Page 56 - strategicfactbook

INTRODUCTION
The Peer Review Team thanks the Michigan Farm Bureau for inviting us to Michigan to learn about your organization and offer feedback and suggestions. We enjoyed the experience, and we each learned things that we will take back to our own organizations. We hope the ideas contained in this report will help the organization continue to prosper.
OVERVIEW OF PROCESS
The Peer Review Team began by reviewing several documents including publications, bylaws, policies and board reports to understand the operations of the Michigan Farm Bureau. The team then traveled to Lansing to interview 25 people. The team met with the president, county leaders, state board members, select staff and others in the Michigan agriculture community on February 25-27, 2020.
The recommendations in this report reflect the observations of the team based on what we learned during that brief time. While we are aware that our understanding of the organization cannot be complete after only three days, we hope our observations will be helpful. Undoubtedly all our recommendations will not perfectly fit the needs of the Michigan Farm Bureau. We hope the leaders will, however, consider the intent of the recommendations and make whatever modifications they think are appropriate to benefit the organization.
STRUCTURE OF REPORT
Our goal in preparing this report was to help the Michigan Farm Bureau identify its strengths as well as possible areas for improvement. The report begins by identifying the strengths we observed. We think it is important for the organization to clearly understand its strengths so it can build upon them as it continues to move forward. The report also identifies the key issues we observed, and for each issue, includes several recommendations. Key ideas are bolded in each bullet point to make it easier to scan the document. We realize it will be up to the leaders of the Michigan Farm Bureau to decide which of our recommendations they choose to pursue.
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