BREAZE

Hosting a good meeting is an important skill to develop. Many Climate Action Groups have fallen over because their meetings were too long, too unfocused, too depressing or dominated by a couple of vocal members. Your regular meetings are the focus point for many members to find out what others have been up to, and to attract new members.  They’ve got to be worthwhile, and they’ve got to be fun.

•  Set regular meetings in advance. Once a month generally allows for work to be done between meetings while being frequent enough to feel like a regular meeting. By allowing people to book meetings into their diary in advance, people can make sure they are available to attend.

•  Set an agenda for each meeting, and circulate it in advanced to those attending. That way people know what will be discussed and can come prepared. Allocate a time for each agenda item. At the end of each meeting, flag a few suggestions for the next agenda. Make sure your agenda is action focused. If you need to use the meeting for information sharing, make sure the information is new and relevant. Too many Climate Action Groups have burnt themselves out with meetings that continually spend the first hour talking about how depressing the latest climate science is. If people want to have broader discussions, suggest they make a time for a separate meeting for interested people to attend.

Make sure you have someone to cover the following roles:

Facilitator to keep everyone on track and keep the meeting to the agenda

Time-keeper to make sure the meeting doesn’t go over time. Meetings should be less than two hours. Any longer, and you’ll find that attendance starts to drop off.

Minute-taker it’s important to keep a brief record of what decisions were made at the meeting, and who was going to do what. You’ll be surprise how many people forget what they committed to doing at the meeting. Make sure you email the minutes to everyone afterwards.

Don’t forget to have fun. If all of your meetings are the same, it can get a little dull. Try inviting a guest speaker on a topic you are all interested in, or invite someone from another Climate Action Group or environmental group to talk about what they are doing in their communities. You might even want to make some of your meetings social events to keep people enthusiastic. Some Climate Action Groups hold every fourth meeting at the pub. Others meet before going for a bike ride together.

For more information about hosting effective Climate Action Group meetings, see the following links:

http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/climate_action_groups.pdf

http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/tCAresource_effectivefacln.pdf