Are Your Board Meetings a Snoozefest?

Join us as we tackle one of the most common challenges in nonprofit leadership: keeping board meetings engaging, purposeful, and productive. We’ll share practical strategies to help you rethink how your board comes together, creating space for meaningful dialogue, stronger decision-making, and a renewed connection to your mission. Whether you're leading the meeting or just trying to survive it, this episode will leave you feeling inspired and ready to lead with intention.

Connect with host Jill Fowler on LinkedIn.

This episode was brought to you by Songbird Leadership -- Amplify your organization's mission through outcome-based executive coaching, strategic planning, and capacity building.

Transcript

Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Jill Fowler of Songbird Leadership.

Are your board meetings a snoozefest? Do you spend well over an hour – or two – listening to participants drone on and on about minutia? Or do they comb through the financials, line by line, and question a $10 overage. Or, this is my personal pet peeve, when committee chairs simply read verbatim from a report that everyone already received prior to the meeting. Ugh! It’s enough to make you fake a bad Wi-Fi connection just to escape!

Today, we’re talking about a big challenge in board culture: meetings that drag, bore, and accomplish very little. Let’s be honest, most board meetings are structured more like a tax audit than a strategy session. And I get it; there’s a lot of information to cover. Budgets, updates, votes, reports…it’s all important. You can get through it, but it doesn’t have to be boring. I’ve got some battle-tested tips to help you transform your board meetings from dull to dynamic. Let’s dive in.

First, some basic housekeeping. Your board meetings have a scheduled starting time. They should also have a scheduled stopping time. Stick to both times! Create some norms with your board that meetings will always start on time as long as a quorum is present. It’s the respectful thing to do for the people who are on time. And if others join late, so be it. Your scheduled stopping time should also be respected. If it’s a routine board meeting and it’s lasting more than 90 minutes or so, you need to take a step back and consider how well you’re utilizing your time.

Speaking of time, a timed agenda can be a huge help in keeping things on track. Using a timed agenda, you add the length of time you plan to spend on each part of the agenda, along with a running timer to help stay on track. Then, charge a member with keeping an eye on the clock throughout and giving the group a polite nudge if they start to fall behind. 

Or you could utilize a consent agenda and group all routine items into a single vote. If nobody identifies something for discussion, you’re done with that section of the agenda in two seconds flat. 

Another housekeeping item is to schedule the circulation of the agenda and all supporting documentation within a certain number of days prior to the meeting. If a vote is required, the number of days’ notice is most likely in your bylaws, so just stick with that. The norm should be that everyone comes to the meeting having read the materials. This can be a little like herding cats, as you have to rely on multiple people to give you their items ahead of time, but it’s worth it to establish and stick to a routine.

Now, getting people to read the materials can be a whole thing. It’s pretty obvious in the meeting who has and hasn’t reviewed things ahead of time. I once worked with a board where the majority of attendees would come to the meeting without reading. For one meeting, I randomly added a line in my written report that if a board member contacted me after reading, I’d make a donation to an organization of their choosing. Only two responded and they asked me to donate to our organization, which I did. During my reporting time at the meeting, I mentioned this and noticeably more people started reading the reports. Yeah, this sounds a little passive-aggressive, but it got people reading and raised some money for our organization. Win win.

Okay, so you’re starting and stopping on time, and everyone is reading everything ahead of time. Now let’s focus on the agenda itself. At the beginning of each meeting, I like to add a Mission Moment – five minutes during which I tell a story about how our organization has made an impact since our last meeting. This is a real hit with board members. It touches the heart, stirs their passion for the organization, gives them a story to use in their personal fundraising efforts, and gives them a good look at exactly what your organization does on the ground level. 

Another part of the agenda that typically causes some head nodding is the financial report. Now, don’t get me wrong – an organization’s financials are of the upmost importance and should be actively monitored by the board. However, the board meeting is not the place to heavily scrutinize every line item. Your Finance Committee should certainly give your financials a thorough review prior to the board meeting. But the full board meeting financial report should include high level highlights only. Where are you financially since last month? Did anything unusual happen to cause a large variance? If so, how is that being handled? And so on. And certainly field questions, but trust your Finance Committee to do their job as reviewers and then focus on the big picture. It is also helpful if your board members have been trained on how to read financial statements, but board training is a topic for another day.

Continuing on with the agenda, what’s the purpose of your meeting? If you’re meeting just because your bylaws say to do so but have no other purpose for the meeting, that breeds snores. And, over time, disengagement. So, get with your board chair and create a theme for every meeting. Schedule it out like you do for your blog or social media so you know what you’re going to cover throughout the year. This could be a juicy discussion topic or a staff member presentation. You could ask the board to watch a short Ted Talk or listen to a podcast and then come together to share thoughts on how to incorporate some of the ideas presented into your culture. Get creative! It’ll be a breath of fresh air for your board while making you look knowledgeable of the latest trends. 

Also consider what questions you pose to your members during meetings. Do you simply ask, “Any questions?” or are you seeking more meaningful feedback from the group? Try something like, “What are the top two concerns we see here today?” or “How can we use this situation to make the maximum possible impact?” or “How can this situation be leveraged for greater success?” See the difference?

Speaking of questions to ask the group, at the very end of the meeting, ask everyone to share one word that describes how they’re feeling as they leave. It will bring the group together, possibly generate a laugh or two, and provide a litmus test for where the group is emotionally.

Finally, some words about meeting facilitation. Typically, the board chair is the facilitator in the meeting. A skilled facilitator can make all the difference by respectfully redirecting conversation when it veers off track, drawing out the quieter voices, or occasionally saying, “Let’s put this topic in the parking lot and follow up later.” It’s truly an art. 

Great meetings don’t happen by accident. They’re designed. They’re facilitated. And they’re built on a culture that values people’s time, expertise, and shared commitment to the mission.

So, here’s my challenge to you: before your next board meeting, take 15 minutes to look at your agenda. Ask yourself, “Is this a meeting we’d want to attend? Does it create space for real conversation?” If the answer’s no, use even just one of the tips we talked about today. Small changes lead to big shifts. And when your meetings are better, your decisions are better. And when your decisions are better, your impact grows.