We are excited to announce the release of Board Management – a board of directors management tool.
Throughout the years we’ve worked to design, build and market all kinds of crazy projects, working on systems like a nation-wide auction site to help for-profit schools auction off extra classroom space in the high end tech education market (that’s a mouthful) or creating and supporting a social network for stock and options traders.
Our design-work has spanned the gamut, from a local business, all the way to clients that have been featured on Shark Tank and other notable national media.
And from an online marketing perspective we’ve helped some of the largest software vendors get their products in your hands.
With Board Management, we’re able to combine all of this experience, into a product that meets a HUGE need in the non-profit space while at the same time continuing to improve our own skills in the digital and Internet world.
Board Management History
Harry approached me a little over a two years ago with the idea for Board Management and at first – I must admit, I wasn’t thrilled. Having little direct experience at the time with non-profits directly (outside of web development) I didn’t see the need. But, slowly, after seeing what it’s like behind-the-scenes at a number of non-profits, I realized how necessary his idea was – a tool that solves many of the problems Boards deal with when communicating internally, communicating to their executive director (and vice-versa) as well as organizing the underlying organization.
So we got to work.
After about a year of development, after countless hours of design and programming – we did a quiet test – a private beta. We opened up slowly to personal friends and contacts in the industry and our product was well received. We mapped out some additional next steps, updates, bug-fixes and a marketing plan and again got to work.
And last week I’m excited to say we’ve officially launched live Board Management.com – the first of it’s kind software-as-a-service that caters to Boards of Directors.
What is Board Management Board of Directors Software
It’s packed full o’features, but ultimately Board Management helps rescue people at non-profits.
Being on a Board of Directors can be an interesting experience – at least it was for me coming from a small business/entrepreneurial background – things are disorganized, communication is poor at best, no one knows where any files are, etc – Board Management solves a lot of these issues and provides a central tool to structure communications and daily activities at a Board/non-profit.
The Board President – probably the second most influential person at any non-profit, must steer the ship so-to-speak, and corral ideas, materials, files, meetings – into a direction and work alongside the Executive Director and Board to sign off on a strategy. It takes the input of dozens or more people to pull this off. But, how is this currently done?
Right now things are messy in the non-profit world.
Many Board Meetings throughout the world are transcribed by the secretary manually. Yes, they’re hand written. Then it’s a combination of back/forth that happens (after these notes are converted to a digital format) dispersed to the rest of the board members and executive directors, and then everyone hopes – that a copy is stored somewhere. It’s inconsistent. Many organizations even forget to ‘cc the correct members and committees on important email messages.
Board Management simplifies this. Board Meetings are set up, and meeting minutes are stored. You can even type them and save them during the meeting. Simple, and guided.
For individual board members, that might not have a clear titled role – Board Management allows you to easily see, all in one place – who those strangers staring across from you are – their bio and message them all quickly, securely, in one place – simple as email and is stored for the future.
There are literally hundreds of use-cases where Board Management can make the lives of anyone on a non-profit board of directors’ lives easier, and will allow them to get more done quicker to further their organizations’ mission.
Where Board Management Is Headed
I’m excited that we have nearly 100 organizations already actively using the system and am as equally excited about this as the announcement of the CWA – Community Web Award – a grant we created alongside the Southwest Florida Community Foundation – to provide websites, marketing, and Board Management licenses to non-profits in need in Southwest Florida. We launched the CWA last week, in conjunction with the official public launch of Board Management.
We’re already talking with many partners to help bring Board Management to a national audience and are really excited by the potential – all while providing a tool that meets a massive need in this so-deserving space.
As we grow and improve Board Management, we will apply many of the more advanced techniques we’re learning to all of our client projects and believe that it will help us grow and improve the service we offer to our clients.