Meeting Mastery: Elevating Fundraising Event Planning Through Effective Meetings Meetings play a crucial role in the successful execution of a fundraising event. They serve as the incubator for creative strategies, the hub for staying connected and informed through updates, and the platform where we collectively shoulder the responsibility of accomplishing our tasks and achieving our objectives. Yet, just as with any project, fundraising events require a streamlined approach to meetings, preventing them from spiraling into a recurring "groundhog day" loop. Here's how you can infuse the essence of action and accountability into your meeting agendas, ensuring your fundraising event planning remains on the fast track. Streamlining Meetings for Success: The Action Plan
By incorporating two easy steps into your meeting - the action step review and the action step reminder - you can enhance clarity. Together, these additions will require just around 5-10 minutes of your time, yet they will spare you numerous hours that would otherwise be spent revisiting past discussions with questions like "Did we already address that?" or "Did I need to follow up on that?" Action Step Review: A Guiding Beacon At some point early on in your meeting make sure you review action steps from the previous meeting. Once you establish this in your organizational culture, there won’t be any surprises. You’ll find that because people know they will be asked, they very likely will come prepared to give a status update. It’s helpful to send a reminder out in advance with the agenda as well as a reminder that updates will be requested on all pending action items. Infusing Clarity and Accountability: Real-Time Discussion As you move through the meeting, pause when you get to action steps as they come up. Create clarity as they happen and be sure to ask the person who is committing to the task when they think they can get that action step done by. This gives everyone an opportunity to be clear and also creates accountability for the team member. It also provides an opportunity for discussions about setting realistic timelines. A Shared Commitment: Closing with Collective Ownership At the end of the meeting have everyone contribute to a conversation about what they are walking away from the meeting with in terms of their own action steps and due dates. Have the note taker confirm or clarify any discrepancies and also share any items that may have been missed. Amplifying Impact: Reinforcing Action Steps Action steps gain reinforcement through various touchpoints:
Navigating Bumps on the Road: Flexibility and Support Even with these extra accountability measures you’ll find that sometimes tasks fall through the cracks, or sometimes we just run out of time to get everything done. If action steps have not been completed you simply add them to the list for the next meeting. You can also use the opportunity to ask when you can expect the item to be completed and also to check in to see what support might be needed to get the task done. It’s a great opportunity to support a fellow team member. Helpful tips: Make sure that whoever is taking notes for your team either bolds action steps so that the agenda creator can easily find them and add them to the agenda or that they are sure to capture them at the end when the team summarizes action steps. One thing I used to do with a former organization I worked at was take all the action steps and put them at the bottom of the notes I took to make it easy for the agenda creator to add to the next agenda. It would look something like this: Action Step 1: Jill will solicit coffee shops for gift certificates for our buzz and brew package by 10/23 Action Step 2: Chris will secure AV and Auctioneer quotes by next meeting 11/1 From here you would then find that these action steps would be brought into the next meeting’s agenda which makes it very easy to ask for a status update. If you want ideas on how to improve your meeting agendas or increase your meeting effectiveness, reach out, I’d love to support your team!
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AuthorMichael Faith Benefit Auctioneer and fundraising professional Archives
August 2023
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