ERG Meeting Agenda & Facilitation Templates

The first one is electric. Thirty people show up, the chat is buzzing, and everyone has ideas. By month three, it's the same six people on a call that starts with "So… what does everyone want to talk about?" By month six, the calendar invite quietly gets declined.

It's not a passion problem. It's a structure problem.

ERG leaders are volunteers. They're running meetings on top of a full-time job, usually without facilitation training, a template, or a prep hour to spare. So meetings drift, the loudest voices fill the space, ideas never turn into action, and members stop seeing why they should show up.

A great agenda fixes most of that before the meeting even starts.

This guide gives you four pre-built ERG meeting agendas for the moments that matter most, each with minute-by-minute timing, facilitator scripts, and prompts that get people talking:

1. The Kickoff launch a new ERG, a new year, or a new leadership team
2. The Monthly Convening the heartbeat meeting that keeps members coming back
3. Quarterly Planning turn ideas into a 90-day plan with owners and dates
4. The Retrospective learn from what happened and get better on purpose

You'll also get bonus mini-agendas, a facilitator prompt bank for tricky moments, copy-paste invites and recaps, and simple ways to measure whether your meetings are working.

Steal all of it. That's what it's for.

Why ERG Meetings Need Their Own Agendas

An ERG meeting isn't a team meeting. The rules are different, so the agenda has to be too.

• Attendance is voluntary. Nobody has to be there. Every meeting has to earn the next one.
• The room is mixed. Founding members, brand-new joiners, allies, and maybe an executive sponsor, all with different context and comfort levels.
• The topics can be personal. Identity, belonging, and lived experience need more psychological safety than a project status update.
• Leaders are volunteers. Prep time is scarce, so the agenda has to do some of the facilitating for you.
• Members are spread out. Different teams, time zones, and work schedules mean hybrid and remote participation is the norm.
• The ERG has to show impact. Leadership wants to see outcomes, not just gatherings. Meetings are where goals get set and progress gets tracked.

A strong agenda solves for all six. It makes the purpose obvious, gives everyone a way in, protects time for real conversation, and ends with something that moves forward.

The ERG Meeting Rhythm: Which Agenda, When

The best ERGs don't treat every meeting the same. They run a predictable rhythm, where each meeting type has one clear job.

A sample year looks like this: a kickoff in January, monthly convenings every month, planning sessions in January, April, July, and October, and a short retro right before each planning session. The retro feeds the plan. The plan feeds the convenings. The convenings give members a reason to keep showing up.

Pro tip: put the full year on the calendar at the kickoff. Recurring invites with a consistent day and time (like "second Tuesday at noon") can do more for attendance than any single great meeting.

Planning around heritage months and observances? Map them first with Confetti's free DEI calendar so your quarterly plans line up with the moments that matter to your members.

The Anatomy of a Great ERG Agenda

Every template below is built from the same six building blocks. Once you know them, you can build an agenda for any ERG meeting in about ten minutes.

1. Arrive (5 min) a warm welcome and a low-stakes opener that gets every voice in the room early. Once someone has spoken once, it's much easier for them to speak again.
2. Anchor (2–5 min) why we're here today, what we'll leave with, and the community agreements. One sentence of purpose beats a paragraph.
3. Connect (10–15 min) small-group or pair conversation. This is the part members can't get from an email, so protect it.
4. Work (20–40 min) the main event: a learning moment, a decision, a planning exercise, or a reflection.
5. Commit (5–10 min) who does what by when. If nothing is decided, the meeting was a webinar.
6. Close (3–5 min) an appreciation, a one-word check-out, and a preview of what's next.

The golden rule: never cut Connect or Close to make room for Work. They're the reason people come back.

Three roles to assign before every meeting:

• Facilitator guides the conversation and watches the energy
• Timekeeper gives a two-minute warning before each section ends
• Note-taker captures decisions, owners, and dates (not a transcript)

Rotating these roles across members is one of the easiest ways to build leadership skills and share the load. Bonus: people who have a job in the meeting almost always show up to it.

Template 1: The ERG Kickoff

Sample agenda (90 minutes)

Facilitator script: opening

"Welcome, everyone. Whether this is your first ERG meeting or your fiftieth, we're really glad you're here. Today has one goal: to leave with a shared picture of what this group can be this year, and a clear way for every person here to be part of it. You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to bring your ideas."

