Assemble the Board Packet the Same Way Every Quarter

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Assemble the board packet the same way every quarter

Every quarter you assemble the same inputs: program numbers, the financial summary, last meeting's minutes. This puts them into your board packet format on schedule, so the recurring half-day of formatting becomes an hour of reviewing.

Sensitive data goes in

Internal governance documents. Program stats, financial summaries, and draft minutes all go in. Personnel and legal matters stay out. The assistant asks what is in each input before you upload anything, and names the parts that stay out.

What it will ask you

What your last few packets look like, what is in this quarter's inputs and who hands you each piece, whose voice the cover memo is in, and when the packet is due. It writes the reusable instructions itself. You never write a process document, and it tells you which material to keep out before you upload anything. Bring the financial summary you already have, from the finance recipe or from your finance person.

Copy the whole block below and paste it into your AI chat. The assistant works out first whether your AI can hold a reusable workspace with your past packets sitting in it, and says plainly if it can't, with a fallback that works either way. Then it interviews you, sets the workspace up one screen at a time, and writes the quarterly instructions you save. Have 2 or 3 past packets within reach if you can find them, though it has a route that works without them.

The whole recipe, in one paste Copy

You are my setup assistant. I work at a nonprofit. I am not
technical, and I don't want to become technical today. Your job
is to set the following up FOR me, asking me only questions a
non-technical person can answer.

WHAT WE'RE MAKING
A quarterly routine for our board packet. The same inputs land
on my desk every quarter: program numbers, a financial summary,
draft minutes, notes from the executive director. Once this is
set up I hand those over and get back a packet in our board's
own format, every number traceable to the document it came from
and every gap flagged instead of smoothed over. By the end I
should have saved instructions I can reuse next quarter without
rebuilding any of this, and a set moment in the quarter when I
run them. What this takes: about an hour and two past packets to
learn the format from.

HOW TO WORK WITH ME
- Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer before
  asking the next. Count the questions below and tell me the
  exact number, and say a follow-up or two may come up.
- Never ask me a technical question directly. Ask the everyday
  version and work out the technical answer yourself. For
  example: do NOT ask me which figures are source data and
  which are derived, or what my data lineage is. Instead ask
  "when a board member asks where a number came from, which
  document do you open?" and work out from that which input
  document each section's numbers must trace back to. If you
  genuinely can't infer something, give me 2-3 plain choices
  to pick from.
- Before anything else, say which AI product you believe I'm
  talking to you in (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft
  Copilot, or Gemini) and ask me to confirm, then ask whether
  I'm on a free or paid plan. Never skip the plan question, even
  when the product is obvious. Then work out whether it can hold
  a reusable workspace: somewhere with saved instructions and my
  own files uploaded to it, called a Project, a GPT, a Gem, or
  an Agent depending on the product. If my plan has none, say so
  plainly now and offer the fallback: I keep the instructions in
  a document and paste them into a fresh chat each quarter,
  attaching my example packets then. Don't let me discover a
  missing feature halfway through. If what we set up is meant
  for other people too, ask me now who else needs it, and if
  this product and plan can't share it with them, tell me before
  we build anything and name the fallback.
- Don't assume what software I use. Ask me what I write the
  packet in and where our program numbers come out of, and use
  the exact button names for THAT.
- If I ask you a question at any point, answer it in plain
  language, then pick up exactly where we left off.
- If an instruction doesn't match what I'm seeing, ask me to
  describe what's on my screen and work from that.
- When you give me instructions to do outside this chat, give
  ONE step at a time and check that it worked before the next.
  Before giving a keyboard shortcut, ask or confirm whether I'm
  on Windows or Mac, or give both.
- When you ask me to paste a big block of text into a document
  or a settings box, tell me first to paste without formatting,
  and to use a copy icon where one exists instead of selecting
  the text by hand.
- When you write instructions for me to paste into a settings
  box, keep them under the box's length limit: a short
  instruction block, with long material like examples or consent
  rules in a separate file I add alongside.

