#1 most frequent
United States of America
100.0%7 installations of 7
What is Boardable?
Boardable headquartered in Indianapolis offers their eponymous board portal and board management application.
Categories & Use Cases
Who Buys & Uses Boardable
Boardable--A Non-Profit's Dream Come True!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Boardable has coordinated the restructuring of our Board and made it easier for our Board to meet and become more engaged during the pandemic. We now see the value in using a management platform to keep us organized and productive. I highly recommend to non-profit Boards to consider using Boardable if their goal is to expand the engagement and effectiveness of their Board of Directors.
Pros
- Organize and execute Board & Committee meetings through the "Meetings" which allows you to build your agenda, attach documents, create minutes, and send out a summary of the meeting once completed.
- Provide a very versatile Document Center where you can archive all types of documents for current and future use.
- Polls, Tasks, & Decision-making features. These tools allow for broadcasting to members at large or to committees important information to be acted upon. It also keeps a record of responses.
- Reports--this is an area we are just beginning to appreciate since it provides overviews of board member engagement and progress made within committees and the board at large.
- People Directory--an invaluable tool for orienting new board members to current members as well as allowing for board members to contact each other.
- Goal Setting: this is a tool we are just starting to use. It allows for the tracking of progress for board projects and/or fundraising.
Cons
- Spotlight bandwidth--our organization has a large board (26 members) and we encountered video issues at large meetings. In all fairness to Boardable, this was prior to the latest Spotlight upgrade as well as some of the issues had to do with users not following recommendations and/or not having a strong internet connection.
- You cannot deposit completed minutes directly into the document center. As it stands, once a meeting's minutes are published the minutes stay with the meeting then are stored on the "Past" meeting page. It would be nice to have the option to save the minutes directly to the document center for that particular board mtg or committee meeting.
- Sending notice of published meeting minutes to people who were not included in the original meeting. It would be ideal to allow all board members to receive published meeting notes to review who may not be associated with that group.
Most Important Features
- Agenda Building features--it organizes meetings and provides a quick turnaround for minute building and publishing.
- Spotlight--is pretty robust for smaller group meetings and for larger meetings Boardable provides a zoom integration. This is a nice choice if your board is used to using zoom or is concerned about bandwidth issues.
- Dashboard--allows a clear overview of your particular group interactions, upcoming meetings, and goals, and allows a box to post unique links or documents. We use it to post our strategic map, along with the agency's organizational chart, and other general lists.
- Discussions--this is a great feature for generating and/or continuing discussion on pertinent topics that need further action.
- Directory--I find this feature practical and handy for looking up contact info on board members and/or getting to know their background.
Return on Investment
- Boardable enabled our NP board to continue to meet during the pandemic and in the process helped us discover that we can accomplish more by using a digital platform to assimilate and store important documents, discussions, and tasks.
- I don't know the exact cost savings we gained but from a practical perspective using Boardable has saved tons of paper-generated reports, emails, and time-consuming staff activities. Boardable's fees are reasonable and provide affordable tiers to meet your agency's needs.
- I believe Boardable has taken our large board's engagement up a notch or two by providing the means by which board members can interact outside of in-person meetings.
Alternatives Considered
OnBoard Board Management Software, Govenda (formerly BoardBookit) and Azeus Convene
Other Software Used
Thinkific, Canva, MeetFox, MailerLite
Usability
Highly recommend Boardable!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Boardable as an important board management tool to schedule meetings, organize documents, start discussions, and maintain an up-to-date people directory. Boardable offers a ‘one-stop shop’ for all of the information we need and helps make board members more effective in their fiduciary roles for the Foundation. The Boardable tool has offered five key results for us: 1) time savings; 2) streamlined agenda building; 3) more accountability; 4) access anywhere; and 5) better virtual and in-person meetings.
Pros
- Streamlined agenda building: Instead of spending time sending emails and attachments, I can easily build and share an Agenda with documents appended to specific agenda items. This keeps everyone organized and informed.
- Accountability: I can see when board members log into the platform and keep track of who has read which content for increased transparency and accountability.
- Real-time edits and updates: As things change or need to be added to an agenda, I can easily make edits and share these changes with board members. I can send them an email on the platform to remind them of new documents or information related to the board meeting.
Cons
- We have created a board policy & governance manual and made it a meeting with agenda so we all have easy access to all that information. It would be amazing for Boardable to offer a policy document tool like it that's easier to manage, but this was their suggestion for setting it up for now.
- Being able to add the time zone where the in-person will be held would be helpful rather than just where the person sets as their time zone.
Most Important Features
- Meeting Agenda
- Document repository
- On-the-go access
Return on Investment
- n/a
Usability
Boardable is an asset for nonprofit volunteer management
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use it for our complete volunteer platform/portal. We use a significant portion of the product to help with: Meetings - the product allows us to poll for best dates and times,
schedule meetings, build agendas with board packets, and take minutes, and
the best part is easily integrated with Zoom. The poll function allows us to conduct easy and secure voting for our board members. The document section allows us to have a central location for all corporate documents the Board needs to have access to.
Pros
- Meeting Scheduling
- Agenda and meeting packet building
- Improved centralized communications
Cons
- Meeting scheduling can be wonky with polling for a date
- A lot of the most valuable features are at a higher price point beyond the basic package.
- Opportunity to improve the minutes builder
Most Important Features
- Ease of use
- Board Agenda/packets
- Meeting scheduling
- Directory
Return on Investment
- Decreased staff time significantly on communicating with the Board/volunteers
- Empowered volunteers to take the lead vs. depending on staff to do the work.
- Provided a secure platform for voting
Other Software Used
Salesforce CMS
Very cost-effective and capable board management solution
Pros
- Scheduling
- Document retention
- Ease of use
- Cost-effectiveness
- Support responsiveness
Cons
- Support is currently offered through a ticketing system, so it does sometimes require an understanding that there may be a delay in getting a response.
- Security features in place are adequate, but I would like to see some form of higher security compliance, such as SOC II or ISO27001.
Return on Investment
- Allows for a quicker turnaround in getting docs to board members.
- Provides a one-stop location for all board proceedings and documents.
- Pricing plans for getting up and running are easily among the best available with similar tools providers.
Alternatives Considered
OnBoard Board Management Software, Directorpoint, BoardEffect and BoardPaq
Other Software Used
Rydoo (formerly Xpenditure), Creately