Facilitator prompts

Sample community agreements

• Stories stay here, lessons leave here
• Speak from your own experience ("I" statements)
• Assume good intent, and own your impact
• Make space, take space
• Cameras optional, participation encouraged

Facilitation tips

• Brief your executive sponsor ahead of time. Ask for 5 minutes, personal and specific, not a corporate overview.
• Make volunteering tiny. "Help plan one event" gets more sign-ups than "join the events committee."
• Capture every idea, even the ones you won't do this year. They become next year's backlog and show members they were heard.
• Send the recap within 48 hours, while the energy is still high.

Template 2: The Monthly Convening

Sample agenda (60 minutes)

Running short on time? The 30-minute version: Welcome (3), Wins (5), Feature segment (12), Updates and asks (5), Close (5). Move breakout conversations to a Slack or Teams thread afterward.

The feature segment rotation

The feature segment is what keeps the monthly meeting from feeling like a status update. Rotate it so there's always a reason to show up:

• Member spotlight: one member shares their career path, a passion project, or a tradition from their culture.
• Guest speaker: a leader, author, or community organizer, followed by member Q&A.
• Skill share: a member teaches something useful in 15 minutes (negotiation, personal branding, a tool they love).
• Culture moment: a heritage month, observance, or holiday, with history and member reflections.
• Listening session: leadership hears directly from members on a specific topic, with clear follow-up.
• Experience month: a hosted class, game, or workshop so the leads get a break from planning.

Want a ready-made format for the skill share? Our guide on how to host skill sharing sessions at work walks through it step by step.

Facilitator prompts

Facilitation tips

• Welcome first-timers out loud. A personal "Welcome, Priya, so glad you're here" is one of the simplest ways to make sure a new member comes back.
• Keep updates to 60 seconds each. Anything longer goes in the recap email.
• Make every ask specific. "We need two people to help with the October panel, about two hours total" beats "Let us know if you want to help!"
• Record the feature segment (with permission) for members in other time zones.

Template 3: Quarterly Planning

Pre-work (send one week before)

• Last quarter's retro notes (see Template 4)
• Budget remaining for the year
• Upcoming observances and company moments for the quarter
• Member survey or feedback highlights
• Any asks or goals from your executive sponsor

Sample agenda (2 hours)

The impact vs. effort grid

Sort every idea into one of four boxes:

• Quick wins (high impact, low effort) do these first. They build momentum and credibility.
• Big bets (high impact, high effort) pick one per quarter, max.
• Fill-ins (low impact, low effort) do them only if you have spare capacity.
• Not now (low impact, high effort) park them in your idea backlog.

90-day plan template

Copy this for each priority:

Facilitator prompts

Facilitation tips

• Start the brainstorm silently. A few minutes of writing alone before sharing keeps the first idea spoken from anchoring the whole room, and gives quieter members equal footing.
• One owner per priority. "The events committee" can't be accountable. A person can.
• Plan for your real capacity. Three priorities done well beat eight half-finished ones. Volunteer time is your scarcest resource.
• Share the plan with your executive sponsor within a week. It builds trust and makes budget asks easier later.

Template 4: The Retrospective

Sample agenda (60 minutes)

The retro promise

Read this aloud at the start of every retro:

"Regardless of what we discover, we believe everyone did the best job they could with what they knew, the time they had, and the resources available. We're here to improve the work, not judge the people."

This small ritual is borrowed from the agile world, and it changes the tone of the whole conversation. Volunteers need to feel safe saying "that didn't work" without worrying about letting anyone down.

Choose a retro format

Rotate formats so retros don't go stale:

• Keep / Start / Stop simple, fast, and action-oriented. Great for your first retro.
• Mad / Sad / Glad surfaces how people felt, which matters a lot for volunteer burnout.
• 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for) good after learning events and speaker series.
• Sailboat wind (what pushed us forward), anchors (what held us back), rocks (risks ahead), island (where we want to go).

Facilitator prompts

Facilitation tips

• Bring data, but don't lead with it. Numbers give context; people's experience gives the insight.
• Silent writing first. It's the best way to hear from everyone, not just the most confident voices.
• Always end with appreciation. Volunteers need to hear that their work mattered, especially when something didn't go to plan.
• Close the loop. Open your next quarterly planning session by reviewing the retro changes. It shows the retro was worth everyone's time.

Bonus: Four Mini-Agendas for Everything Else

Not every ERG meeting is a big one. These short formats cover the rest of the year.

