Basecamp for Seniors
Basecamp for Board Members
Introduction
Serving on a board comes with plenty of challenges. The real work of researching, discussing, and making decisions about important topics shouldn’t be overshadowed by the administrative work.
This article is for people who serve on boards, but don’t already use Basecamp to help with that. I will show you some common situations people run into and how Basecamp can reduce the stress.
Getting new board members up to speed
Typical scenario:
A new board member joins and lots of old emails and documents need to be forwarded.
Was anything forgotten?
Are there separate email chains about the same topic?
Is there even a single person who has everything?
Assuming the new board member got all the info, it’s still going to be a hassle for them to sort through and make sense of it all. And, it’s definitely a pain for you to get them what they need.
With Basecamp:
When a new board member is added to a Basecamp project, they automatically have access to all of the historical info in that project. You don’t need to hunt down every last email and file — everything’s in Basecamp! Every topic is self-contained and everyone’s comments are preserved in chronological order.
Keeping conversations organized
Typical scenario:
All board members are cc’d on an email about an important topic and a conversation ensues.
When two people reply to the original email, the conversation is forked — each reply is missing the other’s response. And the problems ripple with every additional reply.
If someone forgets to ‘reply all’ and only responds to the sender, the rest of the board doesn’t receive potentially important information.
It’s difficult to review the details of the conversation by reading through eight levels (or more) of quoted replies, with the original email displayed with tiny margins at the very bottom.
With Basecamp:
Anyone can create a message for the entire board. The entire conversation is easily accessible at any time in Basecamp and all replies are kept in chronological order. Board members can receive a notification to let them know there’s been an update.
Staying in the loop
Typical scenario:
Different projects are in progress and you’d like to periodically check on the status.
You could have regular meetings, which take up a lot of time, require coordinating everyone’s schedules, and make it difficult to track progress over time.
You could request weekly email updates. But that’s hard to keep organized and is also difficult to track progress over time.
With Basecamp:
To-do items can be viewed by anyone at anytime. As progress is made, it’s noted right in the to-do and time-stamped. You can even make a comment in someone else’s to-do or ask a question for them to respond to right there. And when a to-do item is completed, it’s marked as done with a big check mark.
There’s even a special feature called a hill chart that visually shows the progress of all the key to-do items for a task. For example, if you’re planning a fundraiser, you can look at the hill chart and instantly see which tasks need attention.
Summary
These are a few of the ways Basecamp can help you as a board member, but there are countless other aspects you will appreciate once you start using Basecamp.
And, if you can manage with just three active projects, you can use Basecamp Personal for free — assuming you don’t have more than 20 board members.
How to contact Dave
If you’re interested in learning more about using Basecamp to help remove some of the stress from your life, call me at (608) 301-5602 to discuss. More info is on my Basecamp for Seniors page (all ages welcome).
Note: I am not affiliated with Basecamp.