All meetings should have a clear objective and a set agenda. In Isle of Wight / Surry, our monthly Committee Chair meetings have a consistent objective: "Gauge our progress to being Ready to Relay". To keep the meetings focused, the agenda is also consistent:

• Updates from the Event Chair
• For each Committee in turn:
• Last 30 days' accomplishments
• Next 30 days' plans
• Inter-Committee dependencies
• Event Chair: Summarize open action items

Note that to limit the meeting to one hour, only the Committee Chairs report; they summarize the status for their sub-committees.

As for Monthly Meetings (open not just to Team Captains but to everyone), they also follow a consistent agenda:

• Celebrate victories over cancer with a sharing of experiences by survivors;
• Educate with announcements of current interest to Isle of Wight / Surry Relayers;
• Donate to our fundraising goal by sharing what team activities are planned for the next month;
• Motivate by reminding us of what our efforts support by sharing some of the ACS programs Relay For Life funds. (We have a guest speaker from the Division or Region speak on an ACS mission priority.)

We lay out the Monthly Meetings on a five month by four topic grid, map the topics/speakers to the Celebrate, Educate, Donate, Motivate agenda, and decide on the the emphasis / primary objective of that month's meeting. (Example: February was heavy on Educate about +1 Club, HERO, ACS CAN, Bank Night processes, etc..., so the objective of the February meeting was "Get everyone up to date on 2007 Relay initiatives".)

Giving Committee Chair and Monthly Meetings consistent structure demonstrates respect for people's time (we time box to 60 minutes) and provides consistency of structure so attendees walk in with expectations that we can hopefully satisfy.

For whatever it's worth.

/Rick Bodson
Production Coordinator, Isle of Wight/Surry (VA) Relay For Life
www.IWSRelay.org