providing a form on the table for each individual with a simple scale of 1-5 on how the meeting went. If less than a 3, the individual evaluating should give an explanation and suggest how to improve the effectiveness of the meeting in the future. As the meeting is about to conclude, the leader of the meeting asks that the members rating the effectiveness of the meetings. Everyone in the meeting should participate in this evaluation and give feedback. Comments can range from the quality of our meetings, organization of the meetings, the number of attendees, or the access to important documents. Once the feedback is submitted, the meeting leaders need to review the feedback and determine a plan to adjust meetings accordingly.

By improving focus, expectations, consistency, and evaluations, your organization’s will become more effective. The goal of this process is to help organization’s plan for the future and help the staff determine a plan for achieving those goals. Ultimately, it is not enough to only focus on accomplish the mission of the organization but the processes (like meeting rhythms) should be strong consideration in the process.

MyCommunity can help you make your nonprofit better. We exist to build relationships and tools that equip organizations so that they can maximize their impact. Our suite of tools is designed to help organizations of all sizes focus on their mission without worrying about the logistics. We understand the importance of building strong relationships, so we provide the necessary tools to maximize impact and make a difference like our easy-to-use platforms MyDonors and MyVolunteers. Likewise, MyNonprofitCoach equips nonprofits with the training they need to be successful. Schedule a demo for any of our solutions here.

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Source: https://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/how-to-score-your-meetings/association-management