The Committee Room

The committee has been in its strategic planning session for three hours. There's a long list of things to do, three sheets of butcher's paper and a shiny new website on the wish list. Then someone asks: what's our vision? Silence. Then a brave volunteer offers a sentence nobody can explain — including the person who said it. In the second episode of the Planning With Purpose series, Kate Hartwig...

A community arts centre committee has had a huge year: six exhibitions, classes four nights a week, a new website and a grant application for a kiln. But when the president sits down to write the annual report, she can list everything they did and not one thing it achieved. All hands on deck, and nobody steering the ship. In the first episode of the Planning With Purpose series, Kate Hartwig and K...

It was a dark and stormy Tuesday night. Item one on the agenda had been there since 2019, the minutes read as if they'd been written at a different meeting, and the car park question — voted down three times — had risen from the grave again. Some committee rooms are haunted. In this Halloween special, Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee open their field guide to the creatures that lurk in committee rooms...

The Treasurer opens last year's budget, adds a little CPI to every line, and the committee approves it. It looks sensible. But nobody has actually budgeted for the year ahead — they've given last year's story a pay rise. In the final episode of the Financial Confidence series (for now), Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee show how to build a budget that connects to what your organisation is planning to d...

Once upon a time, there was a committee that thought their finances were fine and dandy. The Treasurer read the numbers aloud. The surplus was healthy. Everyone nodded. Nobody looked at the Balance Sheet. Nobody noticed that current liabilities had been greater than current assets for three months in a row. The story the numbers were telling was right there — written in plain figures on every repo...

Sam got backed into a corner and reluctantly said yes to being Treasurer, and everyone else at the table breathed a sigh of relief. The finances are in Sam's hands now. Except — that's not quite how it works. Every single committee member shares the same responsibility for the members' money. Nobody needs to be an accountant. But nobody gets to opt out either. In the first episode of the Financial...

Natural justice and procedural fairness sound like they belong in a courtroom. They show up in community clubs and volunteer organisations more often than most committees realise — and the obligation to follow them applies whether your Constitution mentions them or not. Ignorance is not a defence. In this special episode, Kate H and Kate M welcome their very first guest: recently retired South Aus...

It's an ordinary committee meeting. Nothing about compliance on the agenda. Then the secretary goes looking for the public liability certificate of currency — and the policy lapsed four months ago. And then someone remembers Dave, coaching the Under 12s since March, was due for a new Working With Children Check when his expired in April. Nobody followed that up either. Two essential obligations, q...

The committee knows the Constitution isn't working anymore. It describes an organisation they no longer are. Changing it feels too hard, too expensive, too complicated and too uncertain — so they work around it, work through it, ignore the bits that don't suit them, and keep going. Until one day they can't ignore it anymore. And by then, the problem they've been avoiding for years has become a con...

Does our Constitution allow us to do that? The room goes quiet. The Secretary looks at the President. The President looks at the Secretary. Eventually they find the Constitution in the shared drive — and there's nothing in it about employees at all. Your Constitution is binding on every member of your organisation whether they've read it or not. Ignorance is not a defence. And most committees are...

The questions keep coming — and so do the Kates. In this second Your Questions Answered special, Kate H and Kate M work through eight more real situations from committee members across Australia. Questions covered in this episode: A committee member has been sharing confidential information outside the committee room — what are the committee's options? The AGM has only enough nominees to fill the...

The AGM was three weeks ago. A requisition arrives on the Secretary's desk — twenty-two financial members requesting a Special General Meeting to discuss financial management, a cancelled program, and the future of the current committee. The President's first instinct is to ignore it. The Secretary's first instinct is to panic. Neither is the right move. An SGM called by members is uncomfortable....

The curtain goes up. The Secretary pulls out the only known copy of the constitution and blows off the dust. There is a long pause, then a shoulder shrug. Nominations are taken from the floor and twenty minutes later they're still trying to find someone willing to be Treasurer. Other Business opens. The questions start. And go on. And on. Two and a half hours after the curtain went up, the audienc...

It's three months after the meeting. There's disagreement about what was actually decided. Half the committee remembers it one way, half remember it another way. Someone pulls out the minutes. They say: "The committee discussed the matter and a decision was reached." That's it. That's the whole entry. The minutes are the legal record of your organisation's decisions. If they're not good enough to...

The committee has been discussing the same issue for three months. Someone suggests leaving it for the next committee to decide. Someone else wants to table it until there's more information. Staff are frustrated. Members are confused. And the committee is going around in circles. Deferring is a decision too. It's usually the worst one available. In this episode Kate H and Kate M go deeper into de...

The meeting has been going for ninety minutes. The same three people have spoken on every agenda item. One of them is on his fourth lap of the same point. Two committee members have said nothing the entire meeting. One of them is the person with the most relevant expertise on the biggest item of the night. A well-chaired meeting is one of the most underrated governance tools there is — and in this...

The papers went out two hours before the meeting. Nobody's read them. The treasurer is explaining the budget while everyone scrolls their phone. And then there's Dave. Dave hasn't read anything, has very strong opinions, and is not afraid to share them at length. Two and a half hours later, no decisions have been made. A great meeting is almost entirely built before anyone even sits down. In the f...

It's 1789. The committee has been in power for generations. No succession plan. No performance review. Louis XVI has been in the top job since he was 19. The membership hasn't been consulted on anything. The budget is a disaster. And when the members finally lose confidence in the committee, the feedback mechanism is extremely robust. In this Bastille Day special — recorded live from Central Franc...

Biased minutes. A chair ignoring a committee decision he disagrees with. A treasurer who resigned with no notice and took everything with them. A president who's been in the job for eleven years and nothing ever changes. Real questions from real committee members — and in this first Your Questions Answered special, Kate H and Kate M work through eleven of them in plain English. With the occasional...

One subcommittee signs a two-year venue contract nobody authorised. Another finds the perfect venue, waits for committee sign-off, and loses it while they're waiting. Both end badly. Both have the same cause: nobody wrote down who was actually allowed to do what. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case for the delegations register — not as dry governance paperwork but as one of the most pr...

Seven people trying to run every aspect of their organisation by themselves. Three-hour meetings. The same three people doing all the actual work. Burnout setting in. And meanwhile a significant chunk of the membership — talented, interested, willing to contribute — has never once been asked. In this episode Kate H and Kate M introduce three structures that fix this: portfolios, subcommittees and...

You've just been elected to the committee. Someone slides a 100-page manual across the table and says, read through this when you get a chance. Three months later you're still not sure what your role is, who does what, or why half the things you're voting on are even necessary. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case that induction is a process, not a document — and that it starts well bef...

A $14,362 line item in miscellaneous expenses. Budget was $2,000. No explanation. Two committee members noticed it. Nobody said a word. The reports were approved and the meeting moved on. Six months later, the organisation discovered where the money had gone — and the paper trail led straight back to that meeting. In this episode Kate H and Kate M get into why people don't ask the hard questions —...

It's AGM night. Four usual suspects nominate each other. A hand shoots up from someone nobody's seen in two years. Another from the member who's complained loudly at every event for the past twelve months. Seven people are declared elected to stilted applause. Six months later, everyone's wondering why everything has gone sideways. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case for ditching nomin...

Every committee member carries three legal duties from the moment they're elected — whether anyone told them about it or not. Care, Loyalty and Obedience. They sound like an old-fashioned wedding vow, and it turns out they're very serious indeed. In this episode Kate H and Kate M explain what each duty actually means in plain English — the duty of care and why 'I assumed someone else had checked i...