A good HOA board meeting agenda does two jobs. It sets the order business happens in, and it tells every director, before they walk in, exactly what they'll be asked to decide. Most agendas do the first job well. Vendor items fail on the second.
Below is a board meeting agenda template you can copy, with suggested timings, sample motion language, and the open-meeting rules that apply in Virginia, Maryland, DC condominiums, and Georgia. After that comes the part most templates leave out: why contract and vendor items get tabled, and a one-page decision memo that gives the board what it needs to vote the first time the item comes up.
Copy this into your letterhead and change the bracketed fields. The times add up to about 80 minutes, plus any executive session. Adjust them to fit your board, but keep the order, because the order is what protects your action items.
Record who's present and whether you have a quorum before anything else. Under Robert's Rules, a body without a quorum can't conduct substantive business, and a quorum is presumed only until someone notices it's gone. Better you notice it at 7:02 than an owner at 8:30.
Your bylaws set the number. In Georgia, the Nonprofit Corporation Code makes a majority of directors the default quorum, lets the bylaws lower it to no fewer than one-third, and doesn't allow directors to vote by proxy. In Maryland, directors who attend a properly noticed electronic meeting count toward the quorum.
Give owners a fixed window near the start, with a time limit per speaker, and say in the agenda how it works. Putting it early means owners who came for one issue can speak and leave, and the board isn't answering questions in the middle of a vote. Virginia, Maryland, and DC condominiums require one. Virginia boards must provide a designated period at each meeting for members to comment. Maryland requires a designated comment period during a meeting, plus at least one meeting a year where the agenda is open to any matter. DC condominium boards must provide a comment period at each regularly scheduled meeting. Georgia's statutes don't require one, but your bylaws may.
A consent agenda bundles routine items the board doesn't need to debate, like prior minutes, the manager's written report, and renewals already in the budget, into a single vote. Jurassic Parliament, a firm that trains boards in parliamentary procedure, recommends adopting a rule that authorizes the consent agenda, and letting any director pull an item out for separate discussion without giving a reason. Used well, it frees up time for the decisions that need it.
Keep it to what the board has to know: the month's statements, delinquencies, and the reserve balance against the reserve study. Put the full statements in the packet and let the treasurer summarize.
This is where the meeting earns its time. Every action item should appear with three things printed under it: a one-line description, a pointer to the backup material in the packet, and a proposed motion. When directors arrive knowing the exact words they'll vote on, discussion stays on the question.
Action items go before committee reports on purpose. Committee reports can run long, and directors tend to leave early. An action item that comes up at 9:40 at night, with one director already gone, is an item that gets pushed.
Some topics need a conversation before they need a vote. Label them "no vote tonight" so nobody arrives expecting a decision, and so nobody feels ambushed when one comes up at the next meeting.
Executive session is for the few topics the law lets a board discuss privately, and your agenda should name the reason in the words your statute uses.
In Virginia, the permitted topics are personnel matters, consultation with legal counsel, contracts, pending or probable litigation, violations of the declaration or rules, and matters involving the personal liability of members. The board goes into executive session by a vote in open meeting on a motion that states the specific purpose. Nothing adopted in executive session takes effect until the board reconvenes in open session and votes on it.
That last rule matters for vendor items. A Virginia board can talk through contract terms privately, but the vote to approve the vendor happens in the open part of the meeting, which is why the template has a separate line for returning to open session.
Maryland lists eight permitted purposes, including the terms of a business transaction in the negotiation stage when disclosure could hurt the association's economic interests. The minutes of the next meeting must record the time, place, and purpose of the closed session and each director's vote to close it. DC condominium boards may meet privately about contracts under negotiation, among other reasons, on a motion stating the purpose, and any action taken is recorded in the minutes of the open meeting.
Your agenda has to fit the law your community operates under. Here's how the four jurisdictions compare.
Three details are worth knowing before you build the packet.
Virginia's packet rule reaches your vendor memo. Whatever materials you send directors, apart from executive session materials, have to be available to owners at the same time. Write the memo assuming an owner will read it, because one may.
Maryland condominium boards can't keep contract terms from owners. Closed sessions are allowed for deals still in negotiation, but the condominium statute says nothing in the closed-session rules lets the board withhold the terms of any legal agreement from unit owners.
Georgia's new law covers member meetings, not board meetings. SB 406, signed in 2026, gives owners rights to notice of member meetings and to attend a members' meeting at least once a year, starting January 1, 2027. Board meetings are still governed by your bylaws and the Nonprofit Corporation Code, which lets regular board meetings be held without notice and requires two days' notice to directors for special meetings.
The vendor is usually not the problem. Vendor items stall for a handful of reasons that repeat from community to community, and each one can be fixed before the meeting.
The board can't compare the proposals. One bid includes supplies, another doesn't. One covers 20 stations, the other covers 16. When the proposals describe different jobs, a careful director will ask for them to be redone, and that's a reasonable request. Normalize the scope before the packet goes out. Our guide to comparing pet waste proposals side by side shows how.
A question comes up that nobody in the room can answer. Is the vendor insured? What's the term? When would service start? Which budget line pays for it? Any one of those can end a discussion. Ask directors to send questions to you by a set date, and put the answers in the packet. Our list of questions to ask before hiring a pet waste vendor and our guide to the insurance a pet waste vendor should carry cover most of what a director will ask about a pet waste proposal.
