financial year

As mentioned in the previous post, you should be starting to plan for the Annual General Meeting (AGM).

Instead of viewing the AGM as an administrative process, view it as an opportunity to promote your organisation.

As such, some ideas for your AGM could include:

  • Using staff to present and provide an overview of major projects, programs or significant events that have occurred throughout the year.
  • Having an interesting guest speaker attend and discuss their personal and inspiring story.  It could even be a representative from another organisation that your organisation has supported and they can discuss what services or programs they offer.
  • If you run a sporting club then try to have a known athlete from that sport attend.  Often the organisations that represent these relevant sports support and encourage the athletes to attend these types of functions as it promotes their sport.
  • Have members of the Board provide an overview of the performance against the strategic plan for the previous year as well as what are the strategic objectives for the following year.

These are some ideas and there could be many more but this post highlights the value you can obtain by planning ahead and developing an interesting AGM.  The benefits of doing this include that it provides a great way to gain new volunteers, recruit or gain interest from potential Board members, show accountability in relation to how donations have been used as well as find new members for your organisation or club.

What is often overlooked is that your organisation has an important role to play in the local community and the AGM gives you the chance to showcase and promote what your organisation does.