Board retreat agenda template

The agenda behind Board retreat agenda that produces decisions. It is not a retreat. It is the run sheet a chair or facilitator carries into the room, and the page that gets a signed decision out of the day. No email required.

What is in it

Page one names the three decisions the day has to produce, written as the question the board will vote on, with space for the options, the owner, and the presenter. Fill this page first. If it is empty, the retreat has no agenda yet.

Page two is the hour-by-hour agenda, eleven rows from arrival to the closing executive session. Each row carries the block, the time, and a facilitator note explaining what has to happen in it, so a board member who has never run a meeting like this can still hold the clock.

Page three is the pre-work checklist: three rows, each with a send date counting back from the retreat, what goes out, and a checkbox for sent. Two weeks out is the evidence pack, ten days out is the survey gaps or the stop condition memo, seven days out is the draft plan if one exists.

Page four is the decisions record. Three rows, one per decision, with columns for the final wording, the owner, the date, and the vote and any dissent. Below it, signature lines for the chair and the executive director, and a note on circulating the page for initials from anyone who could not sign in the room.

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

How to use it

1. Two to three weeks out, the chair and executive director fill in the three decisions on page one and name a presenter for each.
2. The sponsor times the agenda on page two against the actual room, moving the break and lunch blocks to fit the venue, and leaves the facilitator notes as written.
3. Two weeks out, send the evidence pack and check the first box on page three. Ten days out, send the survey gaps or the stop condition memo. Seven days out, send the draft plan.
4. On the day, whoever runs the room carries page two and calls the time at the end of each block.
5. At 3:30, read every decision back from page one, fill in page four, and have the chair and every attendee in the room sign before anyone leaves.
6. In the week after, the sponsor turns page four into tasks with owners and dates, and puts the review point for each on the board calendar.

Keep the signed pages four from each retreat in the board binder. Read back to back, they are a better record of what the board actually decided than a year of minutes.

When not to use it

Do not use it for a routine planning check-in that fits inside a regular board meeting. The three-decision structure is built for a day, not for a thirty minute agenda item.

Do not fill in the decisions on page one during the retreat itself. They need to exist, with named options, before the invitations go out, or the day will spend its morning writing the agenda it should have arrived with.

Do not skip page four because the day ran long. A retreat with no signed decisions record is a day the board will be asked to reconstruct from memory, and memory is where the disagreement starts.

And do not use it when the real need is a facilitator’s private brief. Page two is written for the room to read from, not as a script for a hired facilitator’s own preparation.