How to Run a Meeting

Oct 9, 2018

Every meeting needs a facilitator! The facilitator is responsible for helping a group of people achieve their objectives for a meeting or call, and for making the meeting inclusive and rewarding for everyone. This is what you need to know to plan your meeting

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Why should your Indivisible group hold meetings? Bringing together members of your Indivisible group through recurring meetings is a great way to build deeper relationships with one another, engage and communicate with all your members, collectively plan for the future, and put the fun in organizing fundamentals. 

Before the Meeting 

Holding a successful and eventful meeting requires groups to plan ahead. Below you can find the various items that you should consider and complete before you hold a meeting.  

Determine the type of meeting

Some groups may need more than one type of meeting to succeed. Here are a few things to consider if your group has a need to deal with different items in various meetings.

Steering or leadership meetings – Your group may need a small number of leaders to meet separately to help plan out group meetings and actions, develop long-term strategy, and make some operational decisions. As you’re building a leadership team, ask yourself these questions to make sure you are modeling progressive values:

  • Is the leadership team diverse? It’s important for your leadership team to reflect your group’s values as well as its membership.
  • Are these leaders making a respected and important contribution to the group? People who have been involved for a while, or who have stepped up to lead significant parts of your group’s work, may have earned the respect of their peers.
  • Does your team reflect complementary perspectives and roles? For example, you may want to discuss your media strategy as a leadership team, so incorporating your press contact might be a good idea.

Create sub-groups or committees – Empowered committees with the responsibility to lead areas of your group’s work, like media or action planning, can be a great way to move things forward. 

Full group meetings – The key here is to run efficient meetings, with a tight agenda and well-organized logistics. Concentrate on keeping everyone in your group informed and involved. Read more about these meetings below.

Social events and parties – A lot of what draws people to local groups in the first place is civic engagement: being part of a social group with their family, friends, and neighbors. With large groups it’s particularly important to have social events, because otherwise the members of your group may never get to know one another—and those relationships are what will keep your group strong and keep people participating.

Setting up a time & date

In order to ensure high attendance and a successful meeting,, it’s important to be mindful of your group member’s meeting availability and limitations. Before you schedule a meeting, check in with others and make sure that the date and time selected aligns with the schedule of the majority of participants. If you’re planning to hold a recurring meeting, verify that the selected meeting time will work for group members in the months to come, and if needed, disclose the next several meetings with as much leeway as possible. 

Meeting objectives

A good meeting requires planning. You should think about the purpose and objectives when planning the meeting. A helpful framework for outlining these items is the ‘Know, Feel, Do’ model. Simply put:

  • Know: What information does your group need to understand by the end of the meeting?
  • Feel: Why is the information shared, important to the group? 
  • Do: What action items should members be “doing” after the end of the meeting?

This framework can help you determine the core items that should be included in the meeting agenda and the desired outcomes. 

Meeting accessibility 

Providing an accessible meeting space and practices should be an essential aspect of the meeting planning process. As you prepare for the meeting, you should be considering the following items: 

  • What standards are in place to protect and respect an individual’s gender identity and sexuality?
  • What visibility, acoustic, mobility, technical or other items are required to ensure all attendees are needed to ensure people’s accessibility needs are met? Not sure of what those needs are? That’s okay, it never hurts to ask with a pre-meeting survey. 
  • Since the start of the COVID pandemic, many groups have chosen to hold their meetings online, but whether the meeting is held in-person or virtually is a decision that should be made by those attending the meeting. In either case, sharing out meeting notes, materials/resources and a recording of the meeting should be shared out whenever possible. This ensures that people with disabilities and people who have scheduling conflicts can experience and fully engage with the meeting.  Before and right after the meeting, the facilitator(s) should communicate how the items stated above will be shared out. For more ideas on virtual events, check out our Hosting Virtual Events page.

Establish roles

Although one facilitator can run most meetings, there are three roles you might invite people to fill:

  • Facilitator: introduces/closes, keeps in scope/on time, draws out participation.
  • Scribe: writes or types notes to distribute later.
  • Troubleshooting: handles logistical problems so the facilitator can remain focused.

Recruitment

For one-time and recurring meetings, recruitment should always take place. People are busy with work, responsibilities, and well, life, and it helps to be reminded when an important meeting is coming up. 

  • When considering your recruitment strategy, you should consider where members are most likely able to see and commit to attending the meeting. Is that Facebook? By calling them? Maybe through email or text? If you’re unsure, and you have the time and capacity, the best approach is to try them all! This will help you understand how and where people prefer to be communicated to. If possible, recruitment should start at least one month in advance, and continue up to the days leading up to the meeting. 
  • Sign-in sheets or forms are a useful tactic to account attendance and collecting up to date contact information.  

Running the meeting 

If your group hasn’t done this already, you should all discuss and agree on group norms is an important step to lay out, what your group stands for, how group’s work and decisions will be carried out, what members can expect from one other, and what practices are needed to ensure everyone feels respected and valued in your group. 

Icebreakers

Icebreakers are a fun interactive way to encourage engagement, help members to get to know each other, and create community. Some examples of icebreakers are:

  • Two truths and a lie
  • Find 5-10 things you have in common with a partner or a group of people
  • Favorite movie, TV show or song 
  • Scavenger hunt 

How to ask questions 

Throughout the meeting pPeople may bring up lots of things—including good ideas—that are not related to what’s on the agenda. If something off topic is raised, ask if you can put it in the parking lot and come back to it during the Q&A section of the meeting. 

Keeping meetings on track 

Running a great meeting takes skill and experience, but there are a few general rules you can use to help make it a success.

  • Think about what you’re going to say and how you want group members to participate. Try to start on time, move efficiently through your agenda, and end on time.
  • Aim for balance. If some group members don’t have much to say, try to ask questions to help them participate. If someone has been talking a lot, consider asking them to hold tight so the group can hear from everyone. Be mindful of power dynamics that might make it more difficult for some people to speak up.
  • Thinking through questions ahead of time. Part of having a successful meeting is being prepared to answer tough questions and keep your meeting on track. 

After the meeting 

Send out meeting notes, materials/resources, recordings and transcripts of the meeting through the group’s preferred method of communication. Not all of the items stated are always feasible, but whenever possible, sharing these items can help members feel included and informed after the meeting. State the actions items that will take place once the meeting has ended and promote any upcoming events that members should be participating in. Finally, the follow-up memo is an opportunity to remind members to recruit new members and advertise actions or events.

If you have an opportunity, reach out to individual members, members who are new, and members that haven’t attended meetings in a while. Generating and sustaining a strong outreach operation helps to immerse and maintain members of your group.  

Template meeting agendas

Regular meeting

When drafting the meeting agenda, you should keep in mind the amount of time that should be spent on each section. 

Intro 

  • Introductions 
  • Group norms 
  • Logistics 
  • Meeting overview and goals

Icebreaker (If time allows)

Group Priorities 

  • Key updates and successes of campaigns and advocacy work.
  • Top priorities
  • Upcoming actions and/or events
  • Items for discussions 

Q&A

Close-out 

  • Action items for members and next steps 
  • Next meeting information  

Sub-committees & Steering Committee/Leadership Meeting

Intro 

  • Introductions 
  • Group norms 
  • Logistics 
  • Meeting overview and goals
  • (If time allows) Icebreaker 

Updates

  • Discuss progress updates from last meeting
  • Identify obstacles that have arisen since the last meeting
  • Determine what changes, if any, need to be made
  • Brainstorm as needed

Q&A 

Close-out

  • Action items for members and next steps 
  • Next meeting information