Leveraging Advisory in Associations & Professional Services

Melanie Venes is a highly experienced leader in professional associations, bringing over 13 years of expertise across membership organisations, including eight years leading panels and committees at ACCA. A respected advisor in the evolution of governance structures, she has played a key role in transforming traditional committees into modern advisory boards designed to deliver sharper insight, stronger engagement, and greater strategic impact.

In this Advisor Insights conversation with Advisory Board Centre Founding Director, Louise Broekman, she speaks about the use of advisory structures to ensure organisations remain connected to their members at scale, particularly in complex networks where tens of thousands of voices cannot be captured through conventional methods alone. At a time when professional bodies are navigating increasing complexity and expectation, she emphasises that advisory boards are not simply a rebrand of committees, but a fundamentally different model built on clarity, contribution, and relevance. In organisations like ACCA, this has meant reducing fragmented legacy panels into a smaller number of high impact advisory boards that deliver meaningful insight while recognising and valuing the contributions of volunteers.

KEY INSIGHTS

Dive into the conversation to learn:

• • How Melanie led the transformation from 50 traditional panels to a smaller number of high impact advisory boards and what made the shift successful
  • Why clear purpose, structure, and frameworks are critical to sustaining volunteer engagement and delivering real value
  • The role advisory boards play in capturing member insight at scale, particularly in large and complex organisations
  • How to balance fresh perspectives with continuity through thoughtful board composition and rotating membership models… and what it takes to design advisory boards that are not only effective today, but fit for the future.