Potential Benefits and Potential Challenges
Potential Benefits
- Descendant enrollment helps ensure that BBNC continues to be led by engaged shareholders far into the future.
As a practical way to address our aging base of original shareholders, descendent enrollment guarantees that our corporation and our communities will continue to have far-reaching impacts in the future. - Descendant enrollment encourages our Native way of life and protection of Bristol Bay to be passed down to future generations.
Descendant enrollment allows newly engaged shareholders to become involved with our corporation in meaningful ways, including the ability to connect with our culture and our values and to carry these into the future. - Descendant enrollment extends ANCSA’s benefits to future generations.
The original leaders and shareholders of BBNC were fighting not just for themselves, but also to benefit their children and grandchildren. Descendant enrollment extends these rights and benefits for future generations. This effort is a direct outcome of strategic planning and is focused on the growth, health, and viability of BBNC. - Descendant enrollment helps educate more people about ANCSA and Alaska Native corporations and their important role in Alaska’s unique form of Indigenous self-determination.
Growing the number of individuals directly invested in BBNC will help to educate new shareholders, and those around them, about the important role all Alaska Native corporations play in the self-determination of Alaska Native people. This will benefit all ANCs and Alaska Native people, wherever they may call home.
Potential Challenges
- Descendant enrollment could dilute current shareholder dividends.
If approved by shareholders, our goal is to have no reduction in current shareholder dividends. Though we aim to keep dividends for current shareholders steady, it is an undeniable reality that opening our rolls to a new class of shareholders will impact how quickly we are able to grow dividends for all shareholders, including BBNC’s current shareholders. - Descendant enrollment could dilute voting influence of current shareholders.
Adding a new class of voting shares will increase the number of BBNC shareholders that are eligible to vote in BBNC’S corporate elections, and therefore could reduce the voting influence of current, individual shareholders. - Descendent enrollment could make reaching voting quorum more difficult.
Increasing the number of voting shares issued by the corporation will correspondingly increase the number of shares that must be voted in order to reach voting quorum for BBNC’s annual elections, an important requirement for BBNC to conduct business at our annual meetings. - Descendant enrollment will increase costs to BBNC by needing to expand shareholder-focused programs/departments.
Leaders of other ANCs that have opened their rolls to new shareholders all emphasize the importance of increasing capacity in their shareholder services departments to handle the administrative burden of adding a new class of shareholders and educating them to be engaged in corporate elections.