In 2015, the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses (AAAN) Board of Directors held a development session on "How Diversity Makes Us Smarter," which started a conversation about changing the board election process from a competitive election to a fully appointed slate.
The whole process, which took about six years, involved several steps to updating the election process. The initial board development session led to the creation of the AANN Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, which was charged with evaluating the composition of the board and the ways they could make an impact on its diversity moving forward.
Then, in November 2017, Mark Engle, CAE, presented his governance research, supported by the ASAE Research Foundation, to AANN's board. At that time, changing the board election process required 10 percent of the membership to vote in favor of a bylaw change. AANN surveyed the membership to ask how they felt about eliminating the membership vote requirement for making changes to the bylaws. Results of the survey showed that about 66 percent of the membership agreed with eliminating the voting requirement.
Please select this link to read the complete article from ASAE's Center for Association Leadership.