Let's talk about affiliate committees!

sloanalberhasky

Happy Monday, everyone! I would love to hear from some of you about two things: 1) How you engage your affiliate committee members and 2) how you go about recruiting new members for your committees.

Our community foundation has a total of 23 affiliate regions, and each region has its own affiliate committee. Some committees are definitely more engaging than others. Some are great about meeting regularly and communicating consistently with us, but others struggle with meeting and communication can feel almost non-existent. Does anyone out there also struggle with engaging their affiliate committees? If so, what has worked well for you, and/or what lessons have you learned?

In addition to engagement with some of our affiliates, we also have struggles with the recruitment of new committee members. In the past few years, we have tried to encourage recruiting members that bring diversity to the committee (e.g., range of ages and stages of life, diversity in skill sets, etc.). Last year, we created and offered recruitment materials and a recruitment matrix to assist our committees in the recruitment process, but very few have utilized these materials. Is any other community foundation on this platform experiencing the same or similar struggles? If your committees are rock stars in recruiting new members-- what has worked for them? What are they implementing and prioritizing that could be shared with others?

Any help or information is greatly appreciated! Thanks, everyone!