Public Meeting Agenda Formatting Best Practices

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1 DEFINITIVE GUIDE Public Meeting Agenda Formatting Best Practices In this guide, we will first walk you through some best practices with text and images. Then, we will show you how to execute the best practices in Microsoft Word with a series of brief videos. AgendaPal Benefits: An affordable agenda management solution that doesn t require RFPs. AgendaPal will automate your process without making you change Unlimited configuration and support just a phone call or away. AgendaPal is 100% cloud based, we take care of everything! Although your meeting agenda may seem to be a very common-sense document built around a basic outline, it is far more than that. Specifically when dealing with public or other lengthy meetings, the format of your agenda document can make or break the flow of your meeting. Your agenda defines the order of business for your meeting. Therefore, it should promote efficiency. Sadly, most organizations don t have an agenda management system and end up sticking to the default outline functionality that Microsoft Word provides to create their meeting agenda. However, even if you don t have software that will automatically create your meeting agenda for you, this guide will outline some best practices (and a few tricks in Microsoft Word) that will help you create meeting agendas that are clean and promote meeting efficiency. General Document Layout - Headers Some organizations prefer simplistic designs for their header as shown below: agendapal.com Although this is very efficient, it is very easy to brand your agenda to your organization.

2 Since you will only setup your template once and reuse it over and over, it is worth a few extra minutes to make it look great. An example of a City agenda header is shown below. Now doesn t that look better? Whichever way you decide to go, it is important to note that your first page header should show your full meeting information and optional branding. However, all subsequent pages should not contain the full header. Instead, it should only contain very basic meeting information and potentially a page number. For example, the meeting name/title and date with the page number as shown below. Note that the information in the header shown above has a different font size and indent than the text in the body of the page. This is important because it obviously separates the header info from the text in the body. Some prefer page numbers in their header while some prefer it in their footer. Whichever you choose, you should include page numbers in your document. Sounds obvious, but we will cover some detailed best practices on page numbering later.

3 Your first page footer is a great place to include additional information for your meeting if it must appear on the agenda for every meeting. For example, if access to your organization s meeting information is governed by the Americans with Disabilities Act or other accessibility mandates, your first page footer is a great place to include this information as shown below. As you can see, it is a good idea to enclose the information in a border or some similar method to make it stand out so that it isn t confused with the other information on the page. General Document Layout - Page Numbering As mentioned earlier, all agendas should have page numbering. That is, if they are longer than one page. Page number formats vary based upon preference. However, it is typically best to put it in a format that not only shows the page number, but also the total number of pages. For example, 1 of 15 or Page 1 of 15. This helps the reader get a better sense of the progression of the document (and meeting). Some people prefer to include the page number on all pages while some prefer to exclude it from the first page. Personally, I like to exclude it from the first page. However, go with whatever you prefer when it comes to this. Section/Item Numbering & Formatting Most people don t give their section and item numbering a second thought. They simply apply the built-in, default outline styling that Microsoft Word provides. Now while this isn t necessarily bad, the default styling is not necessarily the best approach. Both the numbering and format of your sections and items is quite important as it can help your meeting flow very logically and keep everyone on the same page.

4 The default numbering styling in Microsoft Word is shown below: Now let s break down potential areas for improvement. Agenda Item Numbering What is the first thing that jumps out at you when looking at the item numbering in the example above? If you are like me, it is that the item numbers are not numbers, they are letters. More importantly, however, is that they are not unique. In the example, we see that letters are repeated under both sections. This can cause confusion. Certainly you reference each item verbally by the section and item number to avoid confusion. For example, item 1a or 2a. However, the actual numbering on the document should reflect this as well. While this is possible to do in Microsoft Word, it is easier to simply continue the number from a previous section (which we will show you how to do a bit later). Now comes the question of whether to use letters versus numbers for your item numbering scheme. Frankly, numbers are the best practice for items. Why? Take a look at the example below (we ve removed the section numbers for the time being).

