Welcome to December! Before you know it, we’ll be singing “Auld Lang Syne” to bid farewell to 2015 and to say hello to 2016! Hopefully, by now, you have developed your 2016 Annual Operating Plan and Budget so that you’re ready to roll come January 1. And, if you haven’t already, it’s time to have your Board review and adopt your Plan and Budget.
Many of you are on a regular schedule for developing, reviewing, and adopting plans. But if you’re not, and if you don’t have the planning calendar mapped out, this is a good time to develop a plan-to-plan. Take a look at TREC’s sample Board Planning Calendar. You can customize the calendar for your organization, and then distribute it so everyone knows what to complete by when.
It is also important to set clear expectations on the role of the Board in your planning process and in monitoring your progress. Check out TREC’s Organizational Accountability Cycle to see which aspects of the planning cycle we recommend that the Board drive versus which aspects they approve or simply review. Setting up an expectation and a schedule for consistent approval and review of your plans helps you keep the organization on track towards meeting your goals.
I hope you have been able to take advantage of our four-part Board Training webinar mini-series. We have completed three of the four sessions: Board Development, Engagement and Recruitment, Board Leadership: Maximizing Impact and Sanity, and Unlocking the Mystery: Financial Management for Boards. The recordings of these three webinars are available on TREC’s Resource Library. The final session of the Board Training webinar mini-series, Board Friend-raising, will take place this Thursday. This session should be really informative, and I hope you will be able to join us.
I wish you all the best as you wrap up 2015 and prepare to launch 2016, your most successful year yet!
Cheers,
Megan Seibel
TREC Executive Director