I always think of the few weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving as relatively ‘quiet weeks’ relative to the holiday hoopla that comes in December, but it is a very busy time of the year for board work.
It seems that every board I’ve worked with picks these same few weeks to get in quarterly meetings before the end of the year.
Board work has been a worthwhile and purposeful way to stay involved in business and community organizations in early retirement. It’s a terrific way to share skills and experiences that you’ve learned in your working career.
I’m involved with three boards – a corporate board of directors, an executive board for a Big Ten MBA program, and the board for our State Zoo. They all have meetings stacked up in the next couple weeks.
Related: Board Trip to SmallCorp
In addition to the full board meetings themselves, there are smaller finance, governance, and executive committee meetings that happen in preparation. Typically there is a lot of reading in advance, as well. Each board meeting is preceded by a ‘board book’ – a 3-ring binder or PDF pages that need to be downloaded and digested.
Normally, organizations have these meetings spaced out over each quarter, but every early November gets very busy. One November a few years ago, I had to fly from Minneapolis MN to Grand Rapids MI to Madison WI and back to Minneapolis over 72 hours for five different meetings/dinners. This year, all the meetings are being done on Zoom because of the CV19 pandemic. No sense in getting folks together in a board room for a all-day meeting.
Still, even though I don’t have to travel, they will be busy meetings. Fall is typically when most organizations work on budgets for the coming calendar year and do longer-term strategic planning discussions. That makes for some meaty conversation in our online meetings over the next two weeks.
I think I will have stock my home office with some snacks & a few bottles of beer to get through the next few weeks! (Who would know?)
What board work / non-profit volunteer efforts are you involved with?
MrFireStation 
After fiRetirement I immediately joined the Community Foundation that supported the schools in my area, including the HS I retired from. We did direct donations to the schools, funding special projects, scholarships for graduating seniors. Spent a few years there, then moved on. Now I’m President (they had no candidate, threw my hat in the ring 2 minutes before the election, voted against myself, but……) of the Apple Valley Seniors organization. Good stuff.
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That sounds terrific, Randy – congrats, Mr President! I haven’t been involved with a Community Foundation, but I was talking to former AV Mayor Banning about them a couple years ago. He was talking about how incredible the community foundation for Chaska MN was in getting amenities in the city funded. Everyone likes to follow National politics, but the organizations in our own communities probably make a bigger difference.
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