Preparing the Association for a Vibrant Future

Early last year, the NASBP officers began a discussion about positioning the Association to be a strong, responsive, member-focused organization well into the future and embarked on a process that culminated in a strategic vision for the Association. The foundation of and the catalyst for the strategic vision lay in the many responses to and information gathered from the membership in the membership satisfaction survey conducted in 2022 and reported to the membership at the fall 2022 meetings. The resulting vision, called NASBP Vision 2028, was reviewed, discussed, and approved by the NASBP Board of Directors at the 2023 Midyear Meeting. This Vision reaffirms NASBP’s mission “to strengthen professionalism, expertise, and innovation in surety and to advocate its use worldwide” and expresses the following value statements of the Association:

• NASBP will exemplify informed decision‐making, excellence in governance, and nimbleness and transparency of actions.
• NASBP will empower a member‐driven, tolerant, and ethical culture of engaged surety professionals for the welfare and benefit of the surety industry.
• NASBP will be an inclusive, member‐valued community which acts as the catalyst for the preservation, promotion, and technological advancement of surety bonding.
• NASBP will instigate productive relationships and collaborate with surety stakeholders to energize focus around and create initiatives about the importance and trustworthiness of surety bond protections.
• NASBP will be the premier source for educational training and experiences on suretyship for surety professionals and stakeholders, offering varied and comprehensive educational opportunities and learning pathways.
• NASBP will engage in attracting talent to surety careers and in developing talent for leadership roles and responsibilities in surety agencies and companies and in the Association.

Further, NASBP Vision 2028 establishes three principal areas of focus for the organization: advocacy, education, and technology. Strategies and outcomes will center around these areas of focus, with NASBP having the desired goals of being:

• The premier provider of educational and leadership development experiences for surety professionals and a trusted source of information and learning resources for surety professionals and stakeholders,
• The principal catalyst for surety industry standards making and the adoption and acceptance of technologies to facilitate the efficiency of surety bonding processes, and
• The champion of the interests of surety professionals and of the surety industry through relationship building with surety stakeholders and through dialoguing with and engaging public and private influencers, decision‐, and policymakers on the role and importance of surety bonding.

These are worthwhile and ambitious organizational goals that require informed and engaged decision-making by NASBP leaders and alignment of purposes with resources.  To that end, modernizing the Association’s governance structure was deemed an important early objective. That process got underway at the NASBP 2023 Midyear Meeting, as the NASBP Executive Committee recommended bylaw amendments to the Board of Directors to, among other things, fix a date certain by which all membership dues must be paid (March 31) and to permit use of electronic technologies, like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to afford the Board of Directors the flexibility to hold virtual Board of Director meetings in addition to the two in-person Board meetings held at the Annual Meeting and the Midyear Meeting. These amendments were passed by the Board of Directors at the Midyear Meeting.

Before the Board at the Midyear Meeting amendments also were proposed to reduce the size of the Board of Directors from 29 directors to 17 directors. The Board of Directors decided to defer action on those proposed amendments until it had had additional time to reflect on the impact of those recommendations. The Board of Directors convened a virtual meeting on January 26, 2024, to continue to discuss the additional proposed bylaw amendments, which centered on a gradual reduction in the size of the Board of Directors over the next several years. The proposed bylaw amendments established that, though the number of directors would be reduced, each director would have liaison responsibilities for a NASBP committee and for a NASBP geographic region. The proposed bylaw amendments were passed by the Board of Directors at its meeting on January 26, and the Board of Directors, through working groups, will discuss and define further procedures or guidelines for the nomination of candidates for Board service and for the execution of Board director responsibilities. The revised bylaws can be accessed in their entirety from the nasbp.org website.

NASBP Vision 2028 articulates a vision that will focus the energies of the Association in the years to come. Other elements of the Vision already are underway, as work has begun on a total redesign of the Association’s website, NASBP.org, to make it state-of-the-art and responsive to the needs of members, on advancing RiskStream Collaborative’s initiatives on using blockchain technology for digital bonding, and on a surety careers short curriculum for college students. The NASBP Executive Committee and the Board of Directors regularly will review Association actions for adherence to Vision values and to progress of Vision objectives and will make sure that the Vision remains at the forefront of the Association’s decision-making, guiding the work of the Association for an impactful and meaningful future for surety professionals.