Design an Advisory Board Structure that highlights the talents volunteers bring to the group.
Once you have invited members of your community to join an Advisory Board, it is important to identify the leadership positions. As an Advisory Board grows and changes over time, it is important to remember and recognize individual talents that each volunteer brings to the group. Below is a suggested structure for organizing your volunteers. While most positions are optional, First Book highly recommends that all members feel committed to either a role or a task to help the Advisory Board succeed.
Required Positions
- Chair - Serves as Liaison between the Advisory Board and First Book national office. Facilitates Advisory Board meetings and ensures proper and timely transmissions of donations to the national office. First Book highly recommends sharing this responsibility between co-chairs.
Advisory Boards are required to select a Chair or Co-Chairs at their first or second meeting. This position is critical to ensuring that the Advisory Board meets regularly and that First Book staff has a primary contact.
Recommended Positions
- Secretary - Records meeting minutes and distributes them to members
- Treasurer - Monitors Advisory Boards budget and transmits donations to the designated account at the national office.
- Application Chair/Committee - Coordinates Application distribution and acceptance.
- Fundraising Chair/Committee - Coordinates fundraising strategies and goals.
- Outreach Chair/Committee - Helps publicize First Book locally.
- Recipient Group Liaison - Facilitates contact between Advisory Board and recipient groups.
- Chair Elect - Agrees to be chair next year.
Tips
Once your roles and responsibilities have been defined in the context of the group, you will be able to better plan for upcoming activities. You can view a Sample Organizational Chart (jpg) for an advisory board. Please review it with the understanding that it can be altered to fit your community needs.
An important observation is that not all members are going to be able to commit to a role or a defined task. Like all volunteers, First Book volunteers lead very busy lives. Volunteers are not required to carry an official title to participate in Advisory Board activities and often volunteers without titles are the ones that make a one-time event a tremendous success.
Volunteers are more eager to take on a leadership role if there is a term limit associated with the role. When discussing volunteer leadership positions, consider asking that volunteers serve for one year with the understanding that the group will discuss leadership roles once a year.