Governance: Balanced Boards

There are a lot of books and articles on the subject of this blog title and I’d like to highlight the ideas put forth by Glenn Tecker at Tecker International LLC, in a slide deck he recently shared with the association community.

He starts out by talking about the 3 key attributes you should look for when identifying potential new board members.

 

Skill set – marketing, lobbying, legal, finance, fundraising, etc.?

 

Diversity – this would include but not limited to generations, geographic, industry sector, gender, ethnic, etc.?

 

Experience – what experience do they have in the community, working on a board and knowing the work of the chamber?

 

The slide deck included a list of the “Six Key Attributes of Board Members.”  This list below is verbatim from his slide deck (Copyright 2020 Tecker International LLC).

  • The ability to think strategically and analytically and to effectively communicate thoughts and the reasons for them.
  • Possession of earned respect of other key stakeholder group members.
  • The ability to work well with others as a member of a collaborative group with group decision-making authority and an understanding of the fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and obedience.
  • A demonstrated understanding of the differences between “oversight” and “supervision.”
  • An earned reputation for emotional maturity, personal integrity, and honesty.
  • A demonstrated familiarity with the body of knowledge related to both the process for which the group is responsible as well as the substantive content of the subject area within which decisions are choices will have to be made.

I wrote about the Duty of Care, Duty of Loyalty and Duty of Obedience of board members in a previous blog post that can be found HERE.

 

I’ve also talked about creating job descriptions for potential board members in previous blog posts.  Have you thought about creating a set of interview questions to ask your prospective new board members?  This is where you may want to go back to the skill set and attributes comments above for specific examples.

 

Remember, these new board members will be with the organization for the next six years, if you’re like most chambers who have two year terms renewable for three terms, and picking the right ones is key to your and your organizations success!


For more resources on board governance go HERE.

Connecting with People on Facebook

I attended a fascinating webinar presented by Jannelle Watson with Facebook.

The following are my notes from her session.

She separated her discussion into four different areas; the basics, the tools, content strategy and resources.

The Basics

  • You need to be on a Facebook page not a profile
  • 218 M active every month
  • 166 M return every day
  • 156 M use Facebook on mobile every day
  • 90% of discovery happens on mobile.  Optimize for mobile.
  • Use simple vertical images and graphics, and remember, less is more! 
  • Ensure page security.  Set strong passwords, two-factor authentication.

 The Tools

  • Comment moderation.  Comment policy, profanity filter and page moderation.
  • Facebook Live - most engagement.  10x the comments while Live.
  • Live Premieres - schedule and debut on-demand videos as Live moments.
  • Facebook Groups - you can tie it to your page.  A great resource to continue conversations with select attendees.
  • Events - tool used to promote your events.
  • Messenger - send important messages to your subscribers or use to set auto responses.
  • Messenger Rooms
  • Stories - show your personality.  You’re at the top tray when your people sign into Facebook.  You can use it to interact with your members.  Remember, your story goes away after 24 hours.
  • Facebook and IG ads - paid advertisements vs organic reach. 

Content Strategy


What Works?  Make sure it’s authentic, interactive, timely and consistent and varied.

  • Authentic - make it feel personal and a connection to the community;
  • Interactive - answer questions from your members, go Live, like and reply to comments and tag other pages;
  • Timely - discuss hot topics, breaking new (i.e. press releases or program deadlines) and write quality long-form content.  This can be cut and segmented and promoted on Twitter; and
  • Consistent and varied - develop a content calendar (for a previous blog post on that subject go HERE), post regularly, aim for daily posts and use a variety of post types, photos, videos, stories, links and Facebook live.

Resources

  • Google Facebook Resources
  • Fundraising tool for 501 c3’s only
  • Facebook speakers are free
  • Facebook Live Producer
  • Facebook.com/gpa - has everything she talked about
  • Facebook Help

Great tips to take advantage of this social media platform.