Managing your Member Network and Committee
Help and guidance for managing your Member Network and Committee, including advice on governance and recruitment.
What is the purpose of our Member Networks
The purpose of Member Networks is to connect members around areas of psychological practice, research, and interest, and geographical regions, in order to provide community; advance psychological knowledge and practice; support professional development; promote psychological education; and raise the profile and impact of psychology and psychologists, including their contribution to wider society.
How networks fit into the society's governance
The society's overarching documents are the Charter, Rules and Statues, which outline how each of the networks can be established. More detailed operating procedures are provided in the Member Network Rules and Special Interest Group Operating Practices which support network committees in understanding the governance framework they work within.
The society's Member Board also provides additional support and oversight of our network structures, outputs and ways of working to ensure our networks thrive.
Member Networks and Special Interest Groups
We have two types of networks:
- Member Network (Society Branch, Division, Section or Special Group) - these networks are formally recognised within our society governance documents
- Special Interest Groups (Division Branches, Faculties) - these are groups which sit within a Member Network.
The role of the network committee
Every network or special interest group has a group of people who voluntarily manages its activities. This is often called a committee, although your network may use a different name, such as executive committee or team. They take collective responsibility for decisions relating to the network.
Broadly, the committee's job is to ensure that the network:
- does what it was set up to do and meets the purpose of our member networks
- develop and deliver a plan of activities which over the year allows all members of the network to engage and benefit from.
- has enough money and does not get into debt
- works within the society Charter, Statues and Rules, member network rules and special interest group operating practices
The committee will also need to work with the member network services team to produce an annual report outlining all the key metrics, achievements, challenges and plans each year.
Collective Responsibility
All of a networks committee members must share responsibility for the running of the network, and for decisions that are taken. You must all make sure, as a team, that the network is run properly, responsibly and in line with the Member Network Rules and Special Interest Group Operating Practices.
How networks can structure their committees
All committees will need to have a Chair or Co-Chairs.
Committees will want to develop the responsibilities of each committee member based on the networks plan of activities, thinking about the resources they have available and how best to deliver the outputs. Committees will also need to make sure their committee represents their membership from students through to chartered.
How to recruit a new Chair or Co-Chairs for a Member Network?
To recruit for a Chair or Co-Chairs, the committee will need to advertise the role by following the steps outlined below:
- Complete the volunteer role advert form.
- Once we have the details, we will make the advert live on our volunteer opportunities and a news article on your network webpage.
- You can advertise the opportunities via your network newsletter and via your social media.
- The advert will have an initial deadline for nominations to be submitted. If at the point of this initial deadline there has not been two eligible applications, the committee may look to extend the deadline for a further 14 days.
- If at the point of the extended deadline there is not two eligible applications, the committee may extend the deadline for a final call for a further 14 days.
Please direct applicants to the Network Chair or Co-Chair role description when advertising the role.
At the final deadline if there is:
- More than one valid nomination - for the role of Chair, the process of holding a vote will begin where the network membership will be asked to vote which candidate they wish to take up the role, this will be ran on a simple majority.
- A single nomination - then that nominee will be elected to that role.
- No nominations - the committee will meet to discuss if they wish to extend the deadline further or if they wish to pause the process and identify any barriers to members putting themselves forward.
If the committee pause the process, they must ensure they appoint a Deputy Chair, if there is not a Deputy Chair already in place, from appointed members on the committee in order for committee business to continue without the chair role being filled.
How to recruit a new Chair or Co-Chairs for a Special Interest Group
We do not run elections for SIGs. All positions on a SIG committee are appointed roles, with specific skills for chairing meetings and leadership. All applications are reviewed by recruitment panel. If multiple applications are received with the skills for chairing meeting, the recruitment panel may wish to consider forming a co-chairing role.
To recruit for an appointed committee member, including a Chair or Co-Chair, the Committee will need to advertise the role by following the steps outlined below:
- Complete the volunteer role advert form. This lets us know the details we need to make the advert live. You will need to provide the number of roles to be advertised and the required skillset, including name of the recruitment lead
- Once we have the details, we will make the advert live on our volunteer opportunities and a news article on your network webpage
- You can advertise the opportunities via your network newsletter and via your social media.
Please direct applicants to the Network Chair or Co-Chair role description when advertising the role.
