Meeting Preparation

On this page

• Governing Board Meetings
  • Pre-Meeting Cadence
  • Slide Decks
  • Meeting Minutes
  • Post-Meeting Cadence

Preparation for Governing Board Meetings, Technical Advisory Council/Technical Steering Committee Meetings, Budget Meetings and other Foundation-specific meetings is integral to success. An example for Governing Board preparation is below; please note that each foundation may have individual requirements.

Governing Board Meetings

Pre-Meeting Cadence

• Begin the build the slide deck roughly two weeks prior to the meeting. Solicit inputs from the TSC/TAC, Outreach Committee, Budget Committee and/or guest presenters.
• Send a draft slide deck to any reviewers (senior/other PMs on the foundation, ED/GM etc)
• Finalize slide deck preferably five business days before meeting occurs. This includes inputs from the TSC or TAC, Outreach Committee, Budget Committee, SIGs, or any other guests/slide inputs.
• Send slide deck to board members and any LF staff preferably two to three business days prior to the meeting. Timeline for distribution of the slides as a pre-read is dependent on individual foundations; for example, slides should be sent the Friday preceding the following Wednesday/Thursday meeting.

Slide Decks

• Begin building the slide deck roughly two weeks prior to the meeting date. This will give adequate time for inputs, adjustments, and review from sub-organizations to the Governing Board.
• For continuity and personal experience, the easiest method is to duplicate the previous meeting’s slide deck and update dates as needed.
• For visibility, slide deck drafts should live in their respective Google Drive location.

Meeting Minutes

• Prepopulate meeting minutes from your foundation-specific template. From personal experience, highlighting areas that need to be accurately reflected, i.e. start time of the meeting, is highly beneficial.

Post-Meeting Cadence

• Review/revise the meeting minutes and send a draft for review (if needed) to senior/otehr PMs on the foundation, or ED/GM.
• Convert the Google Document to a PDF.
• Convert the slide deck used in the meeting to a PDF.
• Place both PDFs in the Google Drive folder, and utilize the Files section in Groups.io for Board member visibility.
• Distribute the finalized PDFs to board members utilizing the Governing Board distribution list (usually Groups.io).

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