A board retreat is a wonderful opportunity for board members to get to know each other, to plan for the upcoming year, or discuss an important topic in depth. However, these can only be achieved with a properly planned retreat. Today, we discuss the strategies we use to conduct a productive nonprofit board retreat.
Transcript:
“Well, welcome to this week’s episode of I501(c)You the podcast for nonprofit board members. And for those of you who may be watching on video, because we do post on video and do shorts, you’ll see that I’m very casually dressed on this Thanksgiving weekend. So sometimes that’s how we record these things, just very casual.
And so I hope you can appreciate that. But today I want to talk a little bit about something that many of you may be gearing up for. And as you particularly as you look towards the winter, the spring, and maybe even a new fiscal year, and that’s having a board retreat, an opportunity to get the board together. And for those of you who listen, you’re on episode 35 back in in May, we talked about recharge, realign and refocus why you need a nonprofit board retreat.
And today I’m not going to belabor that. I’m going to assume that you decided you need a nonprofit board retreat. And I’m going to talk a little bit about how you may create an environment that you have a very successful day. And this is some of the stuff that we go through, Read and I go through when we do nonprofit board retreats, of which we knew many, many and absolutely love doing those.
And we have this process that we put in place to hopefully ensure a successful outcome, certainly to meet the objectives that were defined. And so I just want to share that a little bit about with you today what our process is, so that if you choose to do retreat, why don’t do it yourself? Please feel free to use this process if you want to engage another facilitator, you can ask them how their processes and compare and contrast, if you like.
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Really, when you think about it, there are really three, maybe four segments to preparing for a board retreat. In The first one is the planning, the planning part. And that’s where we talk about really, why do you want to have retreat, What is the purpose? What is the purpose for bringing all of these people together? And a lot of them probably work.
So you’re some take a day off during the week or to give up a Saturday for this. You want to have a very specific purpose and very defined objectives and we really challenge our clients no more than three objectives for the retreat, maybe four or five if there’s some overlap, because we know we’re going have to construct an agenda, a run, a show, a flow which accomplishes those objectives.
And so you want to be really, really focused. And one way we ask our clients is what are your objectives for this? And we continue to challenge them. And we also ask so and at 5 p.m. that day, or whatever time it is when we leave, what will have made this, this time to pull everybody together successful? And so by talking about the success factors are talking a little bit about the purpose for the retreat, you should be able to have very clearly defined objectives for that time together when that time to get the course going to be a half day, full day, whatever the case may be, it’s just a function of really what
you’re trying to accomplish. So that’s the planning part. Now we get a little bit into the preparing or preparation part and that is a little bit more important than a lot of people give credit for. And this is where the logistics come in and this is thinking through that day, everything from what prep materials will be sent beforehand.
And those prep materials ought to be a nice segway into the day itself or something that’s going to be covered that day. And we can talk a little bit more about that in a minute. All the way to things, snacks, water, food, room set up is critically important. How will the room be set up? Well, a function that may be where you having the retreat.
And so just that room set up, Are there breakout rooms? Do you want to have breakout areas? And if you’re limited to that, that’s going to change the agenda and the run of show and how you’re going to accomplish your objectives? Are you going to have nametags, which I strongly encourage because you’d be surprised how many people can’t remember each other’s names, particularly if you’ve got new board members, particularly if you’ve got presenters coming in or certainly if you have a facilitator.
So spending some significant amount of time thinking through the logistics, the invitations to the board members, the expectations things along those lines, very, very important and it seems pretty straightforward. But typically there’s a lot of back and forth, mainly because the function of where you’re going to have the retreat. And once you know that, then you might you’re going to have to back into some of the rooms, set up the layout and things like that.
Audio visual is very important and it’s important to test it beforehand. Are you going to have flip charts? I’m a big flip chart guy markers. I usually bring my own unless my clients have them, or depending on how big the group is, we may need to have four or five flip charts. We’re going to have those types of breakout sessions.
All that ought to be planned ahead of time, critically, critically important. That will probably dictate that the positive reception is from the participants. It may not dictate the success of the outcome, but it will certainly go a long way towards that direction. Okay, so you’ve planned a little bit, you know, your objectives, your purpose. You talked a little bit about the preparation, the logistics.
