The WBN mission is to encourage and facilitate the growth, performance and integrity of professional women by creating opportunities to foster relationships through a creative exchange of referrals.
2009-2010 Committee Chairs
The business of WBN is conducted through its committees. These
committees provide members with opportunities to develop leadership skills
and to network with members from all chapters.
Awards
Conducts a search for and awards the honors of Woman of the Year, Service Woman of the Year, Service Project of the Year, the Jean Walsh Scholarship and others as they may be approved.
This committee is most active in March – April and again in October – November.
Members of this committee will read all applications submitted and attend committee meetings to discuss and decide who will be awarded the honors
Discretion, ability to make an unbiased decision and non disclosure are important.
Drafts the Bylaws and /or amendments thereto. Recommendations may be submitted by any WBN member. Proposed amendments must be forwarded to the Bylaws committee chair.
Gets an up to date copy of the bylaws with all changes to the webmaster for publication online, the board of directors
Update the old committee duties to new duties.
Works with the Board Services Coordinator to coordinate this effort
Creates an electronic log of all changes made to her successor in easily opened format.
Assists in the coordination of educational seminars and events. Duties would also include the coordination of volunteer efforts with local small business development centers and other organizations.
WBN Leadership Institute – MMc with 2 more people, before hand and 5 people the day of.
Speaker’s Bureau Creation –updating form, collecting applications, submitting to webmaster add to site. MMc
Develops public awareness of WBN, it’s purposes and events, through public relations-type activities such as press releases, media relationship building and advertising. Works to provide WBN with one “voice” within the media. Secures a photographer for all WBN events and each new Board.
Supports the efforts of our PR Coordinator. The expansion will cause the PR coordinator’s workload to expand. Having a committee of people who have been trained in media relations who maintain their chapter or region in the paper will be helpful to maintain media presence in each area as we grow.
Supports the efforts of our Newsletter editor, helping her to coordinate collection of articles that document WBN events, and added value type of articles and reports to her what happened at chapter rep and board meetings.
Number of Committee members required = 1 each North, South, East – Amy Fauth, West.
Goals for the Communications committee for 2009- 2010 are
Work with the Technology committee on becoming digitally advanced in delivery of our message by becoming a part of online social networking by having the BSC set up online communities within facebook, linkedin, twitter, flicker, and other popular social media as they become available. Use website to communicate more readily with our members and prospective members by having “everything they need” online. Create a WBN Blog.
Create more content rich newsletters in PDF format, saving cost of constant contact, allowing people to print it at will, and to have more accurate records of WBN events to use for WBN history.
Growth
Coordinates and directs chapters. Presents new chapters for approval by the Board. Arbitrates disputes within chapters. Reports to the Vice-President.
Helps start the new chapters by guiding them in chapter start up as per WBN Chapter Start up policies.
Answers questions of potential and new members of the new chapters.
Attends the first four meetings of the new chapter to help them get off the ground
Let’s them learn to fly. You want them to be able to run on their own after your initial assistance.
Encourages new chapter to reach the 20 member threshold in their first few months.
Current expansion areas to include:
Butler
Grove City
Monessen
Pittsburgh Central
North Suburban (North Side , Ross Township, McCandless, Bellevue, West view)
Collects WBN photographs and memorabilia and records the history of WBN.
Contacts chapters to get photos and memorabilia from their past events and scans them onto disk, labels them
Contact previous Historians to retrieve information from them.
Recreates the list of Honorary Members, Past Presidents, Founding Members, Woman of the Year, Lifetime members.
Creates a timeline of events and adds to it month by month as to when chapters started and dissolved, recruiting and chapter events, major WBN events and happenings, awards, and other occurrences. Uses old newsletters to recreate past records and keeps current happenings up to date.
Passes along all information in electronic – easily opened format at the end of her term to her successor.
Creates lists of who served on boards and committees and when
Committee Chairwoman =
Number of Committee members required = ?
Membership
Recruits members and refers candidates to the appropriate chapters. Ensures that all chapters have adequate membership applications, directories, brochures and other membership promotion materials. Maintains the waiting list by chapter. Reviews entire database yearly to be submitted for directory printing and distributes completed directories to Chapter Representatives.
Works with smaller chapters (those with 10 or fewer) chapters to increase their numbers to a goal of at least 20 members. This is to keep the chapters healthy.
After helping smaller chapters with their efforts they can work the chapters from 11-19 members.
They do this through attending the smaller chapters meeting to evaluate why chapter membership may not be progressing. Is there something in the chapter dynamics holding back the growth of that chapter? For example: is it more a coffee klatch than a business meeting? Are there one or two people who take over the meeting? Are they not asking people to attend? Are they giving people wrong directions to the meeting? (yes - it happened to me)
Make presentations to smaller chapters as to how to increase membership through active outreach and explaining why continual recruitment efforts are vital to the health of the organization. (I already have a power point presentation completed for this purpose. They just have to deliver it. This presentation will also be recorded for chapter leadership to be able to access online by the technology committee)
Give viable recommendations on where to reach out to gain more visibility in their community and to gain members.