Nobody drafted a motion. Without a motion on the table, discussion drifts, and a drifting discussion ends with "let's take this up next month." Print the proposed motion in the agenda.
The item is last. If a vendor decision sits after committee reports and open discussion, it gets whatever time is left. Move it up.
A key director isn't there. If the treasurer is absent, someone will suggest waiting for the treasurer. Confirm attendance two days before the meeting. If a director who cares about the item can't attend, get their questions in writing in advance, or move the item to a meeting they can make.
"Let's table it" gets used as a polite no. In Robert's Rules, the motion to lay on the table is meant for setting a question aside briefly when something more urgent comes up. The official Robert's Rules FAQ calls using it to kill a motion "a common violation of fair procedure," because it lets a simple majority end debate. If the board genuinely needs more information, the right motion is to postpone the item to a certain time, usually the next meeting, and the best version names the question that has to be answered by then. A postponed item comes back on a date. A tabled item comes back when someone remembers it.
This memo is one of the most useful pages you can put in a board packet. It gives a volunteer director everything they need to vote in one place, and it shows the board the work the manager has already done.
A few notes on using it. Keep it to one page, and put everything else in attachments. Write "why this is on the agenda" in facts, not adjectives; "14 resident complaints about empty dispensers since June" moves a board in a way that "ongoing issues" doesn't. If you recommend the lowest bid, say why. If you recommend a higher one, explain what the extra cost buys. Our post on why the lowest price isn't always the lowest cost walks through how to make that case, and five questions every board should ask about a pet waste budget covers what directors will want to see.
☐ Three weeks out: confirm the item with the board president and request any missing proposals, insurance certificates, or references.
☐ Before your notice deadline: send the meeting notice and agenda the way your state and bylaws require.
☐ One week out: send the packet, including the decision memo, and give directors a date to send questions.
☐ Three days out: circulate answers to every question and any revised proposals.
☐ Two days out: confirm attendance and quorum, and check that the directors most invested in the item will be there.
☐ Meeting day: bring printed copies of the motion and the memo.
☐ Within two business days after: tell each vendor the outcome in writing, add the decision to the action list, and draft the minutes. Our post on turning an approved budget into an action plan covers what happens next.
Print these in the agenda under the item they belong to. Adjust the wording to your bylaws.
The annual meeting is a meeting of the owners, not the board, and its agenda is different. Here's a short version.
Check your bylaws for the notice period and quorum for member meetings. They're usually different from the rules for board meetings.
In Virginia and Maryland, yes, with limited exceptions for executive session. DC condominium board meetings are open to owners in good standing unless the condominium instruments provide otherwise. Georgia has no statute requiring open board meetings, so the answer is in your bylaws.
Only in the narrow ways your statute and bylaws allow. Robert's Rules treats approvals collected from directors one at a time as something other than board action. Georgia's Nonprofit Corporation Code allows action without a meeting by unanimous written or electronic consent, unless the articles or bylaws permit fewer than all directors (at least a majority) to consent. DC condominium boards can act by unanimous written consent attached to the next meeting's minutes. Virginia's Nonstock Corporation Act allows action if each director signs a consent, but Virginia's open-meeting statute also bars boards from using informal gatherings to get around open meetings. Ask counsel before you rely on email for anything that matters.
A group of routine items, like minutes, reports, and in-budget renewals, approved together in one vote. Any director can pull an item out for discussion. It saves time for the items that need debate.
Under Robert's Rules, a proposed agenda becomes binding once the meeting adopts it, so adding an item means changing the adopted agenda. Keep a "discussion items" slot for new topics and save the decision for the next meeting. In Maryland, the board must also hold at least one meeting a year with an agenda open to any matter.
Virginia, Maryland, and DC don't set a fixed number of days for board meetings, and Georgia doesn't require owner notice for them at all, so check your bylaws first. In Virginia, whatever you send directors has to be available to owners at the same time. A week ahead is a practical target, because it gives directors time to send questions and you time to answer them
Aim for about 90 minutes. If meetings regularly run past two hours, the fix is usually a consent agenda and a tighter packet, not a longer evening.
A board meeting agenda is a plan for how decisions get made. Put the decisions early, print the motion under each one, and give directors the backup a week ahead with time to ask questions. For vendor items, the one-page memo does most of the work: same scope for every option, the budget line, the terms, and the motion, all on one page.
When an item gets tabled, look at the packet before you look at the board. A complete packet does most of the work of getting a decision made.
Sources (all retrieved October 1, 2026).
Code of Virginia § 55.1-1816, https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title55.1/chapter18/section55.1-1816/
Code of Virginia § 55.1-1949, https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title55.1/chapter19/section55.1-1949/
Code of Virginia § 55.1-1832, https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title55.1/chapter18/section55.1-1832/
Code of Virginia § 13.1-865, https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title13.1/chapter10/section13.1-865/
Maryland Code, Real Property § 11B-111, https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=grp§ion=11B-111&enactments=false
Maryland Code, Real Property § 11B-113.6, https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=grp§ion=11B-113.6&enactments=false
This article describes general statutory and parliamentary practice and is not legal advice. Your governing documents and your association's counsel have the final word on how your board must meet.
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