Seven volunteers, one evening a month, and a full memory of every decision

Howick & Pakuranga Community Houses: Instant answers from past hui mean shorter evenings and more time for tomorrow

Tammy Watene's board runs on donated hours. Seven volunteers govern two community houses in Pakuranga and Highland Park, in Auckland's east, hiring out rooms at subsidised rates so that not-for-profits and community groups have an affordable place to gather. A team of 1.5 staff members runs the day-to-day; the board handles the governance, meeting once a month at 6pm, after everyone has finished work.

"We all pitch in and do what we need to do, because we're passionate about what we do," says Tammy. "Whether you're secretary or treasurer or otherwise." She would know – she has been treasurer, is now chair, sometimes takes the minutes, and makes the cup of tea as well.

When Tammy took over the chair role about a year ago, BoardPro had lapsed following the previous chair's departure, and the board had slipped back to recording its hui manually. "I thought: we've got the function, we've got an opportunity not to do that – and to focus on our hui a little bit more." Resurrecting BoardPro was one of her first moves. Finding AI Assistant inside it came after.

"What was that last thing we said we were going to do?"

Every board that meets monthly knows the problem: a month is long enough to forget. Actions slip, context fades, and the first stretch of every meeting risks being spent reconstructing the last one.

That was the question on Tammy's mind when she first noticed AI Assistant. "I saw AI, and I got really excited, because I thought – there's the answer to our question: what was that last thing we said we were going to do? In a flash I was getting the actions we hadn't done that we should be doing, and the ones we'd ticked off and done."

The same recall works mid-discussion. When the board needed to link a new amendment to a financial transaction it had approved some meetings earlier, nobody could remember exactly when. "One of our committee members was able to just go in and punch in a question, and she got the answer pretty quickly. Otherwise we would have been searching – when did this happen? Was it last meeting? Was it two meetings ago?"

Or, as she puts it, "sitting there scrolling through screeds and screeds of minutes".

For a volunteer committee, that recall is more than convenience. It is institutional memory on demand – for the committee members in the room now, and for whoever inherits the seats later. Tammy's ambition runs even further: the organisation keeps manual minutes dating back to 2017, and she would love to bring that history in too, so a future board can see how decisions were made and what was happening at the time.

"Where does this go once I press enter?"

Tammy is comfortable with AI – she uses it in her day job and knows how to ask a question to get what she needs. Her hesitation was about something else.

"I'm really mindful of privacy," she says. "My only concern would be to ask questions around: where does this go once I press enter? Who gets to see it?"

It is the right question, and with AI Assistant the answer is a contained one: it works only within the organisation's own BoardPro profile, under the same permissions the board has already set.

Her caution doesn't switch off once the tool is on, either. "AI isn't the answer to everything. You've got to make a real conscious decision. If I'm running a financial report through it, I'm checking as well – testing it against my knowledge."

Why the software underneath matters

Like every use of AI Assistant, Tammy's rests on the committee's information already living in one governed place. And the portal earns its keep beyond the AI. Her latest discovery is the vote function, which lets the board consider and decide on matters between hui rather than saving everything for a crowded evening agenda.

"We can go in at our leisure – we don't have to wait for the week before the board pack is ready. We can look at the documents, have some time to think, and then make a decision on our own. And it's all recorded."

The pattern is the same in both cases: less of the meeting spent on process, more of it available for the decisions that need six people in a room.

Less time in the here and now. More time looking at tomorrow.

Ask Tammy where a saved hour goes, and the first answer is honest: a shorter evening. Meetings that start at 6pm, after full working days, don't need padding.

The second answer is the one that matters for the two houses and the groups that rely on them. With the prep, the recall and the routine questions handled before and between hui, the board's scarce shared hours can go where volunteers' passion actually points.

"We'd spend more time on strategic overviews, looking at future planning," she says. "We wouldn't be worried about what's happening in the here and now. We'd be looking at tomorrow."

The committee meets so that community groups across Anchorage Park and Highland Park Community Houses have an affordable place to gather. Everything that gives its volunteers their evenings back – and their attention forward – flows through to that.