Want to quadruple your chances of achieving your mission? BoardEffect can help

The writing’s on the wall — your board can’t keep running a tech deficit. According to recent stats, tech-savvy nonprofits are four times more likely to achieve their missions than others. But just 25% of nonprofits have a strategy to transition to a digital workflow. And only 50% of those have the resources to implement their strategy.

Meanwhile, cyber risk is on the rise, threatening less tech-savvy boards with not only lower productivity, but catastrophic security breaches too. According to a recent Microsoft Digital Defense Report, nonprofit organisations are the second-most targeted sector by cybercriminals, accounting for 31% of recorded attacks.

The productivity gains associated with implementing the right technology along with the risks of failing to do so make closing the tech gap a critical agenda item for nonprofit boards. Board management software is a crucial piece of tech that can help boards make their work easier and more effective. BoardEffect is tailor-made to streamline the work of charity and nonprofit boards — and has a whole host of features that hundreds of boards around the world rely on every day.

Empowered by BoardEffect, boards can:

To understand just how BoardEffect can help you, let’s take a look at the foundation of a functioning board: the board meeting. Board meetings have three distinct phases:

1. Meeting preparation.
2. The meeting itself.
3. The aftermath.

At every step, BoardEffect equips directors and administrators with tools to take their work to a new level.

1. Before the meeting

It’s just days until the board meeting, and there’s a chaotic flurry of activity to prepare. Directors are trying to pin down the correct version of meeting materials and are familiarising themselves with the contents of the agenda.

Meanwhile, administrators are chasing down reports to include, following up with RSVPs for board members and sending out the complete, up-to-date board materials to board members in ample time for the meeting.

To eliminate the chaos, BoardEffect has tools to ensure meeting preparation goes smoothly. For directors, these include:

• The BoardEffect app, which lets board members access important documents and meeting books from any device at any time, to view important documents and meeting books.
• Annotation tools for meeting materials including “sticky notes,” drawing and highlighting to help board members prepare better for meetings and stay engaged.
• Tools such as polls and surveys to gather votes and key information in advance of the meeting.
• Schedulers and notifications to ensure that meetings are on directors’ calendars.
• Board members can designate an alternative contact to receive notifications such as an assistant so they can stay up-to-date while juggling various priorities.

Meanwhile admins can use:

• A scheduler that lets admins check availability to schedule meetings and sends out notifications. You can also create a Zoom/GoToMeeting event for your meeting through BoardEffect’s integrations.
• Secure communications tools to send out notifications that board materials are ready to review, and to avoid sharing sensitive information over email.
• Create tailored workflows to review files and content in a meeting book.

Case study: Boosting board member engagement by 95%

BoardEffect has helped Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry reach an untold 95% success rate for board member RSVPs, streamlining previously complex and laborious processes.

“It’s life-changing, I don’t even know how I would still be working here if I didn’t have some sort of platform to help ease this whole process.” – Carissa Burgett, Board Administrator and Assistant to the President and CEO, Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry

2. During the meeting

The meeting is finally here, and your board has just a few hours to make serious strategic decisions for your organisation. There are several items on the agenda — and it can feel overwhelming! Every bit of efficiency makes all the difference.

That’s why BoardEffect has features designed to help board members make better decisions in real time, such as:

• Agendas that include the reports you need with each item to make more informed decisions.
• Navigate a summary of annotations that you have made across the pack.
• Easily find and refer to past meeting materials in the archive should you need to refer to them during the meeting.

BoardEffect also gives administrators powerful tools to keep meetings efficient and secure:

• An agenda builder that makes creating meeting agendas and board packets easy and efficient. The software’s agenda builder helps keep things on track, and prioritises the most important items at the top of the agenda.
• The ability to refer to relevant documents and attach them to the minutes while you take them.
• Granular end user and admin permissions that allow you to implement detailed access controls to restrict users, through resource permissions, book restrictions and role-based access for enhanced security and confidentiality.  

3. After the meeting

The meeting’s over — but now the real work begins. How do you keep track of all your tasks? And how do you stay in touch with and collaborate with other board members, no matter where you might be in the world? And how do you continue improving your efficacy on the board?

BoardEffect has key features to help boards continue to be effective in between board meetings:

• Secure collaborative workrooms allow you to collaborate in real time with your fellow board members — as well as facilitate the key work of committees and working groups.
• Tasks and reminders for users or groups to help everyone keep on track.
• Surveys and polls to help you stay engaged in the discussion and know where your colleagues stand on key issues.

Meanwhile, admins get tools to help them keep up with their post-meeting responsibilities:

• A centralised resource library that stores documents to help with onboarding new board members and continuing the training of existing ones. You can create folders for different types of documents to help guide training.
• The ability to easily make all changes, additions and corrections to the minutes and send them out to board members. Dynamic reporting and tracking help gain valuable insights by reporting on all tracked information, including attendance, skill sets, board director terms or diversity, enabling data-driven decisions and improved board performance.
• The ability to create tasks and assign them to board members, ensuring they stay informed through timely email reminders.

Case study: Better reporting = stronger compliance

In many cases, good reporting isn’t simply a matter of better functioning but also of compliance. For example, StarFish Family Services, a nonprofit based in Detroit, participates in federally funded programs, which have strict compliance obligations. BoardEffect’s ability to streamline reporting made this previously onerous and time-consuming task much quicker and easier.

The question is: Can you afford not to invest in board management software?

With all these features in mind, you still need to answer the all-important question: Will BoardEffect give you the ROI you need to justify buying it? Underpinning this question is a set of other critical questions to ask yourself when choose board technology. Will BoardEffect actually save your organisation time in creating board and committee materials? Will it simplify your workflow processes, accelerate trainings for board members, support staff and enable faster reporting?

You’ll also want to consider ‘softer’ parts of ROI, such as improving board member engagement, having the right data to inform decisions and overall organisational reputation.

For a quick answer, try our ROI calculator. And you can also take into account these real results other charities and nonprofits experienced when they switched to BoardEffect:

• The Presbyterian SeniorCare Network reduced its meeting prep time by 75%.
• The McCoy College of Business Foundation saved hours of time on administrative work as well as eliminating printing and mailing costs.
• Memorial Health System brought greater efficiency and structure to its operations by implementing over 120 workrooms for its groups and committees.

Take governance to the next level

At every step of the governance process, BoardEffect is here to elevate it, making your board decisions easier to make and more impactful.

Here’s how you can get started:

1. First, download our buyer’s guide, which contains all the information you need to make the best choice of board management software for your charity or nonprofit.
2. Second, check out our making the business case toolkit, helping you to tailor your case for your organisation.
3. And lastly, contact us for a demo and learn how the right board management software can take your governance to the next level.