Board pack: what to include and how to build one

The board meets on Tuesday. It’s Sunday evening, and the pack runs to 140 pages. Most members will read the first 30 carefully and skim the rest. A good board pack puts the pages that matter where they’ll get read. This guide covers what to include, how to write a board paper, how long the pack should be and when to send it.

What is a board pack?

A board pack, or board meeting pack, is the set of documents board members receive before a meeting. It holds the agenda, the minutes of the last meeting, the reports from management and a paper for each item for decision. American boards often call it a board book.

The pack does most of its work before the meeting starts. When members have read it, the meeting can focus on questions and decisions instead of presentations. When the pack is late, long or unclear, the meeting turns into a briefing and the decisions get pushed back.

What to include in a board pack

Follow the order of the agenda. Members can then read the pack item by item.

1. The agenda. Mark each item for decision, for discussion or for information. Members then know which items need most attention.
2. The previous minutes and open actions. The last meeting’s minutes, marked as draft if they still need approval, and the actions still open, with owners and due dates. A decision log keeps them in one list.
3. The chief executive’s report. What has happened since the last meeting, what’s on track and what isn’t. In a volunteer-led organisation, the board members responsible for each area give the update instead.
4. The finance report. Results against budget, cash position and the variances that need the board’s attention.
5. A paper for each item for decision. One paper per decision, written to the structure below.
6. Items from the annual plan. The budget, the annual accounts, the risk review or the board evaluation, whichever is due at this meeting.
7. Appendices. Background material and full reports, clearly marked as reference, not required reading.

If a member has declared a conflict of interest in an item, your governing document or conflicts policy may say they shouldn’t receive that item’s papers. Check before the pack goes out.

How to write a board paper

Every item that needs a board decision should come with a short board paper, sometimes called a cover paper. The most useful thing it can do is put the ask first. A member should know from the first lines what the board is being asked to decide.

A board paper that works usually has these parts, and you can copy them as a template:

• Title. The subject, in a few words.
• Decision required. What the board is asked to approve or decide, in one or two sentences.
• Recommendation. The option management recommends, and the main reason for it.
• Background. Why the matter is before the board now.
• Options considered. The alternatives, including doing nothing.
• Risks, costs and resources. What could go wrong, what it costs and who does the work.
• Next step and owner. What happens after the decision, and who takes it forward.
• Author and date. Who wrote the paper, when, and who to ask.

Many boards use the same format, shortened, for items for discussion. One or two pages is usually enough. The detail goes in an appendix. If a paper can’t say on its first page what it wants from the board, it isn’t ready to go out.

How long should a board pack be?

There’s no right number of pages, but packs often grow too long. Length usually comes from reports written to show the work rather than to help the board decide.

Three habits keep the pack readable. Give every paper a short summary at the top. Move the supporting detail into appendices. And challenge every information-only report. If it only repeats what members already know, leave it out or cut it to a paragraph.

When to send the board pack

Send it early enough for members to read it properly alongside their day jobs. Many boards aim for about a week before the meeting. If your articles or governing document set a notice period for the meeting, send the pack with the notice or soon after.

Aim to send one complete pack. Documents that arrive one by one in the days before the meeting are hard to keep track of, and the late ones rarely get read. If a paper has to follow, name it, say when it will arrive and tell members when it’s there.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Follow your governing document and the rules that apply to your organisation.

From email attachments to a digital board pack

Many boards still send the pack as email attachments. It works, until someone reads last week’s version, a member can’t find the finance report on their phone, or confidential documents sit in a dozen inboxes nobody controls.

A board portal keeps the current version of the pack together, instead of copies spreading across inboxes. Members with access read it on any device, and there’s one version to update.

How Hippoly helps

In Hippoly you build the board pack from the agenda. In the agenda builder you attach the materials to each item, by upload or from files already in the workspace. The agenda and its attachments then become the board pack. If you update the agenda, the new version is immediately available to everyone in the meeting. You choose whether to notify them.

Members read the pack item by item and make private notes and annotations on the materials. When the item comes up, one click takes them back to the passage they marked. If you replace a document with a new version, its annotations stay in place, and earlier versions can still be opened. Once an admin has switched on access to the workspace content, hi, Hippoly’s AI assistant, can summarise a long document and pull out the key points. Read more about meeting management in Hippoly, or book a demo to see it.