Customer Stories
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
This prominent not-for-profit enjoys modernised governance through faster board packs, mobile engagement, secure documents, and better culture thanks to OnBoard.
Customer Stories
This prominent not-for-profit enjoys modernised governance through faster board packs, mobile engagement, secure documents, and better culture thanks to OnBoard.
Industry: Not-for-profit
Headquarters: Sydney
Board Management Goals
Results
OnBoard Capabilities Utilised
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG) is one of the world’s great Pride organisations and the producer of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade and Festival. SGLMG is an LGBTQIA+ not-for-profit, member-based organisation that provides a platform for LGBTQIA+ communities to share with the world through events, advocacy and year-round programs.
The festival’s roots stretch back to the first march in 1978. SGLMG’s current strategic direction underscores diversity, inclusion, equity and social justice, with the organisation focused on celebrating pride and advancing LGBTQIA+ rights in Australia and abroad. The festival draws a broad community and visitor participation across Sydney and NSW, with the City of Sydney listing more than 100 events each season.
A community-elected board of directors governs SGLMG is governed by a community-elected board of directors. The board meets regularly and oversees organisational strategy and governance. Director elections are held at the Annual General Meeting, with four board positions typically contested each year. Recent AGMs have filled four director seats while other directors continued their terms.
Interim CEO Jesse Matheson describes the organisation succinctly: “Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is the largest LGBTIQA+ Pride festival in Australia, one of the largest in the southern hemisphere,” he says. “We put on a two-week festival which includes a fantastic parade community event.”
Before adopting OnBoard, SGLMG’s board governance ran on a patchwork of tools centred on SharePoint, Microsoft Outlook, and manual PDF compilation. “I was having to PDF everything together and put in links,” Jesse says. “Our board packs can be hundreds of pages.”
Preparing agendas and minutes consumed hours. “I was building everything in SharePoint and then putting it on to Adobe, combining it, going through the agenda and putting links to pages, and that was a long process,” Jesse says.
Communication and information sprawl compounded the load. With information from across 48 years scattered across SharePoint, new and rotating directors struggled to find what mattered for the next meeting. Email threads multiplied; board discussions were interleaved with operational chatter. As a community board with regular turnover and monthly meetings, these frictions translated into lost time, inconsistent engagement, and elevated administrative burden for the company secretary.
Jesse led the software review and procurement. “I did get the quotes,” he says. “I procured it essentially and proposed it to the board as the best solution and then they approved it.”
The team compared OnBoard with prior and alternative portals. Value for money was paramount, but so were the experience and fit for a not-for-profit board. “I was very impressed with the layout, the simplicity of use, the resources online,” Jesse says of OnBoard. “The app was a big factor because a lot of our team use phones and iPads when they’re in the boardroom.”
Service mindset was another high priority. “It was very approachable and felt like we were really being engaged,” Jesse says. “I wanted to feel like I was not just giving my money to yet another app, but to a service that actually was going to care and support.”
— Jesse Matheson, Interim CEO, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
SGLMG’s rollout prioritised confidence and consistency. OnBoard provided director training individually or as a board, which Matheson says was critical to implementation.
Initial apprehension gave way to adoption. “I managed to show the value of it to them and with the training it just provided a really good implementation process where they could be engaged and be supported,” Jesse says.
The platform’s intuitive interface accelerated handovers as roles shifted. When a new company secretary stepped in, “He’s picked it up almost immediately,” Jesse says. “He’s doing it all now. Part of the user interface, it’s easily recognisable. You drag and drop things in.”
Administrators can collaborate on pack builds without re-doing PDFs end-to-end, which is another time-saver that reduced frustration and rework.
Pack Preparation and Meeting Management
OnBoard streamlined agendas, minutes and board packs into one place. The resources library became the board’s single source of truth for “page-one” essentials (risk registers, policies, delegations manual and the strategic plan), keeping directors focused on what matters now rather than trawling archives. “It just allows us to have a place where the board can go and look at what’s happening and the really important things rather than a distraction,” Jesse says.
Mobile-First Engagement
Directors increasingly use phones and iPads in the boardroom. Previously, many downloaded and printed massive packs. Now, “a lot of them just utilise the OnBoard app on their iPad or on their phone,” Jesse says. “They highlight things … it’s much more functional.”
Push notifications nudge timely review: “Engagement can be a challenge sometimes, so the ability to push notifications through the phone is really good rather than opening up Outlook,” Jesse says.
Decisions Between Meetings
SGLMG’s board meets monthly, but approvals can’t always wait. OnBoard’s Actions feature was a solution for circular resolutions and out-of-meeting approvals, simplifying a previously email-bound process and keeping decisions auditable and centralised.
Confidentiality and Risk Controls
As a community organisation, SGLMG must carefully manage sensitive papers. “We had a highly confidential report,” Jesse says. “Rather than emailing it, we actually put it into OnBoard with the watermark, not downloadable. We can remove it. That has really allowed us to ensure that things can’t be downloaded … and if it does leak, we will actually have the watermark across it.”
Culture and Collaboration
Beyond mechanics, the board’s tone evolved. “We were aiming to have a culture change,” Jesse says. “I think we actually changed the way in which people approached each other as well.”
Moving discussions from long, sometimes heated email chains into concise, messenger-style threads helped de-escalate and focus debates.
“There has been a cultural change within the board,” Jesse says. “The way in which we engage and talk to each other has changed, due to the structure of OnBoard and how it’s been overlaid onto the board.”
“You will save money if you invest in proper software that will assist you,” Jesse says.
In a sector where time, money and resources are the scarcest things for a not-for-profit, the return on reducing administrative drag is compelling, he adds.
“If you’re going to measure the amount of time, energy and resources that were spent before getting this compared to the cost of OnBoard take the money – give it to OnBoard and reap the rewards,” he says.
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