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Emerging Adults on Governance Boards brought to you by the Café Technical Assistant Center.

“It has given me a sense of belonging. It is an avenue for me to help invoke change. That can be hard to find. Somewhere that I feel included and my voice is valued and put into consideration.” These are the words of an emerging adult discussing why being on an adult consumer-run organization board is rewarding to them.

Welcome to Emerging Adults on governance boards. This training will offer consumer-run organizations and Emerging Adults information, resources and practical recommendations for successful integration of Emerging Adult consumers of mental health services with governance boards.

Our learning objective today is to learn more about the purpose of including emerging adult consumers of mental health services on consumer-run organization boards, the components necessary to facilitate a successful and authentic experience for the emerging adult and the other consumers on the board, methods of identifying and recruiting emerging adults or consumer-run organizational governance, creating a welcoming environment for emerging adults, monitoring and improving efforts to include emerging adults of mental health services on consumer-run governance boards and finally resources for further assistance and information.

There are many uses for this training such as better understanding the roles, responsibilities and opportunities related to emerging adults on consumer-run boards. For use in training other board members on the importance of emerging adults and how to get them on the board and make them an authentic representative of the emerging adult population. For use with emerging adult groups and populations to help them better understand how you need them and what they can do to serve as the voice. To use as a piece of board orientation for both consumers and emerging adults and others.

So what is an emerging adult? It is generally accepted as the period between the ages of 18 and 25. This includes the time between adolescence and adulthood, when young adults are switching from a pediatric service system to an adult service system and emerging adults are shifting from a school system laden with entitlements to a post-secondary educational environment that thrives on individual capacity.

Emerging adults on consumer run organizational boards are important because they are part of the consumer population. They can offer service to the board just like any other board member. They provide another layer of energy to the board. They are often an untapped resource. They offer insight on the needs of emerging youth and they can bridge the gap between the pediatric and adult mental health systems.

Some advice from an emerging adult. I think as youth we bring a different, fresh perspective on mental health issues as well as issues that are age specific. I think especially with an organization that plans on working with youth the perspective alone is crucial.

And of course there may be many challenges to engaging emerging adults and some of these might include the emerging adult readiness and preparation. How much experience do they have serving on boards? Do they even know what a board does? And locating emerging adults that are willing to serve on your board. Engaging those emerging adults in an appropriate and functional way. Creating a relevant environment. An environment that is welcoming to them and embraces them as full members and equal members and partners on the board. Facilitating their leadership and measuring and monitoring outcomes to facilitate an improvement.

So where will you find these emerging adults? Well, a good place to start would be with schools where there's counselors and clubs and places where students gather who might have mental health issues and be interested in working with your organization. Likewise, you might look at area universities. They also have organizations within the universities that serve a wide variety of diverse student needs. You could also look into setting up a social networking site that would attract and inform emerging adults about your organization. Providers are also an excellent place to help you get connected with emerging adults who are looking to get more involved in the adult consumer movement. Sports and other activities might be another place that you would look as well as places of worship which could serve as a connection and people within the faith-based community could serve as kind of a liaison to guide you towards emerging adults and emerging adults toward you.

Recruiting emerging adults may be a variation of outreach and recruiting adult consumers for boards. It requires a person who can reach out, engage and meet emerging adults on their own level. It can be built through a connection with area youth and young adult organizations for technical assistance and leads and it can be built through interviews with young adults regarding what might help. This could help you better understand exactly what it is that your organization could do to recruit emerging adults to serve on your board.

And some advice from an emerging adult on recruitment. “There are several ways, but I think it’s very important to make sure that the young adults are comfortable with sharing their story, comfortable with the aspects of mental health, and you could use social media, groups of youth that are already formed and clubhouses.”

So how do we engage emerging adults? Well certainly one of the best things to do is to guide emerging adults to opportunities to use the skills, knowledge and experiences that they have. Facilitate opportunities for them to be involved in a variety of levels besides serving on the board of directors. Maybe they would prefer to serve on a membership committee or within a specific activity that your organization is doing. Engage them through developmentally appropriate relationships. Don't expect a new emerging adult board member to behave exactly the same way as a lawyer who's been on your board for ten years. Acknowledge and respect their safety net of support that may include parents, family members and other informal and formal key players. These may be people that help them in their lives and within their struggles to meet their needs. Assist in developing personal choices, social responsibility with emerging adults. Help them develop their skills in a way that allows them to serve as a peer voice for others like themselves.

There are several steps for setting the stage and becoming successful. Discuss recruitment with the board. Make sure that all the board members understand what it is that you're doing and why you want to bring emerging adults onto the board. Identify the expertise, contribution and skills sought in the new board members. Don't assume that emerging adults don't have skills, contributions and expertise. Maybe you need help with your web page development. Maybe there's other things that you need that they can provide for the board. Establish a strategic recruiting plan so that you know what you're doing, how you're doing it and who's going to get it done. Assign a lead recruiter who can help guide you through this process and keep checking back with that plan and make sure that things are getting done. Set regular checkpoints to revisit and discuss progress, success and make those necessary changes.

What would success look like? Your organization and board should define success. What would it look like to the board? What might it look like to an emerging adult? What might it look like to funders? What might it mean to sustainability? Answers to these will help you to understand better exactly how you would define a successful effort of engaging emerging adults on your board.

And of course we want to ensure that the emerging adults that we engage are the authentic voice. The authentic voice is the voice of the population representative served by the program, the individuals whose lives will be directly impacted by the outcomes of the program planning, development, implementation and evaluation.

What is authentic board representation? Well, an authentic board representation might include targeted populations, all ages, all diagnoses and a diverse population of cultures, ethnicities, races. Individuals who are invested in the mission and vision, individuals who carry out board member duties and responsibilities, and others as needed to ensure sustainability and longevity.

