Waypoint #2: Karma Compass Takes a Board Meeting from Agenda to Adopted Minutes

Waypoints is our weekly note on what we shipped in Karma Compass, so you can follow along as it grows.

The board meeting ends at 8:00. The work it creates lands on the executive director for the next month: typing up notes, circulating a draft, getting the minutes adopted, chasing whoever said they'd send the audit.

This week we built for that month.

Every meeting in Karma Compass now has one page with four stages: Prepare agenda, Meet, Minutes and Summary. None of them is locked, so you can go back to the agenda after the meeting has happened.

We'll follow the October Board meeting through each stage.

Prepare the agenda: see whether the meeting fits before you send it

The agenda is now a timeline. Set the meeting to start at 6:30, give the budget discussion 20 minutes, and every item after it shows its new start and end time on one line from "Meeting starts" to "Meeting ends." If a meeting meant to end at 8:00 actually runs to 8:20, it's obvious.

Drag an item to move it, or drop a document on it to attach it. You can upload several documents at once and choose who presents each item.

When Compass drafts the October agenda, it tells you which earlier meeting it kept items from. If you'd rather start fresh, choose Start with a blank agenda. And an item like "Approve the FY27 budget" no longer holds up the board packet until you've written the decision question.

Meet: attendance and quorum, counted for you

Tick names as people arrive, or record who attended afterwards. Compass keeps the count at the top of the page and tells you whether you have quorum.

When the meeting is over, paste your notes or the transcript from your call and choose Draft minutes.

Minutes: a draft the whole board can read

Compass drafts the October minutes from what you gave it. The questions only you can answer sit at the top, and you answer them in place.

You can open the source at any time from inside Compass, whether it was pasted notes, a PDF, a Word file or a transcript. If the draft started from the wrong file, Clear minutes and start over removes the uploads and the draft and leaves the meeting, agenda, attendance and saved action items alone. This only works until the minutes are adopted.

When the draft is ready, Generate meeting minutes draft produces a PDF stamped "DRAFT — NOT ADOPTED." Every director can open it, and you can email it to the board from Compass.

Summary: adopt, and the record is final

The executive director, chair, secretary or an administrator adopts the minutes. Compass checks quorum and any unanswered questions first. Adoption then locks the official record, produces the final PDF and starts every action item from the meeting. If nobody recorded attendance on the night, Compass takes it from the minutes.

After the meeting: one list of action items for the whole board

Every action item from every meeting now lives on one Action items page, and it looks the same there as on the meeting record and the Summary.

When November's notes mention "send the audit to the finance committee" again, Compass updates the existing item or marks it done. It doesn't create a second one.

Action items in minutes that haven't been adopted yet sit in their own section, "Waiting for minutes adoption," so they don't show up as overdue. Mission Control tells you, for example, that "2 action items wait on adopting the October Board meeting minutes."

Board assistant answers you can check

When a director asks the board assistant a question, the answer now cites its source. Compass confirms the quote appears word for word in your document before it shows it. Open the citation and you see the surrounding passage with the quote highlighted, and you can download the document from the same panel.

Set up a new board in three steps

Guided setup is now three steps: Role, Members and Quorum.

Quorum is one sentence: "To reach quorum, __ of __ members should be present in a board meeting." Paste your roster the way you already keep it. Compass reads titles like "Trustee," keeps nicknames like Robert "Bob" Chen, and no longer mistakes a Finance Committee Chair for the board chair. We also removed the step that asked you to confirm your email address, since signing in already did that.

Also this week

• Twelve actions now ask before they run. Closing a vote or a decision tells you it can't be reopened.
• If email sending is off, whoever has permission can turn it on from the notice itself.
• Every upload states its 4 MB limit and checks the file when you choose it, rather than after you've waited for it to upload.
• Minutes that were uploaded but never finished now show up for anyone on the board, on any device.
• If the agenda changed after you started, generating the board packet offers the prepared version or a fresh packet instead of failing.
• We audited every third-party package Compass depends on and fixed all but 14 advisories, which are waiting on upstream fixes.
• Moving from another board portal? We'll migrate you for free, and the AI consultation is free too.

Questions people ask about Karma Compass

What is Karma Compass? Karma Compass is board management software for nonprofits with an AI board assistant built in. It prepares agendas, board packets and minutes, and tracks the action items your board agrees to.

Who uses Karma Compass? Nonprofit executive directors, board chairs, board secretaries and directors, and the consultants who support nonprofit boards.

Can Karma Compass write board minutes from notes or a transcript? Yes. Paste your notes or a transcript and Compass drafts the minutes. Anything it couldn't settle is listed at the top for you to answer, and those questions have to be resolved before the minutes can be adopted. Drafting with the assistant is included in Compass Pro and Enterprise.

Can directors read the minutes before they're adopted? Yes. Every director can open the draft PDF, which is stamped "DRAFT — NOT ADOPTED."

Who can adopt board minutes in Karma Compass? The executive director, board chair, secretary or an administrator. Adoption locks the record and produces the final PDF.

How does Karma Compass track action items across meetings? Every action item lives on one board-wide list. When a later meeting mentions the same item, Compass updates it instead of adding a copy.

Is Karma Compass free? There is a free plan for every nonprofit, and you don't need a card to start. Drafting minutes with the assistant is included in Compass Pro and Enterprise.

Start free

If you run a nonprofit, chair its board or advise boards for a living, you can start free at compass.karmahq.org. Last week's updates are in Waypoint #1.