5 As you can see, the item numbers (or letters in this case) are unique. However, if we have more than 26 items on our agenda, Microsoft Word will start over again with 2 letters. For example, our 26th item will be item z and the 27th will be item aa. Although this is fine since we still have unique item numbering, it is better to use numbers rather than letters as we truly have limitless uniqueness regardless of the size of your agenda while maintaining the best user experience. Now you may ask, If I am using numbers for the items, won t it look odd to use numbers for the sections as well? In short, yes it would. And we ll tackle that on the next page. Agenda Section Numbering Question: Now what is the purpose of a section in any document? Answer: To break the document into logical chunks. Your meeting s order of business is broken down into logical chunks so your meeting agenda reflects this. So how should you number your sections on your agenda document? Frankly, it is not only about the numbering (which we will cover a bit later). When it comes to numbering, you can be as flexible as you would like even deciding not to number your sections. Provided that you format the text of your sections differently than the rest of the document, you can easily get away with no section numbering at all.

6 In the example above, the sections obviously strand out from the rest of the information on the document even though we don t use numbers for the section. I prefer to have some number for my sections. However, I make sure that it is not the same as the item numbering scheme as it is simply confusing as shown below: In the example above, we see that the section format is the same as the item number format. This can obviously create confusion. Therefore, I prefer to use either letters or roman numerals for the section numbering to differentiate it from the Latin numerals we used for our item numbers. Some people may be concerned that letters are not a good idea for section numbering due to the same reason that we gave for them not being a good idea for item numbering you may run out after 26 and double letters aren t the most user friendly. However, is the vast majority of agendas (>99%) that I have seen in my time, very few ever have more than 26 sections. Greater than 26 items is common, but sections not so much. In summary, I would typically use Roman numerals for sections and Latin numerals for items.

7 Indents & Formatting When it comes to indenting, common sense prevails. Section and item text should be indented from the number and items should be indented from the section as shown below: Also, when creating your agenda, any additional text under a section or item should be aligned with the first line section/item text as shown below:

8 Now we come to a point where we need to discuss formatting of the text in your agenda document. There really is not standard rule other than the title text for sections and items should be visually different. Additionally, the supporting test under each item and section should be different than the title text. A common sense approach is best here! Use All Caps, Bold, Underline, and Italics to differentiate and make the document easier to read. However, make sure that you use consistent fonts and try to keep font size the same (or close). Any variation of fonts and/or font size can make the document more difficult to read. Below is a great example of how you can use Caps, Bold, Underline, and Italics to make your agenda easy to read. Additional Tips This section is dedicated to some special situations where you may want to deviate from the formatting best practices discussed thus far. In many situations, your organization s board, council, commission, etc. may have officials that serve on multiple boards. For example, your organization s Board members may also be Commissioners for the finance committee. In these cases, you may hold a joint meeting of both formal bodies. Additionally, you may have closed sessions to a meeting for a given meeting body. This is typical to discuss legal proceedings or human resources issues. In these cases, you may want to adjust your numbering slightly. For example, assume that your organization has a closed session that is not discussed during the normal course of the public meeting. Obviously you have a legal obligation to disclose that the items will

9 be discussed. However, the discussion will be held behind closed doors. In most cases, you may want to distinguish these closed session items from the items that will be discussed during the public meeting. One effective way to do this is to prefix the items in the closed session with CS (for Closed Session). This way the public will know that these items are different than the other items on the agenda that will be discussed during the public meeting. An example of how this will look is shown below: Conclusion As we discussed at the beginning of this guide, the format of your agenda document may seem to be common sense. However, there are some best practices that will help you ensure that the flow of your document makes your meeting run more efficiently. As always, feel free to contact us at should you have any questions or simply need some help with your agenda format. Make sure to watch the AgendaPal video demo by clicking the button on the right to see how your entire agenda creation process can be automated. Happy formatting! See what AgendaPal can do for you. Sign up for a free trial within minutes to get started automating your agenda process. agendapa.com