How to recruit new appointed committee members
To recruit for an appointment committee member, the Committee will need to advertise the role by following the steps outlined below:
- Complete the volunteer role advert form. This lets us know the details we need to make the advert live. You will need to provide the number of roles to be advertised and the required skillset, including name of the recruitment lead.
- Once we have the details, we will make the advert live on our volunteer opportunities and a news article on your network webpage.
- You can advertise the opportunities via your network newsletter and via your social media.
Please direct applicants to the Appointed Committee Member role description when advertising the role.
Appointed Members
Applications received for Appointed Member will be forwarded to the recruitment lead who will form a panel of at least two committee members to review applications. Committees may wish to include individuals from the wider network membership to the panel process.
The recruitment lead will contact all applicants outlining the decision and providing any feedback. They will also confirm who will be joining the committee to the member network services team for them to be inducted as an appointed committee member.
Chair guidance
If you are looking to apply as Chair:
- You will need the role ID number, which will be stated on the advert.
- You can apply as an individual or submit a co-chair application.
- If you wish to share the Chair role with another member, you can submit a Co-Chair application - You must provide the member's information who you wish to share this role with. By completing this, you are confirming that you are submitting on their behalf.
- Answer four questions based on the BPS strategy and our four shared pillars, Community, Champion, Confidence, Cultivate, that can be found on Goals and Ambitions of the BPS strategy.
The four questions
You will need to outline your experience and expertise and provide examples based on our shared pillars.
- Community - As Chair, in what way would you support the development the sense of community with the Member Network? (Maximum 300 words)
- Champion - As Chair, how would you aim to champion for your Member Network? (Maximum 300 words)
- Confidence - As Chair, what would building and supporting the confidence of the Member Network look like for you? (Maximum 300 words)
- Cultivate - As Chair, what skills would you be able to bring to cultivate the growth of the Member Network? (Maximum 300 words)
The information provided in your above answers, will be used in a vote. However, a vote will only be required should more than one application be received before the application deadline.
Your application will need to be supported by two members who will need to be a BPS member and of the relevant member network. You will need their names and membership numbers.
Appointed member guidance
If you are looking to apply for a committee role:
- You will need the role ID number, which will be stated on the advert.
- Answer the two questions below.
Appointed member application questions
Any previous experiences
This can include current and previous roles within the society and other organisations
Skills and experience
What will you bring to this role or committee?
If you have any further questions, please email [email protected] stating the role ID in the subject line.
I have sourced a free venue for my event from my institution, can I sign the contract?
It’s great to have free venue hire however, there may be additional costs including catering, AV hire and staffing the venue must account for.
It's important you start work on your event prior to finalising the venue as it may not be financially viable for the event to take place there. Submit your event form prior to sourcing venues.
All venue contracts must be signed by the BPS as we are a financial entity, as a volunteer, you are not. Email the quote or venue contract to your Member Network Lead as soon as you receive this for them to start creating the event budget.I want to run an event in 4 weeks, is that possible?
We can run on short notice however, until the event form is completed, we cannot start work on this, your event doesn’t exist to us.
An event form must be submitted to start the internal processes of the event. It's important to consider the time to get the event live, budget creation, venue liaison, set up and the promotional opportunities available with a longer lead time.
How do I know how much the event will cost so we add it into our annual activity plan?
It can be hard to predict the cost of running event with so many variables.
When planning your costs for the year, think about how much of your annual budget you want to contribute to your event, if any.
Complete the quick event form and we will arrange a kick off call to discuss your event, desired outcomes and some of the finer details to begin building an event budget. We use past event data and data from other events to help us predict potential registration numbers.
Can we just set up our own registration for events?
We understand networks may find it quicker to set up their own registration and manage the event, but they shouldn’t have to.
As a BPS event, we want to support networks with events and capture the event registration detail for the network annual reports.
As an organisation, we also need to ensure we have good data governance practice – members should not be collecting and storing attendees details and emails.
Can I be a Co-Chair?
Yes, of course, but you would need to apply to the role as a Co-Chair application. You will need to outline who the Co-Chairs will be, complete the four application questions and outline two nominators who support both Co-Chairs.
The committee will be kept up to date with applications. The committee will need to consider if extending the application deadline will support further applications. If at the extended deadline there has been only one eligible application, a final call will be advertised. If at the end of the final call there is one eligible application that individual or co-chair pair will be elected in to the role without a membership vote.