Boards Need Their Own Planning Process
How to Develop a Planning System for Non-Profit Board Effectiveness & Productivity
When directors think about planning, they usually think of strategic or operational planning for the organization. But non-profit boards also need their own planning process. In the ongoing series about governance reviews, you learned that there are three main categories of board responsibility, one of which is board operations and organization. The planning discussed in this article falls into this category.
An ad hoc approach to board planning might work when things are predictable, but it fails when the board is faced with unexpected opportunities, risks, or problems. A dedicated planning process not only supports board effectiveness, but when unexpected issues arise, it will help the board determine how to adjust the agenda without leaving other crucial issues behind.
Planning and Review Team
Once a planning system is in place, it is easy to keep up to date. The Planning and Review Team should include the board chair, executive director, and committee chairs. Expect this process to take extra time in the first year, but once in place, planning and review activities are a small commitment with a big payoff. Once the system is in place and directors are used to it, quarterly reviews usually take 10-15 minutes, and annual reviews, 1-2 hours, unless the board is dealing with significant productivity challenges.
Annual Planning
Schedule the initial annual planning session several weeks before the start of the fiscal year. If you are in the middle of a fiscal year now, it is a useful exercise to do this for the rest of the year before starting a full year plan.
Step 1: Divide Board Responsibilities by Quarter
Regular Board Responsibilities
Start with board responsibilities that occur at least once per year. If you have a well-developed board mandate, this is easy. If you are still in the process of creating your board mandate, the Team will need to work together to create a list.
Divide the board’s responsibilities as follows. If something falls under more than one category, place it in the highest (starting with #1), but note that it falls into the other categories as well.
Responsibilities that are obligatory under legislation, regulation, bylaws or member resolution.
Responsibilities tied to an external time frame, such as funding applications or reports.
Responsibilities tied to an internal time frame. For example, the board composition planning process relies on information provided by other board processes, or approving an operational plan requires information from at least the financial review, strategic review and risk management processes.
All other mandated board responsibilities that occur at least annually.
Distribute the board’s responsibilities among four quarterly lists in a way that should allow completion before any deadlines, and distribute the board’s work evenly.
Periodic Board Projects
The fifth category is the large projects that come up every few years, such as reviewing policies and processes, facilitated strategic planning or third party board evaluations. Determine whether one or more are scheduled to start in the coming year. Estimate the time needed for each project and likely deadlines, and add to the quarterly lists.
How to Distribute Tasks Across the Year
If you are not sure of the appropriate quarter for a task, work backward from the ideal completion date and consider both how much work is involved, and whether other sources of information are required.
Step 2: Meeting Plans for Q1 & Q2
“Meeting plans” are the list of board responsibilities to be addressed at each scheduled board meeting. They are not yet final meeting agendas.
Considering the following information for each item, distribute the Q1 and Q2 tasks to specific meetings:
Preparatory material: what is needed for directors to prepare for the meeting, when will it be available?
Meeting time allocation: Will there be a presentation? Can it go on a consent agenda? Is it likely to include a long discussion?
Committee Schedule: for items that are first addressed in committee, work with the committee schedule to ensure each item has enough time at both board and committee.
Note: It is only necessary to do meeting plans together for both Q1 and Q2 in the first year. Download a sample schedule for instructions going forward.
Step 3: Other Factors Affecting Board Productivity
Towards the end of the first year using this process, the Planning & Review team will start working on the next fiscal year. From that point on, the following items are also part of the annual planning discussion.
Did the board stay on or close to its meeting plans?
How do board culture, director participation and meeting facilitation affect productivity?
Is the number of items on the board’s agendas working to support good discussion?
Balance of work between the board and its committees, and support for the board from staff and contractors.
Feedback from the quarterly reviews.
Board effectiveness and productivity are affected by many factors, which can be tackled using various approaches. Boards can change the number of committees and directors, and they change meeting logistics. Directors and board and committee chairs can change how they participate. People can learn and improve facilitation, open listening, asking good questions, and other aspects of meeting engagement.
Meeting Agendas
As they move through each quarter, the board chair and executive director should use the meeting plans as a foundation for meeting agendas.
Use a system to capture all incomplete agenda items for immediate rescheduling or for a future planning session.
Quarterly Review & Reset
Quarterly reviews are brief, as long as the Team sticks to the intended purpose—managing board productivity between annual reviews. The Planning and Review Team should:
Reschedule any incomplete items from the quarter under review to another meeting or quarter, or defer them to the next annual planning session.
Create meeting plans for the next unplanned quarter.
Compile comments on scheduling and productivity for consideration in the annual planning session.
These reviews should not include discussion of the actual issues that were on the agenda last quarter. They are purely for reviewing, updating and resetting the board’s plan.
Unplanned Agenda Items
When unplanned items hit the board’s already-full agenda, it needs to add more meeting time, defer a scheduled item, or defer the unplanned item. When something must come off the agenda, use this process to decide:
Is the unplanned item related to an urgent opportunity or risk that could impact the organization’s ability to carry out its mission? If no, reconsider whether this unplanned item is urgent. If it can wait, defer it to the annual planning session, or ask the Planning & Review Team to try and fit in in another quarter.
If the unplanned item must bump something else, look at the categorization number (from Step 1 of Annual Planning) for all items already on the meeting agenda:
Look first at deferring a #4 item as it is not tied to a specific time frame or external obligation.
Major projects (#5 items) can often be delayed slightly, but look at what is tied to the project outcome first.
If you shift a #3 item, it will affect other items in the board’s mandate, so look at the full consequence of doing so, not just time at one meeting.
#1 or #2 items are more difficult to shift as they are tied to an external time frame or obligation. Make sure you know the potential downfalls of deferring any of these.
Importance of Board Planning
Planning is crucial for non-profit boards of directors because they are fiduciaries with mandated duties. Ignoring responsibilities because the board is too busy is not an option.
Planning is difficult because most boards don’t work together on a daily, or even weekly basis, like workplace teams. Boards don’t have as much opportunity to add in a last-minute 20 minute meeting to catch up on unfinished business or discuss a new opportunity. Most directors have busy lives with other responsibilities, so their board work must be planned in advance, and should be expected to stay pretty much within that plan.
This planning system works well for boards because it balances capturing every board responsibility for the fiscal year with planning by quarter, so the board can review and reset to address changes as they arise. It also provides a simple framework for addressing unplanned items that come before the board.
It may seem like a lot of work, but once you get a board planning system in place, it will help with efficiency and effectiveness. Like all planning systems, you can tailor this one to fit your board’s unique situation, including its use of technology, or expanding the process to board committee planning.
Download a sample schedule for a Planning & Review Team, including primary responsibilities for annual planning sessions and quarterly reviews.