THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
5/22/2010 7:00:00 AM
Youth advisory boards a unique way to engage future leaders
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| Brenda Hemsted, left, Bankers Trust vice president of consumer services, coordinates her company’s Youth Advisory Board for high school students. Photo by Duane Tinkey |
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BY CHRIS CONETZKEY
Staff Writer
It might not be quite the time to start putting 25-year-olds on your board, but how about creating a board just for them?
One new thought seeping its way into organizations in Des Moines is forming company-led youth advisory boards or councils in an effort to help educate future leaders and help businesses better understand the desires and habits of those Facebooking, Twitter-tweeting young adults.
Credit Bankers Trust Co. President and CEO Suku Radia and Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines President J. Barry Griswell with helping bring the idea to their respective organizations.
Bankers Trust's effort to tap into the younger generation culminated last year with the formation of its Youth Advisory Board program. The company has two boards that are filled with a high school senior from each of 15 schools in Greater Des Moines and a board in Ames made up of seven seniors. The boards, which are now nearing the end of year one, meet once a month for an hour during lunch and seek to educate the students on financial literacy and about the banking industry.
Beyond just helping educate the students, the program has given Bankers Trust personnel the ability to draw on what they have learned from interacting with the youths, and the bank hopes to use that knowledge to improve its practices. For example, Brenda Hemsted, Bankers Trust vice president of consumer services and coordinator of the program, said the bank's leaders once asked the youth board members to evaluate the company's advertisements to see how the younger generation reacted to the ads.
"We have found that listening to that demographic or segment, we learn a lot," Hemsted said. "So we have learned it has kind of been a give and take. We have provided information, and we have also solicited their advice."
Radia learned of the idea from a banking trade publication that highlighted similar initiatives at banks in Texas, and had Hemsted and a group of employees put together the program. Hemsted said the total budget for the program is $12,000 - students receive lunch and a $20 stipend for each meeting and can earn a scholarship, too.
Hemsted was unaware of any other local banks with a similar initiative, but said she would recommend the idea to other businesses looking to interact with youths. As a result, Hemsted said, the company has been able to learn how youths feel about the banking industry, what's important to them and what makes them tick.
That's one of the main reasons Griswell helped push for the launch of the Community Foundation's Young Leaders Advisory Council (YLAC) last fall.
The YLAC consists of 12 members ages 25-45, who were asked to serve for 12-18 months as part of the pilot program. The members attend quarterly meetings, learn about the foundation, participate in foundation events and provide reports on behalf of the YLAC at board of directors meetings.
Griswell and his staff members got the spark for the idea at a retreat with other community foundation officials. He said engaging the next generation was a high priority for his organization and that all organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit, should be trying to be more in touch with how youths operate.
"Any of the organizations that have been around for quite a while, I think we cannot necessarily assume that we are going to appeal to the younger generations," Griswell said. "Certainly we're not going to appeal to them if we don't change the way we operate and be more attractive to them."
Griswell doesn't envision the YLAC as a quick fix and believes the foundation will continue doing this for a long period of time.
"We need to be attuned to their interests and appeal to their interests or else we will find ourselves waking up 40 years from now and we won't have donors because they are part of a global village that doesn't include us," he said.
The idea of business engaging youths is far from new in Des Moines. Many businesses - Principal Financial Group Inc. for example - participate in United Way of Central Iowa's Emerging Leaders Initiative, and the Iowa Association of Business and Industry Foundation (ABIF) has a variety of efforts aimed at developing the state's future leaders.
Between ABIF's Leadership Iowa program and Young Professionals of Iowa for young working adults, Leadership Iowa University for college students and Business Horizons for high school students, the organization is devoted to helping young leaders grow in the state.
Tom McMahon, chairman of Leadership Iowa University and vice president of operations at Barker Co. Ltd., thinks it's important that businesses and organizations such as Bankers Trust and the Community Foundation are finding unique ways to reach out to youth.
"When they are committing to helping the next generation grow into the right responsibilities and grow into the jobs and the culture that we have," McMahon said, "it just tells me that we are going to continue to succeed as a state, that Iowa is going to continue to be the place where we want to raise our children and actually have a business that can be very prosperous."
McMahon said that beyond the importance of businesses learning about their future customers, the initiatives can also help efforts keep young people in the state after they graduate from college.
"It is imperative that we engage these students and really expose them to what is available in Iowa," he said. "If we don't, we are going to continue to get the same result we have always had, and that's a predominant number of these students leaving the state."
McMahon recommends that most businesses, unless they have resources like a Bankers Trust, should try to get involved in existing programs that connect business with youths.
So although Griswell said his organization might not be quite ready to put a 25-year-old on the foundation's board, he still questions, isn't that the true test?
"I'm not sure you want to just load up your board with a bunch of 25-year-olds right from the get-go," Griswell said. "But if you are really going to be serious about this, the true test is do you have some young people on your normal board, not just an advisory board, and that is ultimately where we want to get to is where we have representation on our main board."
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