Well, here comes the board balancing act. How do you build a board with the necessary components while balancing representation that might include consumers, emerging adults, agency or program representatives, and specialty expertise, such as lawyers, grant writers, or accountants?

So, planned representation is one of the best ways to ensure balance on your board so representation should be planned and purposeful with consideration for the percentage of consumers that are necessary for the board. The percentage of emerging adults and the organizations needs based upon a current assessment. What is it that you're board needs, who needs to do it and how are you going to get them on the board?

You also want to create a welcoming environment and you can do this through involving more than one emerging adult member at a time. Often if there's only one on the board they may feel isolated and alone or they may feel like a token. Do some research on best practices. Find out what other organizations are doing to engage emerging adults. Discuss with some of your peers who are engaged in similar efforts. Reach out to youth-run organizations and gather ideas from them on how you can do this best. Ask emerging adults themselves. What is it that they need? What would they want to be on an adult consumer board? Develop a board orientation that includes information on how to network with consumers and other board member and assign a mentor to each emerging adult board member so they have someone turn to with questions and concerns.

MORE EMERGING ADULT ADVICE: Emerging adults need “advocacy training and supports to make sure they understand everything being decided upon.” In other words, we want to make sure that the emerging adults have the same level of information and knowledge as other members of the Board, so that they can be effective and functional members.

An ongoing support can be enhanced through quarterly check-ins. Calling the emerging adult up and asking them how are things going? Is there anything we need to change? Is there anything that we can do to support you better? Regular opportunities for them to build their skills and capacity such as going to conferences or trainings, learning more about boards' budget development or how to make a motion. Roundtable discussions with consumers and emerging adults to discuss common and some not-so-common issues, and then that single point of contact such as the president to address issues and concerns. And this can be their mentor.

In monitoring an improving effort should be a regular and predictable process, and it should be based upon your anticipated desired goals and outcomes. It should include an annual board member evaluation as an integral component of improvement that would include a self-evaluation and an overall evaluation, and the results of these evaluations would lead to ongoing quality improvement, looking for ways to make your board more effective.

You certainly could use benchmarks to measure and monitor your efforts to bridge the gap between emerging adults and consumer-directed services and programs, so let's talk a little bit more about that.

Benchmarks are preset data markers that serve as indicators of progress towards desired outcomes. So benchmarks consider performance or industry averages or benchmarking can establish internal and external markers of success that you have deemed to be the standard that you would like to reach.

Some things to keep in mind about benchmarks are that they always contain a number because they're measureable, and they're based upon a consensus of what the average or ideal number is; exactly what it is that you have set for your standard. They're realistic and tied into mandates sometimes by funders, service populations and accountability factors. For example, it's possible that a funder says that in order to receive certain money that they have given you that you have to have 20 percent of your board represented by emerging adults.

Boards can strategically set desired outcomes relating to emerging adult membership. Some of these desired results might be the number or percentage of emerging adults on the board. The number or percentage of motions made by the emerging adults. The number or percentage of committees with emerging adult representation, or the number or percentage of emerging adults supported at conferences and trainings.

Strategic planning can also help with this. It can help you establish benchmarks or intended outcomes, and it creates a plan for tracking and meeting outcomes or benchmarks, and it identifies responsibilities and ensures regular checkpoints. It gives you a way to plan, monitor and improve the work that you're doing.

You might want to do your strategic planning with the planning tool and you might utilize something like the outreach planning brief that we have provided you as a handout. In the upper left hand corner your overall goal might be to increase the emerging adult participation on your board by 20 percent and the outcome or difference it might make would be better representation and voice of the emerging adult population, and in the column that says how will you do it you would list everything that you thought you would do in order to accomplish this and besides that you would put what you would need, who would help, when you would start and when you would finish, and finally at the bottom you would state how it is that you would measure your success so that you would know if you had reached your goals. This is only such planning tool that you can use and there are many, many out there but we do recommend that you put your ideas down in writing so that you can track, monitor and improve them.

The Strategic Planning Boards can set a quality improvement committee to examine progress on a regular predictable schedule, to adjust the plan and benchmarks as necessary, make them more realistic, report to overall board and seek technical assistance for any areas of concern or ongoing challenges. This allows you to have a bit of a snapshot of your organization and the work that you’re doing towards emerging adult involvement on the board.

And finally, an emerging adult board member says I think my biggest suggestion would be to make sure young adults on the board feel comfortable to ask questions if they don't understand. I don't mean that the board meeting needs to stop to make sure youth understand, because that can be interpreted as demeaning, but that the youth feels comfortable to ask someone if they have questions, so the youth can fully participate. Also that that board can take youth views and opinions seriously. That can be the most discouraging factor in the process.

Some resources that you might want to look at is BoardSource. They provide articles on many aspects of government such as forming an audit committee and evaluating the performance of the chief executive. There's also an excellent question and answer section with practical advice for enhancing the day‑to‑day operations of the board. https://boardsource.org/

Another resource is United Way of Central New Mexico, the Center for Non‑Profit Excellence. They offer Board resources, training tools and information that might be useful. https://www.centerfornonprofitexcellence.org/

And finally the National Council of Non-Profits Board Development; they have resources and tools for board development, as well as how to identify, recruit, orient and assess your board. https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/finding-the-right-board-members-your-nonprofit

Thank you so much for joining us. Please check our web site for other resources, training, white papers and materials related to emerging adults and board development. The Café Technical Assistance Center is supported by SAMHSA to operate one of its five national technical assistance centers, providing technical assistance, training and resources that facilitate the restructuring of the mental health system through effective consumer-directed approaches for adults with serious mental illness across the country. http://cafetacenter.net