When should a forum plan next year's calendar?

In the autumn, before members' board dates and company calendars for the following year are fixed. Asking early is how a forum gets first claim on the time.

Can one poll cover a whole year?

A single poll covers up to 120 days, so a practical approach is one poll per half-year, or one covering each quarter's candidate meeting days.

What should be included besides the monthly meeting dates?

Anything the group commits to as a whole: the annual retreat window, chapter or partner events, and any fixed external anchors that should be excluded from the range up front.

What happens when one date on the published calendar has to change?

Re-poll only the window around the affected date, not the whole year. A small, bounded poll gets answered quickly; reopening the full calendar invites everyone to re-litigate dates that were already settled.

Guide

Planning a forum calendar for the year

Groups that decide their dates a month at a time lose attendance to whoever books first. Groups that set the year in one round get first claim on their members' calendars, before board seats, school terms and other commitments have a chance to land on the same days. The work is front-loaded — one longer poll instead of twelve short ones — but the payoff is a calendar that mostly holds without a chair chasing it every few weeks.

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Run it before calendars fill

Late in the year, before the next year's board dates and budget cycles are fixed, is when a forum has the most leverage. Ask for the whole year while there is still room in it, rather than after members have already accepted other recurring commitments into the same slots.

What to put in the poll

Include every kind of date the group commits to, not just the monthly meeting — the retreat block, the chapter events, the partner evening. They compete for the same calendar space, so they should be decided together.

Monthly or six-weekly session days for each quarter.
A candidate window for the annual retreat.
Any fixed anchors — conferences, chapter obligations — marked as excluded up front.

Poll in half-year chunks if the group is large

A single poll can only cover so many candidate days sensibly. For larger forums, it is often cleaner to run one poll for the first half of the year and a second, shorter one around mid-year for the second half — by then you also have a better read on any changes to the group's membership.

Publish and defend the calendar

Send calendar invitations for every date the week you decide. A published forum calendar is the only thing that holds against the next thing that wants the same Tuesday, since a calendar invite a member has already accepted is far stickier than a date only recorded in a document.

Re-poll only what breaks

When one date has to move, poll the two weeks either side of it rather than reopening the whole calendar. Small, bounded polls get fast answers; a reopened year does not, and it also risks unpicking dates that were already working fine for everyone else.

Worked example

Example: setting a 22-member chapter's full-year calendar in October

A chapter chair wanted to lock in monthly meeting dates, one retreat window and a partner evening for the coming year before members' own board calendars filled up.

1In mid-October, opened a poll covering every candidate Tuesday and Wednesday for the first six months of the following year.
2Included the retreat candidate window and the partner evening as separate sections in the same poll, rather than as later, separate asks.
3Set a two-week deadline and copied assistants directly given the group's usual delegation pattern.
4Selected the eleven monthly dates and retreat window with the strongest combined attendance, and sent calendar invites for all of them the same week.
5Ran a second, shorter poll in April for the second half of the year, once two new members had joined the chapter.

Eleven of twelve months had calendar invites accepted before the new year began, and the April top-up poll took under a week to settle the remaining six months.

Frequently asked questions

When should a forum plan next year's calendar?: In the autumn, before members' board dates and company calendars for the following year are fixed. Asking early is how a forum gets first claim on the time.
Can one poll cover a whole year?: A single poll covers up to 120 days, so a practical approach is one poll per half-year, or one covering each quarter's candidate meeting days.
What should be included besides the monthly meeting dates?: Anything the group commits to as a whole: the annual retreat window, chapter or partner events, and any fixed external anchors that should be excluded from the range up front.
What happens when one date on the published calendar has to change?: Re-poll only the window around the affected date, not the whole year. A small, bounded poll gets answered quickly; reopening the full calendar invites everyone to re-litigate dates that were already settled.

forum calendar schedulingSet the rhythm in one round.all forum schedulingThe hub for peer groups and boards.scheduling a peer advisory group meetingThe quarterly version of this process.scheduling a forum retreatHow to fold the retreat window into the annual round.

How to schedule a peer advisory group meetingA repeatable process for chairs running forum, mastermind or peer-advisory groups.How to schedule a forum retreatRetreats need a block of days, not a single date. Here is how to find one across ten executive calendars.

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