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A meeting agenda template for volunteer teams

Caleb Fairbanks · · 8 minute read

Most volunteer meetings do not run long because people are chatty. They run long because nobody wrote down what the meeting was for. A meeting agenda template fixes most of that, and it does not need to be clever. It needs a purpose, a list of items with times next to them, a name beside each item and a space at the bottom for who is doing what next.

Below is the template I use for volunteer teams, ready to copy. After it come notes on filling in each part, a worked example, three shapes for three kinds of meeting and the message to send beforehand.

The meeting agenda template

Copy this into a shared document, an email or the notes app on your phone. Delete the lines you do not need. It is plain text on purpose: it pastes anywhere and prints on one page.

[TEAM NAME] MEETING
Date: ______  Start: ______  End: ______
Place or call link: _____________________
Chair: ______  Notes: ______  Timekeeper: ______

PURPOSE (one line)
By the end of this meeting we will have: ________________

BEFORE YOU COME
Read or bring: _________________________________________

AGENDA
Time   Item                              Owner    Type
0:00   Welcome, purpose, check the list  Chair    .
0:05   Actions from last time            Notes    Inform
0:10   _______________________________   ______   Decide
0:25   _______________________________   ______   Discuss
0:40   _______________________________   ______   Inform
0:50   Parking lot: what is left over    Chair    .
0:55   Actions, owners, next date        Chair    .
1:00   End

PARKING LOT (raised, not covered today)
1. _____________________________________________________
2. _____________________________________________________

ACTIONS
What                          Who          By when
__________________________    ________     ________
__________________________    ________     ________

NEXT MEETING: __________________

Four parts of that page do most of the work: the purpose line, the Type column, the parking lot and the actions table. The rest is bookkeeping.

How to fill in each part

Purpose: one line, a finished sentence

"By the end of this meeting we will have..." forces you to name an outcome, not a topic. "Discuss the fall festival" is a topic. "Agreed the festival date, picked a lead for each booth and set a spending limit" is an outcome. If you cannot finish the sentence, you may not need a meeting. An email might do.

Times, not just order

Put a time next to every item, either the clock time or minutes from the start. You will not hit them exactly. The point is that everyone, including you, can see when the list is too long. If your items add up to ninety minutes and the meeting is an hour, the agenda has done its first job: you cut before the meeting instead of overrunning during it.

My rough rule for volunteer teams: a decision people care about takes at least fifteen minutes. An update takes five. Anything new and complicated deserves its own meeting.

Owner: one name per item

Every item gets a person who introduces it, has the facts and proposes what happens next. It is often not the chair. Spreading items around shortens meetings, because owners prepare, and it gets more voices into the room.

Type: decide, discuss or inform

This is the column most agendas leave out, and the one I would keep if I could keep only one.

  • Decide: we leave with a decision. The owner brings a proposal, not a blank page.
  • Discuss: we want ideas or reactions. No decision expected today.
  • Inform: someone is passing on news. Questions welcome, debate not.

Labeling items heads off a very common meeting failure, where half the room thinks you are deciding while the other half thinks you are brainstorming. Inform items are also the first candidates for cutting. If it is only news, it can go in the message you send beforehand.

The parking lot

Something will come up that matters but is not on the list. Write it in the parking lot, say out loud that you have done so, and move on. At the end, decide what happens to each item: the next meeting, an email, or one person looking into it. The parking lot only works if people see their item come back. Otherwise it is just a polite place to bury things.

Actions: what, who, by when

The meeting is not finished until each action has all three. "Someone should call the hall" is not an action. "Dana calls the hall about the Saturday booking by Friday" is. Read the list aloud before people stand up. It takes two minutes and saves a week of "I thought you were doing it."

A filled-in example

Here is the template filled in for a monthly food pantry volunteer meeting.

FOOD PANTRY VOLUNTEER TEAM
Date: Tue 12th  Start: 7:00 pm  End: 8:00 pm
Place: back room of the church hall
Chair: Sam  Notes: Ana  Timekeeper: Joel

PURPOSE
By the end of this meeting we will have: a full Saturday
rota for next month and a decision on the new intake form.

