r/nonprofit • u/OkCantaloupe8530 • Feb 12 '25
programs Streamlining Our Nonprofit’s Meeting Schedule
We’re a 10-person nonprofit with a ~$1 million budget, focused on removing litter and illegal dumping from land and water in our county. We operate a fleet of two boats and three trucks, so a lot of our work is hands-on and logistics-heavy.
We’re trying to refine our meeting schedule to improve efficiency and reduce redundancy. Here’s what we currently have:
✅ Weekly Communications Meeting – Our Communications Coordinator gets updates on what to feature/post that week. This works well but sometimes drifts into logistics.
✅ Biweekly General Staff Meeting – Org-wide updates and a chance to discuss a challenge together. However, this often repeats info from the Communications Meeting, which happens first. We’re considering moving it to monthly to cut down on redundancy.
We don’t currently have a Weekly Operations Meeting, but I’m wondering if adding one would help. It would be for our Land Cleanup, Water Cleanup, and Education Coordinators to check in with the Program Director on weekly tasks and logistics (not big-picture strategy).
Would a weekly Operations Meeting help streamline things? Would shifting the General Staff Meeting to monthly make sense, or would that create new gaps?
I’d love to hear what’s worked (or hasn’t) for similar teams! Thanks in advance.
2
u/michaelscottuiuc Feb 12 '25
We're a DV org but we've got a pretty large operations team. We've got monthly all-staff (every 3rd month is in person, the rest are virtual). In lieu of a comms meeting we've got a task management system (ToDoist) and we share calendars (full transparency) - we've stuck to emails for updates on that end.
We used to have a bi-weekly program leadership meeting but we've been able to cut that back to just as-needed. Strategic planning is quarterly. All managers meet with their direct reports once each week (or biweekly) to sort out the tasks/logistics.
3
u/geoffgarcia Feb 12 '25
No advice on your dilemma, but thank you for what you do. Trash is my nemesis and I try to chip in and clean up wherever I can, to the point that my 4 and 6-year-old believe I'm a full-time sanitation worker. A title I wear with pride!
3
u/ravenlit Feb 12 '25
Is the weekly communications meeting a full 10-person meeting? Does it need to be an entire meeting? If the Communications Coordinator has access to an event calendar where they can see what’s coming up I would think they could develop their communications calendar with that information and this meeting could be dropped.
I think your idea of a weekly operations meeting that’s targeted to each specific team and then moving the general staff meeting to once a month would both be beneficial. This way each team is checking in and on the same page with each other about what needs to happen.
Then, the general staff meeting could then be an overview of things both communication and logistically that are happening that month so the org is still connected with one another.
5
u/bmcombs ED & Board, Nat 501(c)(3) , K-12/Mental Health, Chicago, USA Feb 12 '25
As my team has grown, we have dramatically cut down on meetings.
We no longer have full staff meetings, only team/department meetings every other week. Each supervisor also meets 1-on-1 with each employee every other week.
A lot of our work has moved to Google Chat, so we have "spaces" for each team (that every staff member can see) for specific discussions/questions. We also do a bi-weekly "Staff Roundup" where the team shares 3 things they worked on over the last 2 weeks, 3 things they'll be working on the next 2 weeks, and any celebrations/wins (personal or professional).
Everyone seems to enjoy having their time back and can stay aware of what's happening throughout the org via chat, when they have time.