Anyone Know Why We’re Meeting?

Congratulations! You’ve limited your meeting attendees to those who need to be there.

Now, how are you going to keep from wasting their time?

Your valuable volunteers are smart. They can come up with great ideas and engage in really substantive conversations that result in good policy. That only works though, if they’ve been given time to think about the subject. If your attendees have advance time to think about the subject, they come up with more in-depth questions and analyses that will help you come up with a better decision.

So, the best way is to prep for the meeting by:

• Limiting the meeting focus to no more than 1-3 topics
• Making sure that everyone has all the materials they’ll need in advance.
• Creating a timed agenda

Declare in advance the purpose of the meeting and the subjects that will be dealt with. Your volunteers should know that if the topic is not on the agenda, it will not be entertained. Harsh? Not as harsh as seeing 15 people around a table spending time on subjects they’re unprepared for, and which are really not their purview.

More about prepping a meeting, and other ways to Cheat the Meeting Reaper at Sr. Associate Susan Detwiler’s blog, Thoughtful Philanthropist:  http://ow.ly/14M3x Susan Detwiler and Vice President Susan Sherk are presenting Cheating the Meeting Reaper: How to Avoid Death by Meeting at the International Association of Fundraising Professionals annual conference in Baltimore, April 11, 2010.