How to Run Effective Hybrid Meetings in the Social Sector

(Photo by eli_asenova)

As we move bumpily toward a post-pandemic new normal, one thing is clear: Many future meetings and events will involve both in-person and remote participants. A recent international survey of knowledge workers found that 62 percent already are working both in the office and remotely, and 98 percent believe that all future meetings will include remote participants. As in-person contact becomes safer, nonprofit leaders are working to craft a new vision for board and staff operations knowing that expectations and realities differ greatly from 2019. And while hybrid meetings have their advantages, they also come with unique challenges few organizations have mastered.

The need for well-run hybrid meetings is particularly acute in the social sector for several reasons:

1. Connection. Organizations must engage board members and other volunteers through interaction and linkage to mission. Paid employees can’t avoid suffering through poorly managed hybrid meetings, but many volunteers will not—or will do so just once or twice before disengaging.
2. Dispersion. During the pandemic, many nonprofits benefited by recruiting geographically dispersed staff and board members. As in-person meetings return, they’ll need to find ways to include everyone, but many lack the funding to reimburse travel for far-flung staff or trustees.
3. Diversity. The board members who are hardest to recruit, including people of color and those representing target constituencies, are the most likely to benefit from a hybrid meeting option. Additionally, Daryl Messenger, past chair of the Union for Reform Judaism, pointed out that “Nonprofit boards…recruiting younger members with children at home should avoid expecting in-person attendance requiring long commutes.”

Given this, it’s important not only to remain open to hybrid meetings, but also to do them better. Pre-COVID, remote attendees often felt unseen and detached. The forced virtual environment that accompanied the pandemic eliminated that problem and raised expectations about remote participation. As meetings go hybrid, many people will see the neglect of remote participants as a missed opportunity that disproportionately disadvantages those who bring the greatest diversity.

So how can nonprofit leaders ensure that remote participants feel fully engaged? How can they make hybrid meetings effective, efficient, and inclusive? Rather than lamenting the inability to gather everyone physically, how can they create hybrid experiences that are better than either in-person or remote meetings?

Hybrid Meeting Pros and Cons

The nonprofit leaders I surveyed largely agreed on the need for hybrid meetings but expressed a wide range of opinions about them. They want to return to some level of in-person meetings but know that hybrid meetings draw more people; even if a few remote participants would come in person if that were the only option, many more would not attend at all. After two years of remote meetings, it will be harder to get board members to show up in person as frequently as they previously did—but hybrid also stands to open new doors. Erica Wolf, chief of staff at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, told me, “We’ve seen overall attendance increase with the added flexibility, and it allows us to think more broadly about who and where our board members are … I don’t see a future where this hybrid format and remote participation isn’t an option.”

Others have experienced downsides and take a less-optimistic view. Board Advisor Jon Huggett noted, “Hybrid meetings create a sense of inequality: There are those in the room and those out, those who happen to be sitting in the right place and those who cannot hear properly.” And Spring Impact Founder Dan Berelowitz said, “It's almost impossible to make everyone feel included with any regularity.”

Better Hybrid Meetings

Concerns about the efficacy of hybrid meetings are valid, but we need to ask: Are the problems inherent in the model, or can leaders overcome them through experience? Just as attitudes toward virtual gatherings improved during the pandemic as we gained skills and upgraded our technology, our opinion of hybrid meetings likely will improve along with our proficiency.

It’s important to start with a clear sense of goals. Priorities often include attendance, broad participation and inclusion, a similarity of experience between on-site and remote attendees, and productivity. Achieving some or all these goals in a hybrid meeting at an acceptable cost (in terms of money, time, and training) requires thoughtful consideration of three elements: technology, design, and facilitation. Here’s a closer look at each:

1. Technology

There are two general approaches to hybrid meeting technology, which we’ll call “group” and “individual.” The simplest group approach uses a single laptop camera and mic at one end of the room to capture on-site attendees, and a standard projector to display images of remote participants onto a screen. However, in all but the smallest meetings, the resulting bowling-alley view of on-site participants is too small for remote attendees to see other people well. Adding one or more tripods or wall cameras, placing screens on several walls, and using speakerphone capability can do a lot to improve visual and audio quality. In addition, ensuring that in-room screens display speaker view rather than gallery view makes it easier to see remote speakers.

A more-sophisticated system uses video technology that tracks the active presenter. For example, the Meeting Owl is a cylindrical device that combines a camera, mic, and speaker. It sits in the middle of a meeting room and zooms in on whoever is talking. (Remote participants still appear on screens.) This can be especially effective for smaller gatherings. Most board chairs I interviewed who had experience with the Owl reported that it improved their hybrid meetings, though those who tried linking several together for larger meetings struggled with setup and operation.

A limitation of any group approach is that in-room and virtual attendees don’t appear in the same way. On-site participants show up together (or in a few squares, if the room has multiple cameras) while remote participants appear within individual squares on the screen(s). Those in the room are therefore smaller and don’t have their names superimposed, making it difficult to equalize the experience for everyone. Similarly, the two types of participants have different access to chat and poll functions. In the end, nonprofits that succeed with group approaches tend to have more-sophisticated audiovisual capabilities, with either significant internal or contracted support. For example, Lincoln Center, whose board meetings have an average of about 40 in-person participants and 25-30 participants on Zoom, hires an external firm for technical support and hybrid hardware and software rental.