Can explain why recruitment is important to that chapter’s members. It’s not about filling categories, collecting dues, or hitting an imaginary number.
Committee members should be warm, fuzzy and helpful. A cold “business only” attitude backfires in this committee.
Works with Board Services Coordinator to coordinate efforts.
Committee Chairwoman = VACANT
Number of Committee members required = 1 each North, South, East, West.
Nominating
Reviews applications of nominees presented by WBN chapters for election to the Board. Presents a slate of candidates for election to election to the Board of Directors at the Annual Meeting. Provides election ballots to the Corresponding Secretary, and tallies the vote. Reports the vote to the general membership.
Now creates online survey for the vote and ensures that each member has the email delivered and if not will confidentially handle that members vote if she does not have email.
This committee is active from late January until June. See Bylaws Article 5 section 5 for timeline detail.
Sec. 5. Nomination of WBN members to the Board of Directors – The process for nominating the candidates to the Board is:
Annually the President shall designate a nominating committee which shall be comprised of five members: the Vice-President, a Past President and three (3) Chapter Representatives who shall be chosen from three (3) different WBN chapters.
By March 31 each chapter shall submit to the nominating committee the names of up to three (3) candidates for the Board of Directors. Brief biographical data must also be submitted.
The nominating committee shall meet to review the qualifications of the candidates and to nominate at least three (3) more candidates than necessary to fill the terms expiring as of the next June 30.
Nominations can also be made from the floor at the WBN Annual Meeting.
Members who receive compensation from WBN through the annual bidding process may not serve on the Board during the time period in which their contract is in effect.
Number of Committee members required = 5 including the Vice-President, a Past President and three (3) Chapter Representatives who shall be chosen from three (3) different WBN chapters.
Service Project of the Year Liason
Tracks and documents WBN achievements for organization
Creates one page or smaller descriptions on how to “get involved” each quarter and emails it to director@wbninc.com to be posted via WBN Connect.
Once a quarter attend Chapter Rep meeting to give a timed 5 minute presentation on what is going on with the Service Project and how to get involved.
Is the liaison between WBN and the chosen charity
Committee Chairwoman = GeorgeAnne Muchnok
Number of Committee members required = 1
Special Events
Guides chapters hosting one of the five major events held each year on how to host a great event. These events are the Fall Networking Event in October, Annual Dinner in May, Annual Retreat in January, Spring Networking Event in March, and Holiday Breakfast in December.
Committee members must be somewhat computer savvy since we use online registration and payment for all events and have patience to handle details and many personality types.
This committee will go all year as there will be overlapping responsibilities with each of the chapters.
Designs long range planning and goals, subject to approval of the board.
Develops strategic plan along with budget – side by side to ensure feasibility of plans.
Does a demographic study of membership to ensure recommended plans serve the population of WBN in January.
Members with experience developing departmental or organizational strategic plans, budgets, marketing plans, or have worked in corporate development consulting – or sincere desire to learn these, are encouraged to be on this committee.
Committee is most active from January to June when developing plans for the following fiscal year.
Committee Chairwoman = Anne Bruna
Number of Committee members required = 3
Technology
Works with Webmaster, Board Services Coordinator and PR Coordinator.
Maintains and monitors social media outlets such as facebook, twitter, linkedin, and others.
Researches and makes recommendations on technology as requested by board.
Keeps the board informed of new options that may improve service or save on total cost of ownership on technology.
Helps to implement new hardware and software as purchased by board
This committee runs all year.
Committee Chairwoman = Sue Tresatti
Number of Committee members required = 1
Goals for 2009 -2010 tech committee are
An automated on boarding system including online application processing – eliminating the need for paper through the mail, and wasted time for adding the members to the site, and automatic electronic delivery of membership information to new members helping them to be acclimated to the WBN processes and procedures.
Add dynamic web content training for how to use the new directory and other wbn features on line using jing. This will allow new members and chapter reps to be brought up to speed with video presentations online. It is easy to use and will show people how to update their listing, how to fill in forms as a chapter rep and keep training uniform.
Electronically track chapter achievements for the chapter challenge – posting of achievements online in a password protected area to encourage some friendly competition between chapters of like size.
Work with the Communications committee on becoming digitally advanced in delivery of our message by becoming a part of online social networking by having the BSC set up online communities within facebook, linkedin, twitter, flicker, and other popular social media as they become available. Use website to communicate more readily with our members and prospective members by having “everything they need” online. Create a WBN Blog.
Create more content rich newsletters in PDF format, saving cost of constant contact, allowing people to print it at will, and to have a more accurate records of WBN events to use for WBN history.
Implement Webex or Go to Meeting or other software to support all chapter rep, BOD, and committee meetings.
Invest in the web collaboration software such as BaseCamp or similar for committees to be able to work together and reach deadlines.
