Advantages of Online Meetings for your Nonprofit

When you are used to meeting in person, it is easy to see the disadvantages of online meetings. You are missing out on a lot of body language and other non-verbal cues. Yet the sudden shift to everything online since March 2020 has demonstrated many of the advantages of online meetings.

No commute

Photo by nappy from Pexels

​Not having to travel to the meeting often means that more people join your meeting. You are also able to have people from across the country and around the world participate in your meeting or event.

I led a webinar for a local association recently which normally has 40-50 regulars each month at their workshops. During the webinar they had twice as many as normal including people from across the country as well as Italy and Kenya! This was quite a change for an organization used to serving the metro DC area.

​You also do not need to worry about bad weather impacting your meeting (unless a storm knocks out your internet connection of course!)

Saves money

​Not only do your participants save time and money on travel, your organization saves money. You do not need to rent a meeting space and serve the group food. You will need to pay for an online meeting hosting service such as Zoom or Adobe Connect as well as perhaps an online collaboration tool such as Mural or Miro. These costs, however, will be substantially less than what you would have paid for in food, AV rental, printing and other costs of the meeting.

It also makes it easier for your nonprofit's volunteers participate. They do not have to donate travel time in addition to the actual time in the meeting or event.

Using technology to your advantage

There are lots of ways that the technology itself can help you run an effective meeting.

• Lost? If you are concerned that participants are lost, you can pull everyone's attention back by sharing your screen.
• Share resources: You can immediately share resources by popping links into the chat.
• Record it! Being able to record the session makes it available to those who couldn’t attend live.
• Small Groups: When you have people separate into small groups the shift into and out of groups is pretty seamless - “no standing in front of the room saying - if I could have your attention please.”
• Mute all: You also have greater control over people’s participation with the mute and mute all options.
• The Chat: If side conversations pop up - you can watch them in the chat. With the group chat function you can hear from many more people than if you just rely on reports out from groups. Introverts may be more likely to contribute via written chat than out loud. 

Want to learn more about how to effectively facilitate online meetings? Join my four-week group coaching program. A new cohort starts in September.