In the individual approach, every participant uses a separate screen, typically a computer or tablet. Participants in the same room mute their microphones and turn off their speakers. For small meetings, audio may flow through the host’s computer, but it will usually move through a centrally placed speakerphone (often with extension mics), table microphones, or built-in room teleconference mics and speakers. More-sophisticated arrangements involve extra cameras for focusing on speakers, whiteboards, and/or projected presentation materials. A major advantage to the individual approach is that all participants look the same on the screen. Each attendee shows up in their own personal (and labeled) square, greatly enhancing the equality of experience and the ability to identify speakers. This is also usually the least expensive approach.

Though this requires that everyone have their own screen, organizations can purchase inexpensive tablets to make available in the office. And while some experts worry that in-person attendees will resist having screens in front of them, many who have tried this approach have found that participants prefer it to group approaches. The Zetema Project, a nonprofit focused on improving health care that I chair, recently used the individual approach for a meeting, and evaluations showed that 86 percent of respondents found the approach effective, 82 percent felt fully able to participate in discussions, and 86 percent were able to hear well. Most important, more than two-thirds said they preferred that we conduct future meetings the same way, rather than requiring people to attend in person.

With either technology approach, it’s crucial to plan carefully and invest in the necessary skills, software, and equipment and to ensure that whoever is managing the technology is sufficiently free to focus on it. Fortunately for nonprofits, there are cost-effective options that work.

2. Program Design

Effective hybrid meetings require careful design. Jim Heeger, who currently serves on multiple nonprofit boards, pointed out, “A Zoom meeting is not a Zoom call.” Unlike one-to-one calls, organizations must think through meetings with multiple participants in advance. Berelowitz recommends arranging the agenda so that presenters include both on- and off-site participants. This underscores the importance of remote attendees. If important presenters are primarily on-site, pre-assign virtual attendees to respond to the speakers. In fact, to increase total participation, some board chairs invite board members they know won’t be in the office (and might otherwise not participate at all) to speak or prepare brief responses.

For hybrid meetings that use the individual approach, it’s a good idea to enhance engagement through heavy use of the chat box at specific points during the meeting. This can include feeding pre-determined questions to the group during presentations and discussions. Content-related Zoom polls are another efficient way to engage participants. Before a controversial session, leaders might poll attendees anonymously about the issue at hand. For example, a leader of a homeless shelter might ask, “Do you think we should advocate for needle-exchange programs?” Or, prior to an expert’s talk on technology uptake among disadvantaged youth, the board chair of a tutoring program could poll participants on a related question (for example, “How soon will the majority of our target population have broadband access?”) and ask the speaker to refer to the responses. While chat and polls can still be useful in meetings that use the group approach, keep in mind that the experience will differ for on-site and remote participants, since attendees in the room can’t directly participate without employing more complicated app-based programs.

There’s no question that it’s more challenging to build relationships with people who aren’t in the office. So with hybrid meetings, it’s often worth building in time for social connection even at the expense of board business, since better relationships tend to increase effectiveness. One hybrid board meeting I recently attended at the Zetema Project used the individual approach. All participants introduced themselves, mentioned a top professional priority, and identified an area where they could use help; members responded in the chat box. In addition, graduating fellows made remarks about the experience they were completing and asked panel members for career advice. Panelists then volunteered comments both orally and via chat.

3. Facilitation

In addition to using best practices for virtual meetings, facilitators should strive to harmonize the different experiences of the two sets of attendees by:

• Inviting comments from as many participants as possible, including proactively calling on people who haven’t volunteered
• Alternating between calling on on-site and remote participants, favoring the latter
• Ensuring that on-site participants look into the cameras and speak clearly into mics so that everyone can hear them
• Eliminating in-room banter, which makes remote participants feel left out
• Starting all sessions on time so that remote attendees aren’t left waiting
• Establishing and enforcing etiquette for asking questions—raised hands, for example—to ensure that on-site participants don’t dominate and bark out questions

Some hybrid meetings use a whiteboard or flipchart in the in-person meeting room and a shared Google Doc for remote attendees. Staff or volunteers can help link the two. Meanwhile, the meeting facilitator should have no other responsibilities. A technology expert or others should be assigned to monitor and feed questions into the chat box, clear the waiting room if needed, and handle on-site tasks. Managing a hybrid meeting should be a team effort, and smart leaders see it as an opportunity to engage multiple participants.

Looking Forward

Many boards that previously met in person and subsequently went remote are realizing that their members don’t want to return fully to in-person meetings. Some plan to alternate remote and on-site sessions, while others expect to hold more-frequent but shorter remote meetings with an annual on-site retreat. But most are aware that even their in-person meetings will need to use a hybrid model to maximize participation.

Fortunately, hybrid meetings can be effective and inclusive when organizations carefully plan and execute technology, programming, and facilitation. Indeed, a well-run hybrid meeting can attract more attendees than in-person-only meetings, while making it easier for on-site participants to connect with others than in virtual-only meetings. The trend toward hybrid meetings has the potential to benefit most nonprofit organizations, but only if leaders execute them effectively. Poorly designed meetings stand to turn off volunteers and sap energy; well-orchestrated ones can generate record levels of engagement and inclusion. Leaders aiming to get the best from their boards and teams should invest in becoming proficient at hybrid meetings now.

Read more stories by Mark Zitter.