Leadership and Development

Junior Boards: Engaging Future Leaders and Increasing the Bottom Line

Breakout Session Presenter(s)

• 

  Gena Richardson

  Executive Director
  The Arc of Alabama

Several chapters of The Arc and other human service agencies operate junior boards. These boards commonly seat young professionals whose responsibilities include fundraising, networking and volunteering. Many junior board members have experience in these areas due to their work in student-run organizations in high school and college. Quite often junior boards expand their membership to younger professionals.

Gena D. Richardson from The Arc of Alabama will describe the history of their junior board’s development, their responsibilities and current activities and the outcome of their efforts. She will explain how her chapter pushed the envelope of the traditional junior board model and created a group that fit the needs of her chapter. In less than 6 months the junior board had participated in numerous fundraisers, advocacy events, and community networking groups while promoting The Arc of Alabama and the 30 local chapters in their state.

Learning Objectives:

• Acquire the informational necessary to market, recruit, and create a junior board
• Construct ideas for creating a junior board for your chapter and identify the numerous benefits associated with having an active group
• Upon completion, participants will be able to determine why a junior board is beneficial for any chapter of The Arc and identify ways to recruit dynamic, young leaders into a chapterby focusing on fundraising, advocacy and potentially preparing them to make them roll over as members of a full governing board.