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Highly effective non-profits utilize their top leadership volunteers for their expertise, knowledge and wisdom. They rely on these volunteers for a deep-rooted understanding of their industry or profession, and the ability to envision a future for themselves and their fellow constituents that others outside the industry or profession may not be able to visualize and comprehend. Highly effective organizations capitalize on these strengths of the volunteers and utilize the staff to execute strategies, policies and decisions developed and coordinated with top volunteer leadership involvement. Thus, volunteers become unburdened with the day to day management and administrative functions. At the same time, the paid staff becomes more responsible to carry out more than just mundane functions and to actually contribute ideas and entrepreneurial thinking to the organization. With both the volunteers and staff looking out for new opportunities for their organization, a better organization results.

Today’s associations tend to have a shortage of volunteers willing to donate time to their associations. Many who volunteer wish to spend less time doing so than in the past. They want quicker decisions and they do not want old decisions revisited or second-guessed, and old business re-hashed. Therefore, many associations are finding themselves more dependent on their paid staff to carry out duties and responsibilities the organization depended on volunteers to perform in the past and many have streamlined their governance to be as nimble as possible. They have accelerated the decision-making process so good decisions can be made more quickly and efficiently. In a fast-moving society where change can occur virtually overnight, this is necessary, and highly effective organizations aim to be as responsible as possible and have the ability to make decisions quickly and move quickly on those decisions. Such organizations are willing to take the risk that they may subsequently need to fine tune or even reverse decisions.

Another characteristic of highly effective organizations is that they have volunteer leadership focused on strategy, policy and direction for the organization. They operate at a high level recognizing the strengths and opportunities for improvement of the organization while recognizing current and potential external opportunities and threats. They tend to leave the details of execution to their paid staff. Their executive committees oversee rather than execute and manage. Such organizations depend on the chief paid staff person to be a chief executive officer to carry out the aims and desires of the board of directors through the executive committee.

Some of the more recent works that deal with association governance include John Carver’s Boards That Make A Difference, The National Center for Non-Profit Boards’ Non-Profit Governance, and The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) Foundation’s How To Govern Well. All three of these publications approach the subject of governance from different angles, but they all emphasize the attributes and characteristics that their research has found to be present in the best run and most effective associations and non-profits. Below is a compendium of the more salient points made in these three works based on extensive research conducted in the past few years.

· Governance deals with the legitimate distribution of authority throughout an organization where leadership steers, controls and influences from a position of authority.

· A governance structure with more layers than needed, more committees than needed and more seats on committees than needed, increases complexity with no compensating gain.

· When a delegate body exists, it is usually for the purpose of providing more member representation.

· The power and authority of most delegate bodies is limited to the organization’s bylaws and election of board members.

· A board’s role is frequently described as consisting of three major functions: policy-making, setting direction and ensuring that necessary resources are available.

· A recent survey conducted by the National Center for Non-Profit Boards found that the average board consists of 17 to 19 members. There is a clear trend towards smaller boards.

· There is no right answer to how large a board should be, but boards of 30 members or more are considered quite large.

· Geographic representation on a board, which is essential for many organizations, can render a much larger board than an organization might otherwise have.

· A board meeting is a place of action where leaders come together to make leadership decisions. It should not be a place for ritual voting. Boards that make decisions that should otherwise be made by staff reduce the significance of director’s jobs and diminish the value of the staff capital. The degree to which the CEO can be held accountable for outcomes is also reduced.

· An effective executive committee will ensure that the policies and decisions promulgated by the board of directors will be executed through the staff.

· Executive committees should provide staff oversight to ensure the policies and the will of the board of directors are being carried out.

· Executive committees are typically empowered to make decisions for the organization between board meetings, especially in emergency situations or situations requiring immediate action.

· It is not common for executive committees to require approval of their decisions by the board of directors.

· In earlier days, especially in smaller associations, the chief staff person was an executive secretary, primarily providing support to volunteers. The chief staff person position evolved from executive secretary to executive vice president (EVP), giving it more importance and significance, especially when the chief staff person managed several other staff persons.

· Most associations today utilize the title of CEO and give the CEO position more responsibility and authority than a typical EVP position.

· A major trend in associations is to shift more responsibility for implementing policy and leadership directives from the volunteers to the CEO and staff.

· Today’s association CEOs hire and manage staff, develop business plans, provide information and support to the board, conduct studies, stay abreast of association and industry trends, develop ideas and proposals for board consideration, and usually serve as a link to the world at large concerning the matters of the association.

· All significant board and committee directives should flow though the CEO and not to other staff persons.

The most significant trend in associations today is the shifting of implementation from volunteers to paid staff. This is somewhat due to the declining availability of volunteers as well as a desire for volunteers to spend less time performing volunteer duties for their associations. Today’s volunteers value their time and prefer to provide their knowledge and wisdom to their association rather than their time to perform duties that could be performed by paid staff. Thus, the number and size of committees is declining, boards are becoming more knowledge-based and there is more focus on the CEO to accomplish many more association functions with staff. Because decisions need to be made fast in today’s organizations, including associations, giving the CEO and staff more responsibility allows the organization to be more agile, reacting to change and making decisions more quickly than is usually possible with an organization that has very heavy volunteer involvement.

The membership of AHA consists of Affiliates, Direct members, Associates, Youth members, Business members, Single Event members and Life members. Life members can either be Affiliates, who are also members of a local club, or they can be Direct members who are not affiliated with any club. The membership as a whole has no powers or authority in the governance of AHA.

These are local clubs sanctioned by AHA. They are made up of Affiliate and Life-Affiliate members as well as non-AHA members. Local clubs have their own governance structure and their officers are elected by their members, but they must abide by AHA’s bylaws, rules, policies and procedures. They furnish Delegates to the Annual Convention by whatever means their individual organizations permit. Some elect their Delegate representatives and others appoint them. Clubs can also submit resolutions for consideration by the Convention Delegates.

The body of Convention Delegates, as can be seen in the accompanying chart, includes four At-Large Directors appointed by the Purebred Arabian Trust, the four elected officers of AHA, the two At-Large Vice Presidents appointed by the Trust, and all past Presidents. By far, the largest contingent of Convention Delegates is made up by the representatives of the 18 regions that serve as members of the 18 Regional Boards of Delegates. Each Regional Board of Delegates includes a Chair, a Vice Chair, Past Regional Chair, and Delegates selected by local clubs. Each club is entitled to send one Delegate plus an additional Delegate per 50 club members. This relatively large body of some 535 individuals convenes annually and has the following powers:

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