Board and committee meetings
The papers for the next meeting are in the committee's room, and each volunteer member receives their own personal access.
For associations, chambers and their secretariats
Organise committee work digitally. From meeting papers to formal statements.
In 5F, the documents for your committees are ready to hand, you collect submissions from your members via checklists, and queries sit on the document. Volunteers and members take part without needing their own licence.
Data stored in Germany · Built for professionals bound by confidentiality · No charge for external parties · Developed in-house in Regensburg · Free trial after the demo
The status quo
Meeting papers by email, feedback in the inbox
Before a meeting, the papers go out as a bulk email to the distribution list, with late additions following one by one. Who has which version depends on when each person last checked their inbox. Some comments on a draft go back to everyone, others to just one person, and volunteers work from private devices, with no access to shared filing.
5F replaces this process with permanent committee rooms, where the status of every version is shown and every comment is attached to the document it belongs to.
Use cases
How you use 5F in your association
Working groups and project groups
A working group gets its own room for a limited period, where the participants' drafts, interim versions and agreements are kept together.
Statements and position papers
Several committees contribute to a draft, and their comments sit on the relevant version rather than in separate emails.
Circulars and member information
You store information for all members, for example ahead of a general meeting, in one place that every member can access with their own login.
Submissions from your branches
Annual reports, figures and evidence from your regional or district associations come in via a checklist that shows you the status for each body.
Agreements through to signature
Participants sign cooperation agreements and contracts in the same place where they were discussed, using the 5F Sign module.
Core features
What your secretariat uses every day
Checklists for submissions and evidence
You record what you need from your members or branches in a list and share it with the bodies concerned. Each item shows its status, so the secretariat and participants work from the same overview. You define the list's columns yourself, and a request you have set up once can be reused the following year.
Data rooms for each committee and project
The board, committees and working groups each work in their own area, where documents, tasks and the related discussion stay together. You assign permissions per person, so a guest from a member association sees only their part. If something on a paper remains open, the comment is attached directly to it rather than sent in a circular email.
Tasks
Each task in the process shows who in the secretariat is handling a step and by when. The dashboard shows you what is still open.
Secure links
You share or receive individual documents simply by link. The recipient does not need their own access, and if you wish, you can protect the link with a password and an expiry date. This also lets you involve a body that contributes only a single paper to a process.
5F App
A volunteer board member reads the meeting papers on the way to the meeting and responds to a comment from their phone. This incurs no additional cost: the app is part of every licence.
How does 5F fit your committee work?
In 45 minutes, we will show you the platform in action and discuss your requirements.
Benefits at a glance
What 5F does for your association
- Volunteers at no licence costThere is no limit on how many board, committee and ordinary members take part; licences are only required for your secretariat.
- One current version for all committeesAnyone looking for a document finds it in the committee's room, not in an email thread.
- Comments on the documentComments on a draft stay with the draft and do not get lost in a reply chain.
- Your brand for your membersWith the 5F White Label module, your members sign in at your association's web address.
- Sign agreements digitallyParticipants sign cooperation and service agreements with the 5F Sign module, using an advanced or qualified electronic signature.
- Stored confidentiallyYour committees' documents are stored exclusively in data centres in Germany, and 5F was developed for the requirements of professionals bound by confidentiality.
Range
Organisations 5F is suited to
Committee work in a skilled trades association works differently from committee work in a chamber or a European umbrella organisation. Even so, the underlying processes are similar: everywhere, documents have to be made available to a defined group, submissions come in and drafts are agreed. 5F maps these processes regardless of size and legal form.
- Business and industry associationsfor example industrial, trade, skilled trades or agricultural associations
- Professional associations and bodiesfor example professional associations, chambers, learned societies
- Interest groups and specialist associationsfor example IT, energy, construction or scientific associations
- Civic and social associationsfor example social, welfare, sports, environmental or cultural associations
- Umbrella organisations and federationsfor example national federations and European umbrella organisations
- Foundations and other alliancesfor example foundations with a volunteer board of trustees, consortia of several organisations
Available as add-on
Modules for associations
In addition to the core features, individual modules are available. They run in the same environment as your committee rooms, with no additional software.
5F · Module
5F Sign
Participants sign cooperation agreements and contracts on the document, with an advanced or qualified electronic signature.
Learn more 5F · Module5F White Label
The platform runs under your association's name, and your members see your logo instead of ours when they sign in.
Learn more 5F · Module5F Labels
Coloured labels show your secretariat the internal status; they remain invisible to volunteers and members.
Learn moreHow do associations organise their committee work digitally?
In most associations, committee work runs via email distribution lists, a shared folder and postal mailings to those who do not work digitally. Dedicated meeting management systems exist for meetings and resolution procedures. For exchanging documents with a larger group, dedicated platforms are used, called data rooms, member portals or collaboration platforms depending on their scope. Their defining features are that participants sign in personally, access can be controlled per document and every action is logged. They are aimed at all organisations that take decisions through committees and work with volunteers, that is, associations, chambers, foundations and other alliances. 5F belongs to this group. The platform brings together the provision of documents and the coordination around them in one place, with each comment attached to the paper it concerns.
Distribution list or platform: the difference
| Merkmal | Email distribution list | With 5F |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting papers | Bulk email before the meeting, late additions sent one by one | Permanent room for each committee, holding the current version |
| Access for volunteers | Everything sits in each person's private inbox | Personal account sign-in, no licence costs for volunteers |
| Comments on a draft | Reply chains, partly to everyone, partly to individual recipients | Comment on the version it refers to |
| Status of a request | Known only to whoever kept count of the responses | Each item shows who has already responded |
| Single document to an external body | Attachment that can be forwarded anywhere afterwards | Link with expiry date, no account needed for the other party |
| Signatures | Print, sign, return by post | Advanced or qualified e-signature with the 5F Sign module |
| Traceability | Reconstructed from individual people's sent items | Every action recorded in the immutable audit log, archiving in the integrated DMS |
FAQ
Häufige Fragen
5F is the platform through which your association works with members and committees, shares documents, collects submissions and coordinates drafts. Any membership management system your association already uses continues to run alongside it. In the online demo, we discuss how the two systems work together in your case, based on your own processes.
Get started
See 5F in action for associations
In a short online demo, we will show you the platform in action and discuss your requirements.
After the online demo, you can try 5F free of charge for 30 days.