I have been looking into online board portals in an effort to streamline and simplify the process of producing monthly books for the Board members. Has anyone pursued this or have any suggestions or feedback?
Submitted by: Janella Malicoat
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I attended the IASB, IASA, IASBO Joint Annual Conference last November with my superintendent and Board members. One of the sessions I attended was "Electronic Board Packets". Three different options were discussed and examples were given of each. You may want to investigate through the IASB.
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Anonymous on
9/10/2008 9:34:39 AM
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We have had a Board of Directors website for a couple of years now. The software we use for the site is Microsoft Sharepoint. We post our monthly Board of Directors packet on there and also email it as a PDF attachment. There is also a calendar where all Board and relevant agency meetings (e.g. fundraisers) are posted, a discussion board where Board members can discuss a particular topic, and a membership directory with each of their contact info, as well as key staff contact info. The website concept has been very popular particularly due to the paper saved, and having a central location for data. Currently about 50% of our Board members are active on the site, so we are working on marketing the site to the rest. This may involve some one-on-one training to get them comfortable with the technology.
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Sam on
9/9/2008 5:21:09 PM
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We post our Board materials online. We reserve an area on our website specifically for the materials with a unique log in that is sent at the completion of every BOD book when materials are ready to be downloaded. All the meeting items are still sent to one person here in our office in either word or PDF format and she assembles everything and links it to the agenda. Since we PDF everything - if there is ever updating or modification of an item, it can be updated and a new e-mail sent out. Our BOD members get to review and download the materials at their convenience and we have less problems with e-mail spam filters and blocked services as when it was sent as an attachement. The savings in paper alone is tremendous. Most of our members travel with a laptop so they download it to a CD or directly on to the laptop that they bring to the meeting. Rarely do we even see the printed materials brought in. Working with your IT department I bet you will find the process to be much easier than anything you are doing now. If size is an issue, zip files are easy to instruct BOD members on how to download too. Good luck!
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Robin Lewis on
9/9/2008 12:25:25 PM
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I've gotten a lot of information from a company called BoardVantage. I haven't been able to get use them as of yet (cost prohibitive), but they seem to have an outstanding package. My contact was Brandon Korbey and he can be reached at 650-614-6014. Good luck.
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Nancy Gargiulo on
9/9/2008 12:15:14 PM
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