Customer Stories

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation

How OnBoard Helps the Foundation Board Serve a Vibrant, 105-Year-Old University

Industry: Nonprofit

Headquarters: Eau Claire, Wisconsin

Board Management Goals

Ensuring board members have everything they need to make informed decisions
Replacing outdated and time-consuming processes with a much more efficient, secure, and accessible online solution
Becoming virtual meeting-ready

Results

Significantly reduced the amount of staff time, resources, and stress required to prepare board materials.
Enabled the foundation to provide board members access to materials in advance of meetings, so they can better prepare and have more informed discussions.
Allowed the foundation board to seamlessly transition to virtual meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped reduce environmental harm with less paper printing.

The Challenges

The work of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation runs deep across the university’s 333-acre campus on the banks of the Chippewa River in western Wisconsin.

With the generous support of alumni and other donors, the foundation has provided millions for a variety of university projects, programs, and ongoing initiatives. The foundation provides funding for faculty support, special collections, and scholarships..

The UW-Eau Claire Foundation Board of Directors includes doctors, lawyers, real estate developers, finance experts, and a range of other professionals, alumni, and community representatives dedicated to supporting the university’s students, faculty, and staff. The board plays a vital role in overseeing the nonprofit foundation’s ongoing work to strengthen the fiscal, social, and organizational health of the 105-year-old institution.

Ensuring board members have everything they need to make informed decisions as stewards of the foundation’s resources is critical. The UW-Eau Claire Foundation’s transition to OnBoard made that job easier by replacing outdated and time-consuming processes with a more efficient, secure, and accessible online solution, says Michele Olson, stewardship and planned giving director with the foundation, whose responsibilities include supporting the board.

“It was a lot of time, a lot of stress, a lot of paper, and a lot of cost, You just can’t push an easy button and have 50 of those books done.”

The Solution to Streamlining Board Book Production

For decades before implementing OnBoard, Olson says directors were presented with large, hard-copy board books at each meeting. This required foundation staff members to compile hundreds of pages of meeting materials, organize them between different tabs and subjects, and coordinate with the campus printing office days in advance to have about 50 books printed and bound in time for the biannual board meetings, including numerous committee meetings in between.

Any last-minute changes to the board book meant Olson had to rush to printing services to try to stop a print run. If it was too late, the team was left with few options: They would quickly tear out the original versions from each of the printed books and insert loose copies of the updated documents by hand.

“It was a lot of time, a lot of stress, a lot of paper, and a lot of cost,” Olson says. “You just can’t push an easy button and have 50 of those books done.”

OnBoard has streamlined the whole process, she says. Materials now can be uploaded directly to OnBoard’s Book Builder, and designated foundation staff can go in and update documents as needed right up to the meeting time. If she needs to notify board members of a change, Olson has the option to easily send them all a quick notification.

"Since March of 2020, I don’t know what we would have done if we didn’t have OnBoard. There was enough to figure out last year, it was good to not also have to figure that out.”

The Solution for an Easy Virtual Transition and Less Environmental Waste

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, the UW-Eau Claire Foundation had to act quickly to shift to all-virtual board and committee meetings. Having OnBoard already in place helped immensely, Olson says. Without it, they likely would have had to send password-protected documents to board members via email, which would have created all-new logistical and security challenges considering various email system size limits, incompatible file types, and the potential for human error in manually transmitting everything.

“I sure am glad we had it,” Olson says. “Since March of 2020, I don’t know what we would have done if we didn’t have OnBoard. There was enough to figure out last year, it was good to not also have to figure that out.”

Using OnBoard is saving the UW-Eau Claire Foundation an untold amount of staff time and resources, and thousands of dollars a year in printing costs, Olson says. Less paper printing also is much better for the environment.

“Now I am shredding old copies of those board books that we spent so much money, time, and resources printing,” she says. “I’m glad that we don’t need to do that anymore. Every year I think people are less and less tolerant of waste like that.”

“Now I am shredding old copies of those board books that we spent so much money, time, and resources printing, I’m glad that we don’t need to do that anymore. Every year I think people are less and less tolerant of waste like that.”

The Results

As one of the top-ranked universities in the region, UW-Eau Claire continues to serve its students, alumni, and surrounding communities as a rich center for culture and education. The foundation Board of Directors continues to serve the university by providing guidance, funding, and resources to help assure that UW-Eau Claire will grow and thrive for generations to come.

Having OnBoard has helped facilitate the board in its mission in many ways:

It has significantly reduced the amount of staff time, resources, and stress required to prepare board materials.
It has enabled the foundation to provide board members access to materials in advance of meetings, so they can better prepare and have more informed discussions.
It allowed the foundation board to seamlessly transition to virtual meetings during the pandemic, and has helped reduce environmental harm with less paper printing.

Olson says she cannot imagine ever going back to producing the bulky, printed board books that the UW-Eau Claire Foundation used for meetings prior to OnBoard. The concept seems too archaic now.

“We just don’t want to do that anymore, and we don’t have to do that anymore,” she says. “I think it has been a win-win all the way around.”

Ready to Find out Where Boards are Going?

Talk to a board intelligence expert.