If you help lead a nonprofit, there is probably a board packet somewhere in your near future, either headed your way or waiting to be assembled. As board season rolls around again, I find myself thinking about the person on the receiving end: a volunteer, sitting in her car outside a community center, reading page three of forty on her phone, eleven minutes before the meeting starts. She cares. Everyone involved cares. Still, I worry that the packet, as most of us build it, quietly asks for a kind of heroism that busy, caring people cannot supply every month.
I want to be clear that I admire the packet-makers. The bookkeeper produced the statements. The program director wrote the update. The committee chairs filed their minutes. The executive director gathered all of it and hit send, on time, with a friendly note. Everyone did their job, and yet the sum of all that diligence is a document few people will read in full. It seems to me the trouble is not effort. It is design, and design problems are the friendly kind: they can usually be fixed without a retreat, a consultant, or a single change to the bylaws.
Why do packets grow the way they do? Mostly by accretion. A funder asked for a dashboard once, so it stayed. A past treasurer preferred a certain format, so it stayed. A board member asked a question back in 2021, so a standing report was born to make sure the question never came up again (that board member has since rotated off; the report remains). Adding a report feels like diligence, while removing one feels a little like hiding something. So nothing is ever removed, and the packet grows. I suspect most of us have built documents this way at one point or another.
So, in the spirit of better meetings, and with real affection for the people who make them possible, I want to share a few hopes for your next board packet.
I hope one honest page sits on top. A short memo, written by the executive director or the chair, that answers three questions board members tend to bring: What changed since we last met? What will we need to decide together? Where should I look if I want the fuller story? That single page, written like a person and signed like a person, turns the remaining pages into what they always were, which is a perfectly good appendix. That first page helps members see which supporting pages need their attention before the meeting. (There is a printable example of such a page at the end of this post, along with a blank one you can use.)
I hope it arrives with time to spare. A packet that arrives several days ahead stands a real chance of being read, while one that arrives the night before can only be carried into the room. If your board can adopt a single logistical rule, I would make it this one.
I hope questions travel ahead of the meeting. When the packet goes out, invite questions right away. A question raised on Thursday gets a considered answer at the meeting; a question raised live on Tuesday gets an improvised answer and twenty minutes of everyone's evening. (The memo about the parking lot will still find a way to consume twenty minutes. Some forces are beyond any of us.)
I hope you retire a report now and then. Once a quarter, ask the board a single question: which report in this packet would no one miss? I suspect there often is one. Retire it, gently and out loud, so everyone can see that removing it was an act of care rather than concealment. And if someone misses it next spring, it can simply come back.
I hope you remember who it is for. Not the file cabinet, and not some future auditor, but the person with twenty honest minutes between a workday and a meeting. She does not need less commitment from her organization. She needs a first page that respects her eleven minutes.
One caution as you trim: whatever your state and your bylaws require your board to receive and approve still needs to be there, every time. Everything else is a choice, and choices can be redesigned.
I offer these hopes with real affection for everyone who builds these documents, and without pretending any packet meets all of them. But if you try just one idea before your next meeting, I would start with the page: one honest page, from one person to another. It is a small change, and small changes to a monthly ritual have a way of compounding. And a few months from now, I hope your board walks into the room already knowing what the evening is for, with a little more energy left for the mission that brought everyone there in the first place.
If you would like to see how KindTru prepares a board for one real decision, the sample report, written for a made-up organization, shows it from start to finish.