Proper preparation, technical know‐how help with virtual board meetings

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.31162
• Date: 01 October 2020

Editor: Nicholas King

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Proper preparation, technical know-how

help with virtual board meetings

With COVID-19 continuing its spread across

the United States, and states and local munici-

palities imposing varying levels of social re-

strictions aimed at keeping the virus in check,

nonprofits have scrambled to adapt their opera-

tions to this new reality. For many, that’s meant

switching from in-person fundraising events to

virtual ones—with greater and lesser amounts of

success. Similarly, conferences and public-facing

programming have been restructured to limit

face-to-face interactions as much as possible. But

as time goes on, another facet of nonprofit opera-

tions looks likely to be joining the virtual world:

board meetings.

Depending on their bylaws, nonprofits may

have board meetings on a yearly, quarterly or even

monthly basis. The longer the pandemic lasts,

even organizations that just meet annually are

seeing the need to move their meetings online, and

hope that their boards can adjust to the changes

that ensue.

According to Dottie Schindlinger, executive

director of the Diligent Institute—the research

arm of board management software firm Diligent

Corp.—the pandemic has required nonprofits to

adapt to a new and changing operating landscape.

During a webinar Schindlinger recently co-hosted

that explored some best practices for virtual meet-

ings in the time of COVID-19, she explained that

the existing playbooks nonprofits have for con-

ducting business during times of crisis may not be

sufficient.

“You can’t just rest on your laurels right now,”

she said. “You really have to be nimble. You have

to be able to pivot quickly.”

Among other things, that means having a level

of technological competence that might have been

“optional” for board members in days passed.

“We all really now are forced to be able to op-

erate basic tools” like virtual meeting platforms,

webcams, headsets and mobile devices that some

have done without up until now, she said. But no

longer.

“This is the new normal,” she said. “And frankly

there’s a lot of conversation happening about

whether we ever go back to the way things were

before this crisis.”

In her webinar, Schindlinger pointed out some

of the basic considerations nonprofit leaders

should look at before scheduling a virtual board

meeting. They include:

• What are your state and/or local laws

covering virtual board meetings? According

to Schindlinger, these can vary quite a bit, with

some states already set up to allow boards to

October 2020 Vol. 37, No. 2

continued on page 4

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