Playbooks in Karma Compass: Board Prep, Agenda Drafts and Follow-Up for Nonprofits

TL;DR

• A playbook is something you tell Karma Compass once, in plain words, and it keeps doing it: before each meeting, when an action item comes due, or on a schedule.
• It can draft the agenda for your next board meeting from last meeting's minutes and the open action items, and show where each item came from. Set it to run 10 days before every board meeting and the proposed agenda is waiting for you.
• It can remind whoever owns an action item a few days before it's due, and keep nudging once it's overdue, so follow-through doesn't depend on you sending the emails.
• It can also check things, like whether the agenda is out or a filing is coming up.
• Nothing is published or sent until a person has looked at it. Playbooks run on Compass Pro and Enterprise, and new organizations start on Pro free for two weeks.

Karma Compass is board management software for nonprofits. It drafts agendas and minutes and tracks action items. Playbooks are how an executive director tells it what to take care of, so board prep isn't done from memory the night before.

What is a playbook in Karma Compass?

It's an instruction in your own words that Compass carries out on its own timing. "Draft the agenda for our next board meeting from the last minutes and the open action items" is a playbook. So is "five days before an action item is due, remind whoever owns it."

You pick the timing: days before or after a meeting, before or after an action item is due, every month, every quarter, or only when you ask. "10 days before every board meeting" is a typical one. Start from a ready-made playbook or write your own. Compass turns what you write into a sentence where the parts you'd change (how many days, which weekday) sit right in the text. Before it's on, it runs once against your real records so you can see what it would do.

Can a playbook draft my board meeting agenda?

Yes. Say you write: "Draft the agenda for our next board meeting from the last minutes, the open action items and anything the board has been asked to decide." Compass reads the prior minutes, the earlier agenda and the open action items, then writes up a proposed agenda for the next meeting. You can open the supporting evidence to see the passage or page each item came from.

Then it stops and waits. A button, "Prepare this agenda draft," turns the proposal into a draft in that meeting's agenda, and Mission Control shows it's waiting for review. If there's no meeting on the calendar or nothing on record to build from, it says so instead of making up items.

Now say you like what it gave you. Turn that same request into a playbook and set it to run 10 days before every board meeting. From then on the proposed agenda is waiting when the time comes. You look it over, press the button to save it as a draft in the meeting, and edit from there. Nothing is published or sent until you've reviewed it.

You write this one yourself. It isn't on the ready-made list yet.

How does Compass carry forward open action items and prior minutes?

By reading them. A running playbook can see your meetings, action items, agendas, approved minutes and the documents in your board library. That's how the agenda draft knows what was left unfinished last time.

The follow-up playbooks work the same way. "Work with nobody's name on it" finds commitments in approved minutes that never got an owner, and quotes the minutes. "Decisions that never made it into the minutes" compares what your agendas listed for decision with what the approved minutes record.

Can playbooks gather committee reports and other updates?

Partly. A playbook can search the documents in your board library and tell you what it found, including when it found nothing. "Two weeks before each board meeting, check whether the finance and program reports have been uploaded" is something you can write. You get a note on which are in, which aren't, and what it looked at.

If a report is set up as an action item with an owner and a due date, that person gets a reminder before it's due, and again if it runs late.

Which ready-made playbooks are there?

The ready-made list is called the shelf in the product. It has 12 right now and keeps growing.

Around a meeting: not enough people coming for a quorum, the agenda hasn't gone out, decisions that never made it into the minutes, minutes still waiting to be approved.

Following through: work with nobody's name on it, a reminder before an item is due, and a reminder when it's overdue.

The board itself: board terms ending soon, and an officer seat that's empty.

Deadlines and documents: filings and good standing, a policy that's overdue for review, and conflict of interest forms that are missing.

Does anything go out without me looking at it?

No. What happens next depends on what the playbook does.

Most only write things for you to read, which show up in Mission Control under "What needs you." The agenda one makes a draft you edit. A playbook that emails the whole board writes the email and waits for the chair or ED to press "Send to the board."

The two action item reminders do email people, so there's one extra step. The message is one we wrote. Before it starts you see who would get it and approve them, and after that it goes to whoever owns the item. Overdue ones start the day after the due date and repeat as often as you choose, at most once a week. Your board also needs "Enable email sending" and "Send reminders automatically" turned on in Settings.

Can Compass remind us about nonprofit compliance deadlines?

Yes. Once a month, Filings and good standing reads your IRS record by EIN and the charity registries in California, Colorado, Virginia and Maryland. For other states it reminds you ahead of the filing date and says it didn't read the registry. The ED and board chair get an email when something's due. It doesn't file anything.

How do EDs help one another with playbooks?

This came from a conversation. At a nonprofit event, our founder Mahesh Murthy was telling a board member about playbooks, how an ED can say in plain language something like "two weeks before the board meeting, follow up with the program team for their report and the finance team for theirs," and you can tell it whatever you want.

The board member said that's great, but how about this instruction, and that one? Compliance checks? Reminders to board members? He said it might not even occur to EDs that those can be done.

Mahesh told him that was a great idea, went back, and built a whole bunch of playbooks that staff can review and turn on. The list keeps growing, because every time an ED asks for one, Karma builds it and it's available to every customer. In a way, EDs across different nonprofits end up helping one another. If there's a playbook you wish existed, tell us.

Who can use playbooks, and what do they cost?

Anyone on the board can look at the ready-made list. Turning them on and writing your own needs Compass Pro or Enterprise, and is open to the executive director, the board chair and admins. Every new organization starts on Pro free for two weeks. After that you upgrade or move to Free, and nothing is deleted.

Frequently asked questions

Can Karma Compass draft a board agenda for me? Yes. Write a playbook that asks for it, and set it to run 10 days before every board meeting. Compass builds a proposed agenda from your prior minutes, open action items and agenda history, and you turn it into a draft with one button. Nothing is published until you do that yourself.

Does a playbook email my board without asking me? No. An email to the whole board waits for your chair or ED to send it. Action item reminders go to an item's owner only after you've approved who they'd write to.

Does Compass file my Form 990? No. It tells you what's due and links to where to act. It's governance information, not legal or tax advice.

Try Karma Compass free

If you're an executive director, a board chair or a consultant who supports nonprofit boards, you can start free at compass.karmahq.org.