Thanks to the ongoing support by the Rata Foundation, Volunteering Canterbury -Volcan- will be rolling out the well-received Governance Bites series again during 2023. again at no cost. The facilitator for these sessions will be Garth Nowland-Foreman from LEAD Centre for Not for Profit Governance and Leadership.
These sessions will run on the second Tuesday of each month (see schedule below), from 5.30pm to 7.00pm. Recognising that many will be coming straight from work, we will have a range of pizza bites from 5-5.15pm onwards. All sessions will be held at: St Albans Community Centre, Colombo Street, St Albans (on-site parking accessed from Caledonian Road).
Register with Volcan to attend one or all!
Tuesday 14 February
Non-Profit Boards Adding Value What’s the secret to Governance that really makes a difference for a non-profit organisation? In this interactive session, you will learn how your Board can be less boring and achieve more than just going through the motions or check up on what others are doing. Two important tools are offered to make this possible, which provide the foundation for all the following Governance Bites in this series. Believe it or not this doesn’t involve a call for greater commitment or doing more and more work as Board members.
RSVP essential
Tuesday 14 March
Board and Management - Getting the Balance Right This session gets down to the nitty-gritty of good governance, dealing with the most common questions and concerns that non-profit leaders have about boards. How can boards and managers work constructively together? Is there a clear dividing line between governing and day-to-day management? If not, how do we sort it out in practice? Does that change over time, and is it affected by the life-cycle stage of the non-profit organisation?
RSVP essential
Tuesday 11 April
Better Board Decision Making Non-profit boards only have authority as a group. What’s the different dynamics between individual and group decision-making? And what key difference in approach is required when making routine decision, and when looking to innovate to at least ensure we know what all the options are (beyond the same old-same old)? How can understanding the three key ‘mindsets’ that people can bring to governance decision-making help us make better decisions, and help us ensure we are asking the right questions. This session will provide participants with two useful tools that will help you in making better group decisions.
RSVP essential
Tuesday 9 May
Keeping it Legal While staying on the right side of the law is not the end of your work as a non-profit board member, it is a good place to start. In this session we will briefly look at how laws (written and unwritten) impact on your organisation. We will also remind ourselves what being incorporated means, why it is important, and how to avoid losing its crucial protections. Finally, we will uncover why Conflicts of Interest are not a problem, but how we deal with them can be if we don’t follow three simple rules.
RSVP essential
Tuesday 13 June
Confident Oversight of Finances What exactly is the board’s role in oversight of the finances? What are Treasurers actually responsible for? How can you properly fulfil your obligations without micro-managing? What should we look for in financial reporting? What are the financial ‘red flags’ we need to keep an eye out for? What does every board member need to know about their finances? Why can’t we just rely on the audit or review?
RSVP essential
Tuesday 11 July
The Board’s Role as a Great Employer What can the board delegate, and what does it need to stay on top of? How do we balance our role in arms-length, independent supervision, and the need for engaged, collaborative support? How do we effectively balance a culture of checking and of cheer-leading? What are the critical elements of a ‘good employer’, and how does it become great? And what does that look like, when staff and volunteers are remote?
RSVP essential
Tuesday 8 August
The Secret of Effective Meetings As they say, it’s easy to “take minutes and waste hours”. Typical agendas actually make good meetings more difficult, and who knows the difference between individual decision-making vs the group decision-making needed on boards? Can we be more efficient at our meetings? Maybe even more effective? And perhaps even actually enjoy them? It’s all possible and this participatory workshop will offer several practical tools to help make it happen.
RSVP essential
Tuesday 12 September
Getting the Right People on Board and Helping the Wrong people Overboard All you need to know about recruiting non-profit and community board members. What makes a good board member, where do you find them, and how do you get them interested in your organisation? What are the three biggest traps in recruitment? And how do you get the most of new board members after they are on-board? And then … this is the tough stuff … despite our best intentions and event efforts, we can still end up with the wrong people on board for various reasons. How do you tackle the difficult tasks of ‘sacking’ board member? After all, board members are ‘just volunteers’. How do you actually get the result you need, but also still act with some grace? How can succession planning actually happen in practice in small organisations, and how do you deal with ‘founder syndrome’ when founders have out-lasted their value for the organisation and may even be holding it back?
RSVP essential
Tuesday 10 October
Not for Profits Getting Real about Strategy Everyone wants to be strategic these days. It is used to refer to deceit and trickery in reality TV shows. As an adjective it makes any object or activity sound very important. But does it actually have any practical meaning left? What is a strategy and how is it different from a plan? Where does mot strategy come from, and what is a realistic approach to developing a strategy for your organisation? And what really is the Board’s role in strategy (especially where there also is staff)? Participation in non-profit boards provides individuals with an opportunity to influence impact in our city. This workshop offers practical tools and approaches to help a board lead organisation strategy.
RSVP essential
Tuesday 14 November
Keeping Board members engaged and the role of the Chair Chairs have one of the most demanding jobs in a non-profit. What is realistic and what are the essentials? Can we look again at sharing roles around the board table? One of the key roles of a chair is to facilitate the board as a group – especially in its core role as group decision-makers. And given participation is the purpose if you are going to bother calling a meeting, how can a chair best facilitate real participation that will energise and enthuse board members, and get the best possible decisions from a diverse group? We will look at some practical tools and frameworks to help make this happen in real world non-profit boards.
RSVP essential