Association Boards

1
Association Boards Executive Directors

• Presentation and Open Dialogue with Executive
  Directors of The Arc and People First of
  California

2
Overview

• Board Members Roles in Association leadership
• Working with their Executive Director
• 7 Measures of Success
• Open Dialogue with Tony Anderson, Executive
  Director The Arc of California and Sue Swenson,
  Executive Director, The Arc of the United States.

3
Mission Purpose

• Decide on the direction of PFCA
• Get advise from other leaders in other states
• Visualize the Future

4
Personnel

• Select and Executive Director (one of the most
  important jobs of the board)
• Recruit for excellence
• Evaluate the needs
• Match needs with skills

5
Working with the ED

• State clearly what needs to be done
• Respect the personal needs
• Praise accomplishments
• Encourage learning and growth

6
Ensure Planning

• Take the time to study the needs of PFCA
• Study the needs of people with disabilities
• Set a time table
• Find chances to be creative

7
Ensure Adequate Resources

• 100 Board Gifts
• Seek ways to build capacity
• Build membership
• Build long term finance support
• Practice Salesmanship

8
Manage Resources Effectively

• Build a solid budget based on needs
• Insist on financial reports
• Insist on an audit

9
Determine Monitor the Programs and Services

• Establish milestones and measures
• Set parameters
• Evaluate accomplishments

10
Enhance the PFCA Image

• Speak well in public and criticize in private
• Look for opportunities to speak about PFCA and
  its accomplishments
• Seek opportunities to sell PFCA

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Serve as Moderator

• Find ways to agree with one another
• Remember always to respect each other and their
  point of view
• Provide a place to appeal
• Always come down on the side of persons with
  disabilities and their families

12
Assess Performance

• Evaluate accomplishments
• Find ways to do better
• Explore what could be improved
• Enable others to perform well

13
Practice Effective Governance

• Practice ownership and avoid split allegiances
• Incorporate committees and task forces into your
  activities
• Focus meetings and agenda on goals, priorities,
  policies and positions.

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What Makes Associations Remarkable?Spring 2007,
By Mark J. Golden, CAE

• 18,000 hours of work
• 1,000 CEOs and other leaders to nominate the top
  five associations in the country.
• initial list of 506 associations
• 104 most cited
• Submitted 15 years of data
• At least 20 years operation finished more years
  in the black than in the red exhibited the
  ability to retain members or donors during the
  study period
• More than one CEO
• Willing and able to fully cooperate

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The 9 great associations to be in the study group

• AARP
• American College of Cardiology
• American Dental Association
• Associated General Contractors of America
• Girl Scouts of the USA
• National Association of Counties
• Ohio Society of CPAs
• Radiological Society of North America
• Society for Human Resource Management

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Customer Service Culture

• Everyone takes a we-are-here-to-serve-you
  approach.
• The American Dental Association, for example,
  adopted Members are the purpose of our work as
  its value statement.
• All of the associations systems, processes, and
  structures showed they didnt assume they knew
  what the members wanted and needed.
• Ask and listened carefully to the answers they
  got back, even when the answers werent what they
  wanted to hear.

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Alignment of Products and Services with Mission

• The mission wasnt abstract. It was subdivided
  into areas of need.
• Specific products, services, and activities were
  developed to meet those needs.
• Mission, not revenue, drove the remarkable
  associations product and service mix in spite of
  honoring no money, no mission.

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Data-Driven Strategies

• The capacity to continuously gather and analyze
  data and make decisions.
• What do we now know, and what are we going to do
  about it?
• Girl Scouts of the USA regularly launches new
  programs to address contemporary trends relevant
  to its constituents
• This approach also includes internal market
  research.
• Even the smaller associations demonstrated the
  same will to gather, share, and understand data

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Dialogue and Engagement

• ability to share what has been learned
• The remarkable associations maintain a culture of
  continuous conversation, pushing information up,
  down, and sideways throughout the organization.
• They did not exhibit the typical silo mentality
  organizational fragmentation by department or
  responsibility.
• The National Association of Counties, for
  example, holds weekly staff meetings that are
  true dialogues.
• The Radiology Society of North America redesigned
  its physical office environment to foster open
  and collaborative energy.

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The CEO as a Broker of Ideas

• Many of the chief staff executives in the study
  were visionary leaders.
• The CEO operates as a broker of ideas, able to
  inspire and facilitate visionary thinking
  throughout the organization.
• CEOs in the study group constantly communicated
  with staff members and volunteers, making a
  concerted effort to clarify roles and
  responsibilities and facilitate the
  staff-volunteer partnership.

21
Organizational Adaptability

• Weathered crises, in some cases significant
  crises, and learned from them, quickly assessing
  the situation and then taking action.
• Know what could be changed without violating the
  core mission and what could not be changed.
• Remarkable associations continued to track data
  on their achievement (or their failure to
  achieve) of the results they wanted.
• For example, the Girl Scouts of the USA has gone
  through three complete redesigns of the Girl
  Scout uniform in the past 50 years. Girl Scouts
  has remained true to its purpose but responsive
  to a changing world.
• The Society of Human Resource Management changed
  its board member recruitment process to include a
  competency-based nomination process where
  candidates applied for consideration based on
  their resumes and capabilities

22
Alliance Building

• Engaged in alliances in a more systematic and
  intentional manner, driven by their own strategic
  needs.
• Showed fierce self-confidence, almost arrogance,
  and honest humility, recognizing what they were
  truly good at and what others did better.
• The same clarity of role, accountability, and
  goals so characteristic of internal operations in
  the remarkable associations extended to their
  alliances with outside parties as well.
• The remarkable associations communicated clear
  expectations for each specific partnership and
  did not hesitate to walk away if a win-win
  scenario didnt materialize.
• By contrast, associations in the comparison group
  often engaged in alliances arising out of general
  needs (We share a lot of common interests)
  rather than with specific goals or outcomes. They
  also formed some alliances purely for non-dues
  revenue gains.

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The Sweet Spot

• It is important to note the tight synergy between
  and among all seven measures in each of the study
  group associations. Being strong in a few of them
  wasnt enough. Greatness lies in the sweet spot
  where all seven characteristics intersect.

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Contact Information

• Sue Swenson
• Executive Director
• The Arc of the United States
• www.thearc.org
• [phone]

• Tony Anderson
• Executive Director
• The Arc of California
• www.arccalifornia.org
• [phone]