Recruitment of Directors

The point of a nominating committee should not be to make sure that every Member has an opportunity to serve on the Board of Directors. Rather, the nominating committee should be alert and on the look out for Members who have an interest in the well being of the cooperative, who will participate with other directors to make the best possible board decisions for the benefit of the cooperative.

In the co-op community, we sometimes think that every Member of the co-op has an equal right to serve on the board, which is true so long as the Members are in good standing and not otherwise disqualified by the articles of incorporation or bylaws.

But the quality of directors who are elected to the Board has an important bearing on the quality of the Board of Director, which, in turn, has an important influence on the success of the cooperative.

One nominating committee member for an ethanol cooperative recently made the point that he does not support candidates who seem to be "one issue" Members. This committee member's point is that directors should be broad minded about the host of issues that face the cooperative.

A good use of an advisory committee is to use it as a platform to develop and train future directors to run for open director positions.