You’ve got things kind of ironed out and now we spend a significant amount of time doing almost a minute by minute run off show and lay out the day, recognizing they’re going to be hiccups, things, things change. Somebody says something wasn’t expected and it may pivot the conversation, but we map out the day because we want to sure ensure that at the end of it we’ve accomplished those objectives.
We’ve covered the topics that need to be covered and we’ve created an energy that is constantly building or if it has a you know, it’s a back and forth that the breaks are scheduled at the right time, that any games or comeback games or, you know, we we do things just to boost the energy because if you have a meeting, it goes through lunch and comes out after lunch.
Of course, everybody knows that’s a dull downtime. So we really want to think through that run of show. And how do you engage just in three out of those energy levels in those participation levels, ensuring that everybody has an opportunity to participate in that? That’s a very good point. As I’m thinking about it, is you’ve got board members and there’s going to be a percent of them that are very quiet and shy but have great idea.
So you want to make sure that you create an environment where they’re able to participate and provide their input.
I often get asked whether or not a meal should be included or not, and we always encourage our clients to include a meal either in the front end or back end.
If it’s a half day retreat or certainly in the middle, Right. If it’s a full day retreat. And why is that? I tell you what, even those 30 minutes together, not talking business, just allowing the board members to get to know each other critically important, the value is immeasurable or and or if they know each other, have a structured session, loot, loose light session during lunch.
So the conversation continues and they can better get to know each other. Because we can remember these board members only come together once a month. Maybe. And so while we think they all knew, we know each other and they all love the organization, what they do, which they do, the reality is the relationships probably aren’t as strong as we think.
And so anything we can do to create an environment where they get to know each other better is only going to make their experience of being a board member better. So always, always, if you can include a meal when you do a facilitator retreat.
And as we think about this meeting, this board retreat, it’s a very expensive meeting. You’re getting you’re taking people from their jobs, you’re taking staff time, possibly your time. And so give some thought to the value of this meeting.
How do you create it so that it is successful and worth the time and really the money spent to make it happen
So you’ve got the planning, the preparation, the performing that day of that run of show that’s so critically important and then the question becomes, are you going through this process? Do you do that yourself or do you use a facilitator?
Now, as I share with you, obviously as I’m going through this process, I’ve already been engaged by the client and we now work closely with them and their support staff to to map all of this out. Oftentimes it’s much easier to have those difficult conversations if you have a facilitator and if the CEO and the board chair want to participate, because if they’re facilitating the meeting, it kind of removes them a little bit from the conversation.
But anyway, that’s I don’t want to oversell both the need for a facilitator, but I think it does create a wonderful opportunity for broader and deeper discussion. And then finally, after you spent the day, what’s the follow up? Not necessarily meeting minutes notes, but any action items, any key comments from the meeting? We always, in a follow up report, basically capturing all the detailed notes that are on the flip chart.
But then also we’ll write an executive summary and then we’ll also have a section with, you know, key next steps in key to do items. So it’s important that as you go through this and you’re thinking about pulling everybody together for a half day or a full day, that you give a serious thought to what’s the value, what’s the purpose, what are the objectives, How do we prepare everybody?
What are the logistics for the day? How is it going to look and how can we structure it to make sure that we get the outcomes right, that we achieve the objectives we stated we would achieve? How do we create an energy level of participation so that everybody’s engaged and when they leave, they feel a little bit better about that organization than when they went in.
They feel like they’ve been heard and they’re excited to continue being board members and being ambassadors for your nonprofit. So there’s just some tips as you go through the the year end process is for those of us on a calendar year, for those on more of a fiscal year year, it’s time to start planning for retreats is really pretty soon after the first of the year, if you want to have one in the spring or early summer.
So I hope that helps. Hope that gives you some guidance and helps all of you all have a wonderful full and successful board retreat if and when that time comes. And I’m Michael Corley for the I501(c)You – the podcast for nonprofit board members and we’ll see you next week.”
Timestamps:
00:00 – Our board retreat process
01:58 – Planning
03:20 – Preparation
05:30 – The run of show
06:50 – Include a meal
08:20 – Using a facilitator
09:00 – Follow up and action items
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