Introducing a ‘board’ is an idea that has been floated among previous execs and Councils for some years. There are a number of rationales which underpin this, and our team proposes a flexible model to finally implement it. To start, we need to be clear about what in practice the board will do differently from the executive, and why we need it.
 
Firstly, a board model which help AMSA maintain its institutional and corporate knowledge year to year. One of AMSA’s weaknesses is that apart from the Executive Officer, almost its entire personnel turns over each year, from the executive, Council and the MedSocs which support it. This constant turnover means that executives in particular are constantly repeating the same mistakes made by their predecessors and taking the organisation in different directions instead of building on work already done. Under this set up, it is hard for AMSA to truly grow and develop what it is able to achieve, and our board model seeks to redress this by having in place a constant group of people who help guide the organisation in the long term.  These people will be an anchor point for each new exec, helping them to avoid the perennial pitfalls each executive faces, advising them on legal, financial and strategic direction, helping to explain and maintain AMSA’s external relationships with other organisations and individuals and assisting them in any other area.
 
The board will not be a policy making body, nor will it impact upon the ideas, the integrity or the independence of medical students in running their own organisation. Rather, it is a permanent advisory body that will benefit successive teams in years to come and provide AMSA with greater continuity and strategic direction.
 
Furthermore, the Board will also provide greater oversight over the Exec and Council, which helps mitigate the risk – however unlikely – of future execs engaging in questionable ventures. In today’s corporate environment, this is the best-practice model. It is also the model that works for similar professional associations and peak bodies like the Australian Medical Association.
 
The board model will not only free up the exec to focus on the day-to-day management of the association instead of investigating areas they have no expertise in, but in the longer term, it will act as in important institutional resource and reference point for strategic direction.