Youth Initiative for Human Rights

“Convene does a lot of the core administration work, allowing us to focus on the substance of what we do. It comes into its own as an enhanced collaboration tool and makes us feel as though we are in the same room.”

Please describe your Board structure and meeting calendar.

We are an NGO, and our structure consists of an assembly of 25 members which meet once a year on average. Our Board is made up of 5 members and they meet 4-5 times per annum. We have a body of 14 employees who work remotely.

We use Convene for our meetings, and there are usually 8 people in these meetings including the Executive Director, the Programme Director, the Secretary etc

What were your reasons for considering a Board solution, and what made Convene the system of choice?

We have a current Board which was elected 2 months ago. The previous Board was the first one in our history with most members based outside of Belgrade. Currently we have employees at a number of international sites including one member in Iraq, one in Croatia, and one in Bosnia Herzegovina so it was necessary for us to look into Board solutions since we in need of collaboration software even prior to the pandemic. Convene was one of the products we considered. We also looked at other options however Convene was the one we chose due to its user friendliness.

The document sharing aspect especially was very much in line with our needs. We were also really impressed by the response and kindness we received from Convene support.

In what ways has Convene helped with your remote meeting process?

It is even better than I could have anticipated. I tend to be the member of the team who is always keen to push for solutions, especially to avoid documents being sent as attachments. Convene has proved to be highly beneficial and to make our meetings more efficient and productive. Because the systems have improved the meeting process in general, we now have more time available to devote to more in-depth conversations around particular issues. In addition, Convene has really improved the quality of our meeting minutes.

A feature that has really helped us with the online meeting process has been the voting function. The Document Library is also great as a resource for accessing documents from previous meetings while working remotely.

How has Convene helped with time saving and cost metrics?

It has definitely made a noticeable difference to time saving both in meeting preparation and even more so in post meeting follow up. The quality of our meetings has improved, the meeting itself and the actual discussion are now more effective. Convene has allowed us to structure our meeting process, and as a result, meeting efficiency has increased.

How was Convene received?

We received feedback of all sorts from different people. There was an adjustment period at the beginning, and then in a way we have gone back to the start since we now have new members. Over the last year we have had to install so many apps; it is not just Skype now, it is Teams and Zoom and others, and everyone has their own preferences. I have had to spend time explaining that Convene is not just another app, it is one that is really focused on our specific needs and is highly effective instead of simply being yet another app that must be handled. After we had held one or two meetings using Convene, all those who were initially resistant came to realise the system’s value, more so especially at the end of the year when there were such high document volumes.

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