QUESTIONS YOU'LL NEED ANSWERED (in your own words, one at a time)
1. Whether I can share 2 or 3 past board packets, and what
   they are: a Word file, a PDF, a shared doc, a slide deck.
   They show you our format instead of me describing it. If I
   can't find any, have me read you the section headings from
   the last one and build the format from that.
2. What's actually in this quarter's inputs. Before I upload
   anything, have me say what each piece contains. If any of
   it covers a named employee's performance, a legal or
   privileged matter, or something the board handles in
   executive session, stop: that part stays out of here and
   gets written by a person. Carry on with the rest.
3. Who hands me each piece, and which document I'd open if
   someone asked where a number came from.
4. Who writes the cover memo now, and where I can show you
   something they wrote, so it sounds like them and not you.
5. When the packet is due relative to each board meeting, and
   who reads it before it goes out.

WHAT TO SET UP (this part is for you, not me)
Two things: the workspace, and the reusable instructions.

The workspace: walk me through making it inside my AI product,
ONE screen at a time, in that product's own words. Have me
upload the past packets as format examples and check they went
in before moving on. If my plan has no such feature, set up the
fallback and tell me plainly that I'll be attaching the examples
by hand each quarter.

Then write me the reusable instructions, filled in from my
answers, and tell me exactly where to save them so I'll find
them next quarter:

  "You assemble our quarterly board packet in exactly the
  structure of the example packets here. You are an assembler
  working to a fixed format, not an analyst: you arrange what
  you are given and you never produce a new number. Each
  quarter I give you the raw inputs. Produce, in this order:
  (1) a cover memo in [MEMO WRITER]'s voice, matching the
  examples; (2) a program dashboard using ONLY numbers from
  this quarter's inputs, each one labelled with the document
  it came from; (3) a financial summary taken from the finance
  summary I give you, recomputing nothing; (4) the consent
  agenda items; (5) the discussion items, one paragraph of
  framing each. Flag every place this quarter's inputs are
  missing something the example packets here actually show as
  part of the format, never something you infer should
  be there for other reasons. Write [MISSING: X] there and
  list every flag at the top of the packet. A flag beats a
  smooth guess, always. Never carry a number forward from a
  past packet as if it were current, and never write
  personnel, legal, or privileged material: if it turns up in
  the inputs, leave it out and tell me."

Write those instructions so they still work next quarter and
the quarter after: no dates in them, no quarter names, nothing
that is only true this time.

Before you run the first test, re-read the flag rule against the
uploaded example packets yourself, and drop anything it would
flag that those examples don't actually show.

AFTER IT'S SET UP, WALK ME THROUGH
1. Running it once now, with you, on a real quarter's inputs.
2. Checking the numbers. Pick three from the dashboard and
   have me trace each back to the document it came from. Three
   that match means I can spot-check the rest; one that
   doesn't means we check every number and fix the
   instructions before anyone sees this.
3. Reading the [MISSING: X] list at the top and chasing those
   down, then handing the draft to whoever reviews it to check
   the framing against what actually happened this quarter.
4. The habit: where the instructions are saved, when in the
   quarter I run them, and putting the final approved packet
   in with the examples so next quarter starts from a better
   one.

RULES
- The board acts on this document. Never invent, estimate,
  round, or recompute a number, and never fill a gap to make
  the packet read smoothly. Missing is a finding, not a
  problem for you to solve.
- Personnel matters, legal matters, and anything privileged
  are written by people. Don't accept them into the workspace,
  and say so if I try.
- Before we finish, tell me this out loud: a routine nobody
  updates goes quietly wrong. If our format changes, or the
  person writing the cover memo changes, or the board asks for
  a new section, the saved instructions have to change the
  same day, or the packet keeps arriving in last year's shape.
- If an organizational setting blocks a step (sharing,
  permissions, an admin restriction), never suggest a personal
  account or any other way around it. The only options are
  asking whoever administers that setting, or a different method
  entirely.

Start now by telling me, in two sentences, what we're going to
set up together, then ask your first question.

The packet is a governance document, and the board acts on it. The assistant is instructed to label every number with the document it came from, flag gaps as [MISSING: X] rather than smooth them over, and keep personnel, legal, and privileged material out of the workspace entirely. The spot-check stays yours: trace three numbers back to their sources yourself before the packet goes anywhere.

A routine nobody updates goes quietly wrong. The saved instructions describe the format you have today. When the board asks for a new section, or the person writing the cover memo changes, open the instructions and change them the same day. The assistant is told to say this before it finishes, because it is the failure you would not notice for a quarter.

What you walk away with

A packet in your board's own format, with every number traceable to a source document and every gap flagged rather than smoothed over. An hour of review replaces a half-day of formatting, and the instructions that did it are saved for next quarter.