You sent "thoughts on the gala" and got a confident paragraph that would fit any organisation they have ever chaired. They were not phoning it in. You handed them a topic. A topic has one available answer: the pattern.
This is the advisor case from the staff side of the table. The chair sees you in a block every few months. The cache is stale. Your job is to hand them the facts the base rate cannot explain.
A decision, not a programme area
Name the decision. "I need you to choose whether we postpone the gala by six weeks or cut the live programme and keep the date. I commit on the 20th." A programme area has no closing condition. A closed list can be answered between two other boards.
Say whether you want an opinion or something your organisation records. Those spend different things. An opinion is ten minutes. A formal sign-off travels through whatever process you actually use — and what that process is belongs to your counsel or secretary, not to a well-written email. Do not hide a resolution inside a friendly note.
Respect the time they have. They should see the ask in the first screen.
Two facts that break the pattern
Give the facts that make the default wrong. The test is mechanical: would this change the advice? The room you already booked, the donor who can only do the original night, the staff week that disappears if you slip. Cut the history of how the gala used to work. History is the room. What is true now is the input.
Then your lean, and what would flip it. Chairs are better at attacking a position than generating one. A stated lean turns their job into finding the flaw.
Do not attach the deck. RelayLink does not carry attachments. Describe the one slide that matters — the date, the figure, the constraint.
You release it; they reply from mail
You approve the wording. Use the organisation's name as they use it with other directors. A nickname you keep for the chair stays on your side.
They do not need an account. The briefing arrives as email. They can reply there. If they already have an activated account, a new thread needs an accepted pair. If another officer must see it, say so. One briefing still goes to one mailbox.
Mark the premises your assistant filled. A fluent paragraph about "the board's appetite" is not a count of votes. Label the inference.
When you need the twenty minutes
If you cannot frame the decision, ask for the call as its own request, with one line on where you are stuck. Pretending you can frame it produces the generic reply you already have.
If you can frame it, send the closed list. The meeting, if it happens, should start on the disagreement.