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The big debate in public relations circles these days has nothing to do with the outrageous efforts to sully the reputation of Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange and its implications for the profession and journalism in general, BP’s ham handed response to the biggest manmade environmental disaster in U.S. history or even whether PR staffers caught posting phony reviews online should be tarred and feathered. Instead, the greatest minds of our profession are embroiled in a no-win argument about whether the Public Relations Society of America should require professional accreditation before being considered for service on the Society’s Board of Directors.
Established in 1964, the Accredited in Public Relations credential (APR) is awarded by the Universal Accreditation Board (disclosure: I earned my APR in 2000). It measures a public relations practitioner’s fundamental knowledge of communications theory and its application; establishes advanced capabilities in research, strategic planning, implementation and evaluation; and demonstrates a commitment to professional excellence and ethical conduct.The APR credential has nothing to do with a person’s ability to govern effectively on the board of a national PR society. Zip. Zero. Nada.
Currently, PRSA requires that any prospective board member be accredited. When a ground-up rewrite of the PRSA bylaws was proposed last year, the organization’s General Assembly (the PRSA version of Congress) rejected the proposed language that would have stripped accreditation from board requirements. Despite voting a few years ago to drop the requirement that all Assembly Delegates be accredited, the Assembly balked at taking the next logical step.
The reason the PRSA general assembly voted to drop the requirement that Assembly Delegates be accredited (or “decouple” service from accreditation as we called it then) was that doing so eliminated so many highly qualified PRSA chapter leaders. How could a person serve as the president of a large chapter and not qualify to represent that chapter as a PRSA Assembly Delegate?
The rationale for keeping the accreditation requirement for Assembly Delegates then (as it is now for board service) is that it illustrates an organizational commitment to the credential. If PRSA’s leaders aren’t willing to pursue and achieve the credential, how can the organization suggest it has value for everyone else? What kind of PR practitioner would seek a leadership position but not consider it worthwhile to seek this profession’s credential?
That is a pretty good argument, but we aren’t in a world where everything makes sense. The fact is that only about 20 percent of PRSA members have achieved the APR credential. As a result, until the middle of the last decade, the organization basically had a class system of governance. Only 20 percent of the membership had the ability to serve on the PRSA General Assembly and/or Board of Directors. The other 80 percent, for which everything else was the same (including dues) could not participate in leadership.
Included in that 80 percent are highly capable PR practitioners, including accomplished leaders in corporate communications and agency management. Included in that 80 percent are people who have been leaders of the profession for 20 or more years and regularly shape thoughts about effective strategies, trends and ethics. And included in that 80 percent who, until the mid-00s, could not serve as an Assembly Delegate and STILL cannot serve as a PRSA Board Member are practitioners who have given countless hours of their time as leaders at the chapter and regional levels.
It didn’t make sense for the PRSA General Assembly and it does not make sense for the PRSA Board of Directors.
Last year when the general assembly passed an amendment to the proposed new bylaws that re-inserted the accreditation requirement for board service, I thought it was wrong. To make a point, I presented an amendment to re-insert the accreditation requirement for service as a General Assembly Delegate. I knew it would be defeated, but I wanted to make a point that their insistence on requiring an APR for board service made no sense given their vehement distaste for requiring APR for the assembly.
It was and is a blatant contradiction. If you believe accreditation should be a requirement for PRSA leadership, I respect that. But I can’t understand how you can require accreditation for one set of leaders but drop the same requirement for the other set of leaders.
I don’t think anyone really got the point I was trying to make. Turns out PR people are a very literal group and don’t really get irony.
Fast forward to today with forum posts and e-mails flying with semi-respectful insults pitting the leaders of our profession against each other. Each side is entrenched with very little likelihood that many will be influenced by the back and forth argument. But here’s the bottom line:
- It makes no sense to require accreditation of the PRSA Board of Directors, especially since the PRSA General Assembly dropped the requirement for accreditation for itself and nearly all chapters have no APR requirements for leadership.
- Given the fact that a majority of the leaders of PRSA chapters, regions and the PRSA General Assembly are not accredited, it is impossible to argue that accreditation has any impact on the ability to govern. The organization is already largely governed by unaccredited PR practitioners.
- The inability of four out of five PRSA members to serve on the PRSA board regardless of their level of achievement, track record of service to the organization or interest in serving is patently unfair.
- If the real goal is to illustrate the organization’s commitment to the credential, there must be better ways to accomplish that goal than coupling accreditation and board service.
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This post was shared in the spirit of having a Point / Counterpoint discussion. What do you think? We are also open to posting a counter argument from membership.
As an APR who just spent an entire weekend judging an awards competition that required three APR judges PER AWARD, I understand the argument to open up the leadership positions to a broader range of qualified candidates. We have chapter members who are not APR who were qualified to judge, but could not.
ReplyDeleteAs an immediate past president and nominating chair, I also understand the challenge of filling officer / board positions, even at the chapter level. Professionals with the time, money and flexibility to volunteer are few and far between.
However, I don’t think it’s too much to ask someone elected to the national board to value APR, the hallmark credential of this Society, enough to attain it. It's not a barrier any more than a “preferred requirement” on a job description is a barrier. It's a demonstration of commitment to this organization's priorities, ethics and standards. I expect no less of someone at a national leadership level.
Therefore, as a practical compromise, I and other delegates have proposed alternate revision wording, such as:
“To be eligible as a director, the individual must be a member of the Society in good standing and have at least TWO of the following qualifications: 1)APR; 2) held a leadership role within the Society, including, but not limited to, served as a member of a Chapter, District or Section Board of directors, chaired a national or local committee or task force, or served as an Assembly delegate; and/or 3) served as a public relations professional for 20 or more years, with increasing levels of responsibility.”
Meeting two of these three requirements -rather than only one- obviously yields the best board candidates with the combination of skills, experience and knowledge of this Society’s structure and accreditation process.
It widens the field of candidates, still values APR, and gives the nominating committee flexibility but eliminates the possibility that someone with 20 years’ experience yet no prior PRSA leadership nor accreditation credentials could “waltz, schmooze or buy” their way onto the national board.
This compromise moves us in the direction we need to go without leaving the door open for a future board with no regard for APR. And it sets forth in the bylaws what the nominating committee is already doing: vetting the candidates based on some combination of these three criteria.
I believe as a Society we need to make a compromise in order to move forward on this issue before it becomes any more divisive than it already has.