Serving on boards can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling experience – but that doesn’t mean it’s without stress. Maybe you misplaced the minutes from last month’s meeting, or this is the Secretary’s first term, and they aren’t quite sure how to send them out. You may not be sure of what your responsibilities are, and at this point, you’re too afraid to ask. No matter what the reason is, we get it. But hear us out – it doesn’t have to be that way.
Board management software offers a solution to managing your board in one place – before, during, and after your meeting. No more chasing down your Zoom invite, pulling up a separate email to find the minutes, or trying to remember your co-chair’s number so you can ask “When’s that event, again?”
Board management platforms can be used in every industry, including nonprofits, healthcare, education, technology, and other associations such as sports. A watertight board management strategy can transform and future-proof your boards at scale. Using board management software is one way to do that. Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of pieces involved in being on a board. The agenda, the minutes, ensuring compliance, and all while pushing to advance the goal of your organization? It can feel overwhelming.
When we say that using a board management software “future-proofs” your boards, we mean that you’ll never want to go back to not having one ever again. Find everything that has to do with your board all in the same place, and never panic over a lost email ever again.
Board Portal Software
Board Portal Software can be one of the best investments you can make in your board of directors. In today’s digital age, the old methods of paper-based records and emails cannot keep up. That’s why you need board portal software that provides a secured virtual place for members of the board to access and share information and materials. Furthermore, this kind of technology can also enable you to streamline all the administrative processes that go on behind the scenes and are needed in order to make your board meetings successful. Ultimately this means less stress, more time to plan, and better data-driving decisions.
However, once you’ve decided to invest in a platform, how do you know which one is best? When it comes to doing a board portal comparison, you need to know what the best board portals actually look like.
For starters, excellent board reporting software keeps track of your attendance and meeting records for you. This key element of compliance should be available at the click of a button. Also, board management software should be easy to access and provide plenty of technical support. Ultimately, the best board portal software should include most, if not all of the following features:
- Digital Board Packet – Get your board members all the information they need before they arrive at the meeting.
- Smart Meetings – Utilize built-in virtual conferencing with simple scheduling features.
- Minutes Maker – Effortlessly record and share all meeting information.
- Discussions – Streamline communication, and don’t clutter your inbox.
- e-Signature – Upload documents, request signatures, and confirm document status, all from one convenient location.
- Polls & Votes – Encourage your board members to take action and use their voice to drive decision-making with polling features.
- Reporting – Analyze critical statistics through automated reporting to optimize the health of your board.
Nonprofit Board Management Software
Boards are also a vital component of many nonprofits. These types of organizations have their own specific requirements. The ideal nonprofit board portal will go above and beyond meeting them. One of the most important resources an organization has is time. This is even more true for nonprofits. Fortunately, non profit board management software can help you save that time in more ways than one. That’s why one of the most important characteristics of a board portal for nonprofits is its ease of use. With the right software, you can focus on achieving your mission instead of managing a variety of different software and training volunteers to use all those tools.
These are the top 3 features that you should keep in mind when looking at investing in a nonprofit board management software solution:
- Virtual Video – In the nonprofit world, communication is everything. You need to make sure that everyone is on the same page. With the rise of virtual meetings, we have all learned how helpful and how frustrating these platforms can be. Instead of having to rely on yet another tool, great board management software makes it easy to host virtual meetings from one single platform.
- Document Center – The decisions that your board makes are mission-critical. It is absolutely crucial that they have the data and information they need to make accurate decisions as they lead your organization. A document center makes it easy for your board members to access all the relevant information so that they can be informed and prepared to participate.
- Agenda Builder – Nobody likes having to work from scratch every time. An agenda builder feature saves you time by providing customizable templates that dramatically reduce the time it takes to create these agendas. Ideally, this agenda builder would also be integrated with the other features in your software so that attendees can see exactly what documents and information they need before arriving.
Board Management Software Benefits
As we have already seen, there are many board management software benefits. These benefits demonstrate that using software to support your board governance is a cost-effective choice.
First, a board portal gives your board members more access to the capabilities they need. Instead of having documents that all have to be corralled before every meeting, board management software provides a single digital location to access all these features. Need to review an organizational policy? It’s on the platform. Want to review records from the last meeting? It’s on the platform. That’s the power of a board portal. Furthermore, the best board portals provide mobile access which means that your directors can access this information any time anywhere.
Second, board software can help you save time by speeding up the preparation time for virtual meetings and hybrid meetings. With the right software tools, administrators can quickly get meetings scheduled and then distribute the relevant information in just a few minutes. Furthermore, board members can use the same tool to ensure that they’ve completed all of their assignments. This results in more board member engagement. Overall, board management software allows you to spend less time talking and more time taking action that counts.
Third, board portals increase your security. Boards often consume and analyze information that is highly confidential to your organization. The risks of sharing these documents over email or free online file-sharing services are real and could result in harm to your business or nonprofit. The best board portals recognize that and provide SSL encryption and enforced password policies to keep your information safe and secure.
Finally, a board portal can give leaders the ability to enforce better governance. Stop relying on the features of a virtual meeting software that was never designed to meet the unique needs of a board of directors. Instead, invest in board software that incorporates virtual meetings, document management, chat conversations, and digital voting into one easy-to-use tool.
Board Management Software Pricing
At Boardable, we have personally seen and struggled with the challenges of traditional board management processes. That’s why we have created a powerful, comprehensive board management software with all the features you could ever need. Our platform is built for board leaders and is specifically designed to support virtual and hybrid collaboration. Our software is versatile, and when it comes to board management software pricing, we carry on the principle.
We provide a variety of plans with different levels of features to suit your specific needs. At the start is our Free plan. The Free plan can get you started straight away on your journey to paperless board management. The next level up is the Essentials plan. This adds more features and is a more comprehensive solution. After that come the Professional plan and the Enterprise plan, which also have additional features and functionalities.
To learn more about the features that each plan offers, click here.
Sometimes, the best way to learn about a new piece of software is to see it in action. Boardable offers you two ways to do this. You could sign up for free and start using the software yourself. On the other hand, you could also book a live demo with one of our trusted solutions consultants. This demo will give you a customized, real-time overview of how our platform can help you and your board succeed.
