The Alternative Board

The Alternative Board is a franchised peer-advisory and coaching business founded in 1990 by Allen Fishman, who wanted owners of private companies to have the kind of board of directors he had gained when his own company went public. It began franchising in 1996 and now operates in twenty-five or more countries, with each territory run by an independent franchise owner who recruits members, facilitates their board and provides one-to-one coaching. A TAB board is a small group of business owners from non-competing industries, described on TAB's own pages as up to eight members in one place and eight to ten in another, meeting monthly for a half-day or four-hour session. Members are also expected to attend at least twelve board meetings and around 80 per cent of all meetings. Alongside the board sits monthly coaching and a set of proprietary tools: StratPro for strategic planning, HI-MAP for management training and the Blueprint platform. Dues are billed monthly with no binding contract and thirty days' written notice to leave. Pricing is set locally and not published.

How it works

A local TAB franchise owner, acting as a certified facilitator coach, screens and hand-selects members, excluding competitors, then convenes a monthly board meeting of roughly four hours. Each member also has a monthly one-to-one coaching call and access to TAB's Blueprint platform and member network. Dues are billed monthly.

Typical member

Members are owners and senior leaders of privately held companies, recruited locally by the franchise owner who facilitates their board; competing businesses are excluded from the same board. TAB states members represent over 1,100 industries and collectively generate US$29.3 billion in gross revenue, and reports an average member tenure of 4.7 years.

TAB is the franchised end of the peer-advisory market, and that structure defines what it is and is not. Membership is a local commercial relationship with a franchise owner rather than entry to a national network, so the quality of the board depends almost entirely on that individual, and there is no global directory, member count or price list to compare. The terms are notably lighter than the alternatives: monthly billing, no binding contract and thirty days' notice, against annual dues and initiation fees elsewhere. It has no financial entry threshold at all, which makes it the most open organisation in this batch and also the least defined in terms of who is in the room. TAB's own statistics are internally inconsistent, with country counts of 25 and 30 and board sizes of eight and eight to ten appearing on different pages.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.