The Facilitator Prompt Bank: What to Say When…

Even with a perfect agenda, meetings get messy. Keep these lines handy for the moments every ERG facilitator runs into.

The most underrated facilitation skill: comfortable silence. After you ask a question, count to seven in your head before rescuing the room. Most of the time, someone fills it.

Want to sharpen these skills across your whole leadership team? Our guide to meeting facilitator tips goes deeper on keeping any meeting moving.

Making ERG Meetings Work for Remote, Hybrid, and Every Member

An ERG exists to build belonging, so its meetings should model it. A few practices make a big difference.

For remote and hybrid meetings

• Run hybrid meetings remote-first. Everyone joins on their own laptop, even people in the same room, so remote members aren't left watching a conference table.
• Assign a chat champion who watches the chat and voices remote questions out loud.
• Use breakout rooms of 3–5. Groups this size give everyone time to talk.
• Rotate meeting times if members span time zones, so the same people aren't always joining at 7 a.m.
• Offer async options. Post prompts in Slack or Teams for people who can't attend live.

For accessibility

• Turn on live captions and share slides ahead of time
• Describe visuals out loud, and avoid relying on color alone
• Build in a break for any meeting over 60 minutes
• Make cameras optional, always
• Offer more than one way to contribute: speaking, chat, sticky notes, or an anonymous form
• For in-person meetings, choose step-free venues and ask about dietary needs in the invite

For psychological safety

• Revisit your community agreements at the start of meetings that touch on personal topics.
• Invite, never assign. No one should be asked to speak for an entire identity group.
• Make it easy to pass. "Pass" is always a valid answer in a go-around.
• Be thoughtful with recordings. Record presentations, not personal sharing or breakout conversations.

For more on designing gatherings that work for everyone, see our guide to designing truly inclusive events.

Copy-Paste Templates: Invites, Pre-Reads, and Recaps

Swap in your details and send. Everything in [brackets] is yours to fill.

1. Meeting invite

2. Slack or Teams reminder (day before)

3. Pre-read for quarterly planning

4. Meeting recap (send within 48 hours)

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• No agenda at all. "Let's just catch up" is how a 30-person meeting becomes a 6-person meeting.
• Too much on the agenda. If every minute is packed, there's no room for the conversation members came for.
• All updates, no connection. If the meeting could have been an email, members will start treating it like one.
• The same voices every time. Use pairs, silent writing, and chat so quieter members have a way in.
• Ending without owners. Ideas without a name and a date attached rarely happen.
• Skipping the retro. Without one, ERGs repeat the same mistakes and burn out the same volunteers.
• Never changing the format. Rotate feature segments, retro styles, and facilitators to keep things fresh.
• Forgetting the follow-up. A recap within 48 hours is what turns a good meeting into progress.

How to Know Your Meetings Are Working

You don't need a dashboard. Track a handful of signals each quarter:

• Attendance trend: are numbers steady or growing from month to month?
• Return rate: what share of first-time attendees come back within three months?
• Participation spread: how many different people spoke, shared, or contributed?
• Follow-through: what percent of action items were completed by their due date?
• Volunteer pipeline: how many members took on a role for the first time?
• Member sentiment: a two-question pulse after each meeting.

Bring these numbers into your retrospective and your executive sponsor check-in. A simple one-slide summary turns "we meet monthly" into clear proof of your ERG's impact.

Ready to Take Your ERG Meetings Further?

Templates handle the structure. But sometimes your ERG leaders need a month off from facilitating, or your members need a meeting that feels like an event. Here's how Confetti can help:

• Let an expert host it Confetti's cultural impact classes make a perfect monthly feature segment, with a professional host who brings the history, the conversation, and the energy.
• Go deeper on inclusion bring a hosted diversity and inclusion workshop or DEI conversations at work session to your next convening.
• Explore the full collection browse Confetti's diversity, equity, and inclusion experiences for workshops, celebrations, and learning events.
• Build your meeting rhythm the rhythms and rituals collection is full of ready-to-run formats for recurring meetings.
• Try self-guided toolkits Confetti's self-guided toolkits give your volunteer leaders plug-and-play activities, prompts, and facilitator guides. Start with the free samples.
• Plan your year use the free DEI calendar to line up heritage months and observances with your quarterly plans.

Keep building your ERG playbook:

• Team building agenda templates for every occasion
• How to launch peer coaching partnerships at work
• How to host peer recognition circles at work
• DEI activities in the workplace

Frequently Asked Questions