BEFORE YOU COME
Read: draft intake form (attached, one page).
Bring: your calendar.

AGENDA
Time   Item                                 Owner   Type
7:00   Welcome, purpose                     Sam     .
7:05   Actions from last month              Ana     Inform
7:10   New intake form: adopt or revise?    Lena    Decide
7:25   Next month's Saturday rota gaps      Joel    Decide
7:40   Ideas for the holiday food drive     Sam     Discuss
7:50   Parking lot                          Sam     .
7:55   Actions, next date                   Sam     .
8:00   End

The rota item is a decision, not a discussion, because it ends with names in boxes. If your team plans shifts this way, the layout in the volunteer schedule template slots straight into that agenda item. The holiday food drive is a discussion on purpose: nobody is ready to decide anything yet, and saying so out loud keeps it to ten minutes.

Three shapes for three kinds of meeting

One template, three shapes. Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting argues that different meetings need different structures, rather than one long monthly marathon that tries to do everything. It is written for companies, but the idea travels well to a church committee or a youth soccer board.

Meeting Length What goes on the agenda What stays off
Quick huddle, before an event 10 to 20 min Who is where, what has changed, one safety note Anything that needs debate
Monthly team meeting 45 to 75 min Actions review, two or three decisions, one discussion Updates that could be an email
Debrief, after an event 30 to 45 min What worked, what did not, what we would change, who writes it down Blame, and planning the next event in detail

The huddle barely needs paper. Three lines on a whiteboard by the door will do. The debrief works best with the same few questions in the same order every time, so people arrive ready to answer them. The monthly meeting is where the full template earns its keep.

Sending the agenda out

Send it two to four days ahead. Earlier and people forget; later and the item owners cannot prepare. Attach anything people need to read, and mention it in the first lines, because nobody opens an attachment they do not know about.

Here is a message you can paste into an email or the group chat:

Hi all, the agenda for Tuesday's meeting (7:00 to 8:00 pm,
back room) is below.

We need to leave with two things: next month's Saturday rota
filled, and a yes or no on the new intake form.

Please read the draft form before Tuesday (attached, one page)
and bring your calendar.

Can't make it? Reply with your Saturday availability and any
comments on the form, and we'll count you in.

Agenda:
[paste agenda here]

Thanks,
Sam

The "can't make it" line matters more than it looks. It turns absent people into contributors, and it stops a decision being reopened next month by someone who missed the meeting.

Running the meeting from the agenda

An agenda only helps if somebody treats it as a clock. That is the timekeeper's job, and it is a good first job for a newer volunteer. Agree at the start that they will say "five minutes left on this one" and that the chair will act on it.

When an item runs over, the chair has three honest choices and should say which one out loud: take five more minutes and cut something later, move the item to the parking lot, or hand it to two people to sort out and report back. Letting it run on in silence is the fourth choice, and it is the one that wrecks the last half hour.

End on time even if items remain. People who trust that your meetings end at 8:00 keep coming. People who got home at 9:15 last month start finding reasons not to.

Agenda problems and quick fixes

  • Every meeting overruns. The agenda is too long. Cap it at two decisions and move updates into the pre-meeting message.
  • Decisions keep coming back. Write each decision into the notes in one sentence and read it back before people leave.
  • The same three people do all the talking. Give items to quieter members to own, and ask each owner to go around the room for one-line reactions.
  • Nobody reads the attachments. Keep pre-reads to one page and name them in the first lines of the message.
  • Actions go nowhere. Open every meeting with last time's actions, one by one. It is mildly awkward exactly once.

Some of what surfaces in a team meeting belongs in a quieter conversation with one person afterward; these one-on-one meeting questions are a decent place to start. For this week, copy the template, fill in only the purpose line for your next meeting and send it to one other person on the team with a single question: "Is this what we need to leave with?" A printable copy lives in the toolkit alongside the minutes template.

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