Nonprofit board packet template

The outline behind The board packet, what goes in, in what order, and how long each part gets. It is not a packet. It is the structure you build one inside, and the checklist that gets it out of the door seven days early. No email required.

What is in it

Page one is the cover sheet. A line for the meeting date, the location, and the date the packet was sent. Then three blocks. Decisions requested, numbered, with columns for the decision, the question the board will vote on in full, the presenter, and the packet page. Then the consent agenda list, six rows, with the item, the owner, and the page. Then a bordered box for what changed since the last meeting. Fill this page last and send it first.

Page two is the page budget. Six rows, one per packet section, with the pages each section gets, what it must contain, who writes it, and a blank column for the pages it actually used this cycle. The default budget runs to twelve pages: one for the cover sheet and agenda, one for the executive director report, one for the dashboard, two for financial statements, one for each decision memo up to three, and four for the consent agenda items. Under it sits a five item list of what never goes in the packet, including the slide deck that repeats a section and the item added after the packet went out.

Page three is the consent agenda test and the send-out checklist. The test is five checkboxes, and an item joins the consent agenda only when all five are ticked. Below it, the send-out checklist counts backwards from the meeting across eight rows, from the day 21 conversation between the chair and the executive director down to the day 1 rule that nothing is added. Each row has an owner column and a done column.

The last block is for after the meeting. A short note on what the IRS treats as contemporaneous documentation, and a five column table for the decisions taken, who moved them, the vote and any dissent, the owner, and the due date. That table is what the minutes are written from.

The file is a Word document. Open it in Google Docs with no loss. It prints on three sides of letter paper.

How to use it

Run it once as a design exercise, then once per meeting as a checklist.

1. Chair and executive director sit down with the page budget and change the numbers to fit your board. Move pages between sections. Do not raise the total above twenty.
2. Name the writer for every section and put their deadline on the board calendar, not in an email.
3. At day 21 of each cycle, fill the decisions requested block on the cover sheet before anyone drafts anything. If it is empty, the meeting needs a different shape.
4. At day 14, send each section owner their row from the page budget. One row, not the whole table.
5. At day 10, run the consent agenda test over every item somebody wants on it. Move the failures to the agenda proper.
6. At day 8, the chair reads the full packet and approves the agenda and the consent list. This step is the one that makes the page budget hold.
7. At day 7, send one page numbered file, cover sheet first, named for the meeting date.
8. After the meeting, fill the decisions table and write the minutes from it inside a week.

Keep the completed cover sheets. Four of them side by side show whether the board is deciding anything, which is a better board self assessment than most questionnaires.

When not to use it

Do not use it for a board that meets twice a year to ratify. The overhead will produce pages to fill the budget, which is the problem this is meant to solve.

Do not adopt the consent agenda pages while the committees are dormant. Consent assumes a committee has already reviewed the item. Charter the committees, run them for two cycles, then turn the consent block on.

Do not use it during a crisis. A meeting called this week gets a two page memo and no packet. Say when the normal cycle resumes so the exception does not become the practice.

And do not introduce it over a chair who does not want it. The chair holds the day 1 rule and defends the section that got cut. Without that, the outline is a staff document about how the board should behave.