Advice


How do you go about setting


up a franchise council? There is no statutory structure for a franchisee council and they are not obligatory. Put simply, a franchise advisory council is a group of franchisees, established by the franchisor, that meets on a regular basis with members of the franchisor’s management to exchange information and ideas about the franchisor’s system and the network as a whole. The franchisor needs to create a framework for the council and lay it out in a set of bylaws, or constitution. There is considerable flexibility as to what the bylaws should contain, but the following are important issues to cover:


• The specific objectives and remit of the council


• Who is eligible to be a member of the council


• How members are elected by franchisees


• For what term are members elected, when do they retire and how can they be removed


• How officers (eg chair, deputy chair, secretary) are appointed


• How often meetings will take place and where


• Who funds the cost of the meetings


The bylaws (or constitution) do not need to take the form of a long, complex document. Two or three pages of plain language will suffice. The International Franchise Association (IFA) published an excellent paper, ‘Advisory Councils: Effective Two-Way Communications for Franchise Systems’ (1995). It is easily available online. It sets out the things to think about when setting up a franchise council, and provides some useful template documents.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100