Community Meeting

Community meetings encourage togetherness and provide a perfect setting for sharing ideas and opinions. A successful community meeting should have actionable goals; hence, it's a great idea to use a meeting template. The template should outline the topics to discuss so that you don't waste time discussing what's not important.

However, it can be hard to know what you should include in your community meeting template if you have many things to talk about or have never prepared a template before.

To ease the process for you, we will give you an example of a community meeting template that you can use in a formal community setup. Keep reading.

How to Use This Template for Your Community Meeting

A community meeting brings different people in the community together, so it should be well prepared. Here is a detailed description of the above template and how you can use it in your next community meeting.

Introduction and Chitchat

An introduction is the most important part of any meeting because it prepares everyone for the meeting. Whether you are holding the meeting online or offline, you can hold a chit chat session to interact with others briefly as you wait for everyone to settle.

Here are a few tips on introduction and chitchat part of a community meeting:

• Hold a small talk- you may spend a few minutes talking about things unrelated to the meeting, such as family and weather.
• Welcome everyone - when everyone arrives at the meeting, welcome them formally and thank them for attending.

Here's a sample welcome:

"I really appreciate everyone for attending today's meeting. I know you all had busy schedules but still made time to come. We have much to handle today, so we should start right away."

• Introduce the members present, or allow everyone to introduce themselves if there is enough time.
• Mention apologies - apologies may not be necessary for every meeting. However, you may consider mentioning those who send their apologies, especially if they are active community members and hold a certain position in the meeting.

Expectations and Purpose

What is the meeting's agenda? Some people prefer to supply copies to members; others use projectors, while others will simply add a huge copy on the wall.

Whatever methods you use, the community members should be made aware of the meeting's agenda way before the actual meeting. The meeting's purpose should be mentioned again when the meeting starts to remind everyone and inform members who might not be aware of the theme of the meeting.

The purpose of your community meeting could be to:

• Sort conflicts
• Discuss about an arising issue
• Discuss important information
• Exchange opinions and recommendations

Other than the purpose, you should also communicate the expectations of each community member. This could be the suggestions you expect and the level of commitment you need from the members. If you have special roles for some members, communicate them early so everyone can get ready.

Discussion Points

The purpose of the community meeting can be broken down into different discussion points. The members can also add on other points they think should be discussed during the meeting.

Members have the freedom to mention any burning issues that should be discussed. But due to time limitations, you can discuss only a few and postpone the less urgent needs.

Action Items

An action item is a documented task, activity, or action that must be done. The discussion points form the main agenda for the meeting, and they should be discussed and concluded.

An action item is like a solution to any issues/problems that you have discussed in the meeting.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating action items for a community meeting:

• The name of the action plan
• Date of execution, implementation, and conclusion
• A description of the action item
• Possible risks of the action plan
• The person to execute the action

Some helpful tips for creating action items include the following:

• Begin with a verb to avoid confusion
• Be concise(straight to the point)
• Write with simple words for everyone to understand
• Consider the resources needed to accomplish the action plan

Resources

You need some resources to accomplish your action plans. These can include money and labor if you will hire people. The resources should be readily available because without them, and it might be hard to accomplish them.

Together with the community members, you should highlight the resources you will require and agree on how you will acquire and utilize them.

How to Make Your Community Meeting More Successful

Holding a community meeting is not an easy task considering that every member has a tight working schedule. While a template plays a vital role in creating a direction for meetings, much is involved in making the meeting successful. Here are additional tips to make your community meeting more successful.

• Prepare everyone for the meeting - send notifications in time, including an agenda for the discussions.
• Highlight the meeting's agenda/purposes and the desired action items for each agenda.
• Publicize it well- everyone should be aware of the meeting, time, and schedule. You can send emails or use any other effective method of communication.
• Assign roles- a meeting can have countless roles that should be planned well. Assigning roles is part of planning. Depending on the size of your meeting, you may have facilitators, recorders, listeners, and many others.
• Find a good chairman/leader who can lead the meeting well without bias
• Encourage the meeting attendees to contribute to the topics.
• Rehearse if there is a presentation or report to be given. Rehearsing saves time during the actual meeting time and gives you confidence when it's finally time for the presentation.

Final Remarks

The above tips will help you hold and accomplish a community meeting more effectively because you already know the lineup of activities. Don't worry if the format of the above template does not interest you. You can explore our list of 80+ meeting templates and choose the most suitable for your community needs. The goal is to ensure you save time on your meeting and avoid any disastrous topics.