Question:

We’re a national professional society of editorial professionals, founded over 50 years ago. We have two issues going on now with our Board election process. First, can you please share some winning strategies on how we can get more members excited to respond to our call for leadership and apply for the open board positions. Then, how can we get more members to vote on the slate. Thank you!

Answer:

To get volunteers engaged to join a Board, it is always helpful to understand the WHY – is the industry a passion of theirs? Do they need the title or affiliation professionally? Does the Board seem like a strategic group or influential within the community? Do they want to be recognized? All of the above?  You’ll want to highlight driving forces in all your communications.

My success with obtaining great Board members is to highlight the benefits of being a Board member all year-round, not just during the election window.  So that means highlighting committee members and Board members in your publications, communications platforms, at events and anywhere else you can.  Take pictures of Board meetings and activities that looks like fun (and work!) to illustrate that being on the Board is great on many levels.  Once you illustrate how much you appreciate the backbone of your association, members will be more inclined to participate and apply.  Then start recruitment via emails, social posts, all channels for your members to see.  Include testimonials from your current Board members.  Recruit notable figures for your nominations committee and have them brainstorm a wish list group of candidates and assign them to personally reach out and vet candidates with information regarding the responsibilities and positives about the experience. Don’t just rely on what comes in from the applications.  Also, ensure your application process is simple. Remove all barriers to complete.

For your second point, again utilize your nominations committee to personally reach out to voting members asking for them to participate in the election process, cc’ing staff.  Then team members and current board members can reply to the email to remind members to vote. Show the importance of elections by getting your full board involved in the process. We deployed these tactics and achieved over 45% voting rate. 

Katie Geraghty, a senior account executive at Kellen, is currently the Program Director for Society for Manufacturing and Reliability Professionals (SMRP).  Prior to joining SMRP in mid-2020, she was the Executive Director for the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) for over 10 years, where she was responsible for all nomination committee activities, day-to-day operations and managing the global staff, as well as ensuring the strategic objectives set by the Board of Directors were achieved.