While I tend to work with larger NFPs these days, I still love to work with passionate local community NFPs when the opportunity arises. These local organisations are so often the glue that holds together our rural, regional and remote communities – and even our urban communities. So it is wonderful to be able to help them up-level to better governance and clearer strategy, which in turn helps them to deliver the great things that they provide in their local communities, more effectively and more efficiently.
For me, ‘local’, in the truest sense of the word, means the beautiful region around Victoria’s majestic Black Spur. But from a work perspective, impacting ‘locally’ for me can also be thousands of kilometres away in remote Queensland or in outback WA or even in central Sydney. Particularly now that COVID has shown us all new ways of working more easily across vast distances.
Just recently in fact I had the opportunity to work with a number of local business and tourism associations (BATAs) in central Victoria. Gisborne Shire Council is very proactive about supporting their local BATAs, and had committed to support a number of face-to-face workshops and online follow-up meetings to assist the BATAs across the shire to sharpen their governance skills, refresh their strategic plans, and strengthen their membership growth and servicing. So I was delighted to be asked to deliver the project, as it gave me a great opportunity to really help those local community organisations to build on the already-great work they are doing to support their own local communities.
Over recent years I have also been fortunate to be able to partner with the Bendigo Bank to deliver my online governance training to representatives of NFPs across the country. This partnership enabled me to offer places in my governance training sessions free-of-charge to many organisations that perhaps couldn’t otherwise afford to send their board and committee members along to this kind of training. Lots of those who attended were from grass-roots organisations, in far-flung parts of Australia, who add so much value to their local communities. So once again it was great to be able to do this capacity building work with those who can make an impact locally.
And in the latter part of 2022, I worked with the lovely group of people that make up the board and management team of the Waverley Woollahra Arts School in the Sydney suburb of Bondi. For more than 50 years this amazing local art school has provided an extensive program of quality art classes, delivered by practicing artists. The school is an independent not-for-profit cooperative with an impressive alumni of emerging and prize-winning artists, and has grown into a much loved and highly regarded arts hub of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. So of course I was excited when they asked me to help them with their board succession planning ahead of their AGM and elections last year. It was wonderful to be able to support the team through a comprehensive and proactive succession process and see them achieve outcomes that I think surpassed even their most optimistic expectations – another local community NFP making a big impact in their part of the world.
And now in 2023 I am delighted to be embarking on a partnership with the Australian Charity Guide to reach even more NFPs – big and small – across Australia and New Zealand.
So while ‘local’ may mean one thing to me in the geographic context, I love that it can also be so much more in terms of making ‘local’ impact through the work that I do.
If you think I can help you or your local NFP organisation with something, then do get in touch with me on megan@mjbconsulting.net.au or 0421 525 048 to talk about what I might be able to do to help you.
Recent Comments