Marijuana Business Magazine - April 2018

organizations to somewhere else.” The Allied Associations Program is a way to either repair those relationships or build new ones “without boxing them into an affiliate program that maybe isn’t right for them,” Smith said.This effort could have been made sooner in his tenure, he admitted. “We could have done that a bit quicker,” he said. “It all happened a bit fast. It seemed like we went a few years where nobody cared about NCIA at all. Then all of a sudden overnight, every- body wanted to be NCIA.” ‘Reinventing the Wheel’ NCIA’s governance structure also has been a target of criticism. Khalatbari, for one, said the group’s board – at 20 members – is too big and unwieldly. It’s difficult to reach a consensus on anything when so many voices are in the conversation, he said. Smith acknowledges the large board can prove problematic, adding that he’s eyeing an overhaul of NCIA’s gover- nance structure. When NCIA was getting started, Smith felt like there was no compa- rable industry to learn from and no similar trade association. Marijuana, for starters, is illegal in the eyes of the federal government. When NCIA was launched in 2010, no states had yet legalized recreational cannabis. But Smith ultimately concluded he’d been looking at matters the wrong way. NCIA, he realized, was simply a trade association. For example, scores of nonprofit organizations represent a particular industry, be it automobile makers, banks or fashion designers. “We were reinventing the wheel,” he said. “When we realized that actually there are hundreds of other associations out there, and there’s all this literature, I think I didn’t put as much credence into that. I thought, ‘We’re just doing this for the first time, no one’s ever done this before.’” Smith realized he could have been learning fundamental association prin- ciples from other groups that have been around for a hundred years or longer. For example: how to structure a board. Smith admitted there aren’t many trade associations with a 20-member board. “There are very few, if any, that do it the way we do it,” he said. The board was even bigger at NCIA’s inception, with 30 members. Smith and his colleagues made the board that big to unite the industry’s heavy hitters. “We wanted to make sure we had this broad buy-in,” he said. “We kind of strategically picked thought leaders in all the key markets.” NCIA has been dis- cussing reducing the size of the board or changing the governance structure. Breaking up the board into executive committees is one idea that’s been floated, according to Smith. “Now that we’ve scaled, it definitely needs to be readjusted and look more like a traditional trade association,” Smith said. “If I could do it again I probably would have thought ahead to now and put some provision in the bylaws where once you hit a certain number of members it triggers the need for an executive committee.” He’s leaving the decision on how to restructure the board up to its members and expects the changes to be phased in. “There won’t be a radical change overnight,” he said. In hindsight, Smith also said he should have better anticipated the marijuana industry’s rapid growth. “I’ve learned that change happens exponen- tially, not incrementally,” he said. “I could have had a little more confidence Key dates in the seven-plus years since the National Cannabis Industry Association was launched December 2010 2011 2012 Aaron Smith co-founds NCIA in Denver with Steve Fox. NCIA holds its first Cannabis Industry Lobby Days in Washington DC. NCIA members meet on Capitol Hill to appeal to congressional leaders on behalf of the industry and raise money for lobbying efforts. Membership “explodes” when Colorado and Washington state legalize recreational cannabis. 2013 NCIA’s first conference is held in Chicago and includes a one-day seminar. NCIA hires the cannabis industry’s first full-time federal lobbyist. Congress enacts the first federal law to protect medical marijuana with Rohrabacher-Farr, now Rohrabacher- Blumenauer. 2014 NOTABLE DATES Legalization advocate Rob Kampia was ousted from the NCIA board earlier this year. 58 • Marijuana Business Magazine • April 2018