While the British Franchise Association is the largest and most successful franchise association in Europe -- it represents less than 50% of the UK franchisors. Thus, in 2008, the organisation which was established in 1977 published a consultative document titled One Vision with the express purpose of engaging the franchising community on how to become a more representative organisation.
The aim of the publication was to kick off a strategic review as the British Franchise Association would like to be recognised as the authoritative voice of UK franchising and as such, needs to figure out ways to get more franchisors involved. In addition, the organisation needs to be more inclusive and begin to represent the interest of franchisees as well as the specialist professional advisors (consultants, lawyers, accountants, etc) involved in franchising.
Beyond being more inclusive, the objectives of the strategic review are to determine best ways:
1) to set standards with Members for ethical franchising; secure adherence by members of those standards; and promote their adoption by non-members within the franchise community
2) to promote, in partnership with Members, positive awareness of ethical franchising amongst the general public as prospective franchisees and as consumers and amongst employees in the franchise community
3) to promote and protect the reputation of franchising with government, business, academia and the media
4) to secure in the UK, and help secure in Europe and the world, a legislative and regulatory environment for ethnical franchising which encourages its profitable growth
5) to operate with funding from, and for the benefit of, the community of Members as a whole with equity, integrity and efficiency through representative and transparent governance
Recognising that there are inevitable challenges with changing the status quo, the task group solicited feedback via an online questionnaire. The proposed changes were also presented at the Association's 2008 Annual General Meeting in December. Thus, it is expected that depending on the level of consensus, new articles for the association would follow in 2009. So stay tuned. In the interim, you can download the One Vision consultative document from the British Franchise Association Internet site.
Leave a comment