I am curious how you currently 'handle' board or committee meetings.

These meetings need a lot of preparation in regards to getting documents together, assigning any tasks that need to be completed before the meeting, and any action plans after the meeting.

• Do you create them as Group-specific events?
• Do you have file libraries that are shared to specific members?
• Do you not use YM at all for this type of activity?

Thanks.

we only use YM to store our minutes for Board meetings. It would be good to have more meeting specific functions. An area to place the agenda for viewing by everyone. Just make it more intuitive relative to saving time managing a meeting.

We do it off YM. Our Associate Director described our process as follows:

"I typically email documents to the committee members, either through the group email function in YM or I export the list and email through Outlook. I don’t have any central repository of documents accessible by committee members."

We do groups where board members are sent their packets but also the documents are uploaded through the file library.

Thanks for all the feedback.

I will provide some background as to why this topic exists. We are always looking for add-ons that will enhance our own software offerings. I recently had a demo of software to manage board meetings. It has an agenda page, provides a way to create tasks and assign them out, provides a way to collaborate on documents, etc.

Would we be better served to utilize the event system for creating a meeting that does not require registration but can have the ability to have a linked file library. You can already restrict events to specific member types so you could only select the board members to be able to attend the meeting. We do not have a way to assign out tasks that need to be completed prior to the meeting so it would mean adding functionality.

Are these board meetings becoming a hassle to handle that we need to look into an add-on or possibly enhancing our software?

We use the Group functionality and documents are uploaded to a file library accessible by our Board Group.

We also use the Group forum for ongoing comments ...at least I'd like to but it's a battle getting folks to use it.

Anything that could automate the process of creating and distributing agendas, minutes, etc. would be useful.

Gerry,

Great feedback. I will add it to my list of features.

95% of our meetings are conference calls. I email out a PDF Board Book every month to our Board members. After the meeting we post documents to a site-wide file library that is visible to multiple groups so many people have access but we only have to post it once. I am responsible for following up on any tasks assigned during a Board meeting. I've tried to encourage the Board to use more of the features in the YM groups but it's a challenge. Also, our bylaws require that we invite all members to attend in Board meetings if they choose - some non-profits have an Open Meetings requirement for transparency.

Any tools to help make the Board meeting/Committee process easier would be greatly appreciated and I would love to be involved in any brainstorming to help with this product change.

We have a group set up for our Board (and many of the other Boards we work with) and we have file libraries set up to store documents pre- and post- meeting. This has really helped with the organization of our Board.

We have quite a few committees, councils, and sections in addition to our BOD. One challenge we face is scheduling. We use an online service called "Doodle" to identify the best dates and time for our meeting based on our participants availability. This allows us to select a time for each conference call that has the best opportunity for participation. Being able to incorporate this funtion into YM through the groups would be of benefit, in addition to including a function for meeting reminders. We have attempted to utilize the group functionalities for our meetings, however we've had a challenge getting our participants to actually participate that way. This may help drive participants to the group pages and increase their use.

Another challenge we face is adding and removing our group admins and participants in the YM system each year. Due to the volume of our volunteer participants this task is quite lengthy. One improvement we'd like to seee is an easier method of removing and assigning admins and administrative titles.