Young-up: Gen X, millennials and your board of directors

The last couple of decades, many credit unions have implemented plans to help increase diversification amongst their boards of directors. Typically, this diversification is thought of primarily along racial, occupational or geographical lines.

While it is important for your board to offer a true mirror of your overall membership, many credit unions are missing the boat when it comes to an even more important diversification area — age.

The average age of a credit union board of director is typically somewhere in its mid-to-late 60s. If your credit union wants to grow (and a growth strategy must be a part of your overall strategic plan) it only makes sense that you work now to diversify your board’s age.

Please note: this is not to knock older board members. Credit unions absolutely need their experience and voice and they certainly represent an important part of your overall membership. However, in order to complement its younger growth strategy, your credit union must also look towards adding Gen X and Millennial aged members to its board of directors.

How can your credit union both interest and recruit younger members to its board? Consider the following.

• Revise your board succession plan to include age. Again, many credit unions have put diversification plans in place that focus more on race and ethnicity. However, in order to truly represent your membership as with a youth-movement growth strategy, you must also ensure the document reflects the importance of adding additional younger members to the board.
• Ensure youth members know about the opportunity to volunteer for the board. One of the strengths of the Millennial generation, in particular, is its commitment to community and volunteerism. However, you cannot tap into this strength unless the audience knows the opportunity exists. Use traditional and digital marketing methods to reach out to younger members, making sure they know about the role and importance of the board of directors and how they can take a more active part in it.
• Consider establishing a sub- committee advisory board of younger members. These individuals, while not initially full-fledged members of your board, could be established into a sub- committee with dual advisory and learning roles. You can invite members will be invited to all board meetings where they could offer input and learn more about board procedures, responsibilities and etiquette.
• Offer some type of educational opportunity about credit union volunteerism. You can set this up as more of a “brown bag” informal lunch in which younger members are invited to attend, fellowship and find out more about volunteer roles within the credit union, including your board of directors.
• Expand traditional board meeting times. If you’re looking to recruit younger members it’s important to consider the possibility their time commitments are different than the average, older board member. For example, if you are looking to recruit younger members, you must keep in mind that they may have young families and jobs with demanding time frames (in other words, they are not retired). If your board meeting has always been the first Wednesday of the month at 5 PM, you might need to consider changing that to a different day or time in order to accommodate the lifestyle needs of your younger board members.

During strategic planning retreats, I visit with many credit unions of different sizes and membership makeup. As they plan for their future, two emerging commonalities include the push to get younger and the push to diversify the board of directors. Why not marry these two concepts and work to ensure that your board more accurately reflects your (hopefully) younger membership with its own Millennial and Gen X age members?