It can be a daunting job running board operations for the nation’s largest volunteer-supported mentoring network. As Executive Assistant to the CFO and CDO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), Daleska Siroki has managed the execution and operation of the organization’s board meetings for the last 6 months.
BBBSA is headquartered in Tampa, FL and has approximately 245 agencies situated around the country. There are small, medium, and large agencies, but all agencies are dedicated to changing the lives of the nation’s youth by partnering them with a mentor to drive confidence and success. Daleska joined the BBBSA team in August of 2017 and has served as the Executive Assistant to Tim Midkiff CFO since then.
We spoke with Daleska about how Boardable has made a difference for BBBSA…
The Challenge
With 18 full-time board members – many of whom are CEOs and leaders of some of the country’s largest organizations – organizing and executing in-person board meetings was challenging at times. The committees and the entire board meet three times a year, typically in February, June, and October. While their February and October meetings were in Tampa, the June meeting is held during the national conference which travels every year.
“After the pandemic, BBBSA had to shift to fully virtual board meetings. Boardable has been an instrumental part of making the board book creation process run smoothly despite the challenges that come from working remotely,” Daleska said.
Introducing Boardable
After a few board meetings with this time-consuming process, the BBBSA organization’s CFO, CTO, and a few others started looking for a digital platform to make this process easier. The team was looking for a budget-appropriate option that provided them with the solutions they needed – namely an efficient way to create and share board books with the team. Then, BBBSA’s CFO was recommended Boardable by a nonprofit partner out west.
“We knew there had to be an easier way to do things, so we decided to do a free trial of Boardable in October of 2019. We put together a small committee of board members to do a test run in December of that year, and we decided to put it to use for our February meeting,” Daleska said.
During their trial, a few key boardable features stuck out as must-haves for the BBBSA board, including:
- An incredibly user-friendly interface
- The organization of documents, notes, and minutes in an easy-to-understand way
- All of the reports and information that was previously housed in the board book are now in a single location
Today’s Operations
Along with most industries, BBBSA had to shift to a virtual world because of the pandemic. By implementing Boardable in early 2020, BBBSA was ahead of the curve. They have quickly adapted to the Boardable-driven board meeting process, and it made the switch to fully virtual board meetings effortless.
“With Boardable in place, we were able to have a single source of truth and information for all board-related content, including board books. So, instead of spending two-plus weeks gathering information, printing, editing, binding, and mailing board books, we were able to upload all relevant reports and content into Boardable in just under one week,” said Daleska.
Additional benefits of the Boardable platform that Shonda and the BBBS board have seen include:
- A cost-savings from not needing to print, bind, and ship board books
- Additional time savings from not having to manually QA and go back and edit reports if necessary
- The ability to change things in real-time in Boardable
- Having access to all documentation and contents in a single place
- The ability to produce a board book despite staff working remotely
“The Agenda Builder is a feature that has been very helpful. Previously, we were sending out agendas in a Word document. The slightest change meant revising and resending, often multiple times. With Boardable, is much more flexible. We found a template we liked and can input the agenda items directly. The times are included as well so everyone knows exactly how many minutes they have for each item,” Daleska shared.
“Boardable has been incredibly user-friendly, easy to use, and great for our team. We are very appreciative of the support team and how responsive they’ve been. I would definitely recommend Boardable to anyone who is looking to increase efficiency and to cut back on manual processes before board meetings.”
Want to know how your nonprofit board of directors and staff can be more productive and efficient through the use of technology? With Boardable’s board software and meeting tools, you can centralize board information and communications, where everything (and everyone) is just a couple of clicks away. Click below to get started with Boardable.
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