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Creating and Navigating Committees
Creating and Navigating Committees

Learn how to build a new committee in Novi

Melisa Smith avatar
Written by Melisa Smith
Updated over 3 months ago

Novi's Committees module allows you to create committees, manage committee members and their terms, set eligibility requirements, and much more!

To create a new committee in Novi, follow the steps below:

After you've created a committee, start adding committee member terms.

If you need to delete or archive an existing committee instead, refer to the linked section.


Create Committee Categories

Categories help you organize and classify committees (and groups!). This is especially helpful when you have many committees, as you can filter the committee list by category.

Create a category under the Member Settings > Categories tab. Just click "Add Category" and enter your preferred name.

Once you hit "Save & Close," that new category will be available once you begin creating a committee in the next step.


Add a Committee

When you're ready to create a committee, jump to the Segments > Committees tab and click "Add Committee" in the upper right-hand corner.

Enter information about the committee:

  • Committee Name (required): Enter the name of the committee.

  • Categories (optional): If you created committee categories in the previous step, you can select the appropriate category here.

  • Internal Description (optional): Any notes added here will only be visible to internal association admins. You may want to add a summary of this committee, your expectations for committee members, or any other important details.

After entering this information, hit "Save & Close" (or, opt to add another by choosing "Save & Add New.")

Now, you should see your new committee and core details in the main committee list.

Already have an existing committee with settings you'd like to re-use?

On the main committees list, from the Action column, click the caret dropdown and choose "Copy Committee." This will copy over everything except member terms and synced integrations.

Navigating A Committee

Clicking the name of a committee in the main list will open the committee's details, split into the following tabs:

  • Members: View/manage the committee's members and their terms.

  • Integrations: Sync the committee and its members' contact information with an email marketing platform (MailChimp/Constant Contact) or online community (Higher Logic/Forj).

  • Public Roles: Manage if/how the committee appears on frontend pages of your website.

  • Details: Adjust the committee's name, category, eligibility requirements, and more.


Add Eligibility Requirements, Beneficiaries, and More

Once you've entered the basic information about your committee, you're ready to dive into further details like eligibility requirements or additional beneficiaries.

When viewing a specific committee, visit the Details tab to get started with all of the settings in this section.

Eligibility Requirements

Within the Eligibility Conditions section, you can set eligibility requirements that automatically determine which committee members are eligible to serve on the committee.

While it's not required to set these eligibility conditions, if the committee members must meet certain criteria to serve, such as being a member of the association, or being in a certain region, Novi will save you time by automatically calculating this eligibility for you.

If a member doesn't meet the conditions listed here, they'll no longer qualify for the committee. They won't be included in committee member counts, be able to see committee-exclusive information, appear anywhere the committee displays on the frontend, or receive credits for their involvement.

Once eligibility conditions are set, in the committee's Members tab, you'll see a green checkmark for those who are eligible OR a red alert under the "Eligible" column for disqualified people or companies.

Note: committee members with a term in the past, or that begins in the future, will not show an eligibility status.

Additional Beneficiaries

In the Additional Beneficiaries section, choose to extend committee benefits to specific records related to current and eligible committee members.

This would be useful in a scenario where, for example, your committee members are companies, but you'd like to extend committee benefits to all staff of those companies.

Or, if all company staff receive committee benefits because one single staff member is on the committee.

For example, if you lock down a page to a particular committee, any additional beneficiaries listed here would be able to access the page as well.

Continuing Education

If you offer education credits for committee participation, under Continuing Education, determine what percentage of a term must be completed before committee members receive continuing education credits, if applicable.

For example, if your committee terms run from January - December, and you award credits once 50% of the term has been completed, they will be awarded in June.

Note that when creating terms for specific committee members, your credit options are to: 1) leave the Continuing Education fields blank (meaning they won't receive credits), 2) award credits based on the percentage set in the Continuing Education section), 3) assign a specific number of credits immediately upon adding their term.

If you are awarding credits, and a committee term does not have an end date, Novi will calculate this percentage as if the term is one year long (so if you put 50%, for example, Novi will automatically award credits after 6 months).

Member Directories

Finally, under Member Directories, choose if the committee can be used as filters in directories, meaning visitors can narrow down the directory search results to members of a particular committee. Note that you'll still need to enable this per directory.


Sync Committees with Integrations

Email Marketing

Much like groups, to communicate with committees outside of Novi, you can sync each committee with MailChimp or Constant Contact.

Depending on the platform your association uses, under the Integrations tab, you'll see a toggle to Sync To MailChimp or Sync to Constant Contact.

Once one of these toggles is turned ON, your current and eligible committee members (and any related records you choose - see below) will be available as an audience/list in MailChimp or Constant Contact. The sync will not include past, future, or ineligible committee members.

In addition to the primary committee members, you can choose to sync over the emails of...

  • Beneficiary members (meaning any people or companies inheriting benefits from the committee member)

  • Primary contacts (if the committee members are companies)

  • Billing contacts (if the committee members are companies)

  • Management access contacts (if the committee members are companies)

Online Communities

Novi has native integrations with both Forj and Higher Logic. Meaning, if you have an integration with either of these community platforms, you can sync your committees over.

For Forj, choose a top-level group to sync with your committee. Only people with user accounts will be sent to Forj (no companies), so be sure to set up the group accordingly.

For Higher Logic, the first time the sync is toggled on, a community or security group will automatically be created in Higher Logic whose name matches this committee. People with user accounts and companies will automatically be sent to Higher Logic.

Like the email sync, these will only include current, eligible committee members (and their beneficiaries).

Sync Statuses

You see the status of any syncs in the committee's header region. If you don't have a particular sync turned on, you'll see N/A. Otherwise, you'll see the latest date and time the sync updated.

Keep in mind that Novi will only initiate a sync if a committee and its members and/or members' information change. If the last sync date is not very recent, it's likely that there haven't been any recent updates.


Deleting or Archiving A Committee

If you create a committee by accident or simply don't need it in your system, you can delete or archive it.

A full delete is only possible if the committee has no members, isn't connected to any third-parties, or shown on any pages. To delete a committee, click the caret icon under the Action column to delete.

If a committee has members (current or historic), then it can be archived (soft deleted), provided that the committee is not connected to anything (group conditions, pages, third-parties, etc.).

Archiving a committee with current members will end all current terms as of today. Archiving a committee is done the same way as deleting a committee. You will see a message with details about what the committee is connected to before being able to archive:

Keep in mind, you may want to keep a committee in the system, even if it's no longer active, for historical purposes. Remember that if no one on the committee has a current and eligible term, they won't appear anywhere.


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