Manage Your Board

When Zach Katkin joined the board of directors of a children's charity, he admits he felt a bit lost.

There was no central place for him to read minutes of previous board meetings, find biographies and contacts for the other board members and learn on which committees they served. “It took me a long time to figure out what's going on,” says Katkin, principal of Atilus, a Web-design firm in Bonita Springs.

So Katkin, 29, and business partner Harry Casimir, 34, started a separate company called BoardMa, creating a Web-based software system to help boards of directors manage documents, list important contacts, send messages and reminders of “to do” tasks, and schedule meetings on a secure network. “It centralizes everything,” says Katkin.

BoardMa currently has 65 customers since it started its beta version. Katkin says the company aims to have 1,000 paid accounts by 2015, a reasonable goal considering there are more than 1.5 million nonprofits, associations and schools that are prospective customers.

BoardMa will formally launch Sept. 1. “We've been working on this for a year and a half,” says Katkin, estimating the company has invested about $100,000 in development costs.

The building blocks for BoardMa arose from other Atilus projects. For example, the company created a Web-based social network for stock and options traders to share and sell investment newsletters and a tool for online schools to sell space in classes that hadn't been fully subscribed.

But Katkin worried that BoardMa might be too sophisticated for people who are not as technologically savvy as stock traders or online college students. “This is a very technological tool. Is the audience ready for that?” he asked.

Unlike simple programs like Google Docs, BoardMa does a lot more than store files. It is a network where board members can communicate, schedule and organize meetings and share documents on a securely encrypted network. You have to log in and be familiar with tasks such as email and online calendars.

The program is reasonably priced at $40 a month. Competitors who provide similar board-management tools for public companies and large corporations charge thousands of dollars, sums that are out of reach for most nonprofits. “Nothing like it exists,” Katkin says.

Because it's so promising, Katkin and Casimir set up BoardMa as a separate company. They wrestled with that decision because they knew it would be time consuming. “How many things do we want on our plate?” Katkin wondered.

Katkin and Casimir had started Atilus in Casimir's apartment while they were students at Florida Gulf Coast University in 2005. They started designing websites and Web applications for companies in the region and business has been brisk.

Atilus doesn't disclose revenues, but Katkin says they rose 89% last year compared with 2012. If BoardMa is successful, Katkin acknowledges it could eclipse Atilus.

Follow Jean Gruss on Twitter @JeanGruss