ESSENTIAL BUNDLE: Manage Your Community Group

3rd edition of ICDA's bestselling classic

The voluntary sector in Australia is a patchwork quilt of different sizes, different tasks, different groups, and different attitudes, whic is all as it should be. It also covers a range of different legal forms, different regulatory bodies, and different state legislation, which is historical junk and should be tidied up. In any case, there's so much variability across the sector that it's not possible to write a one-size-fits-all set of solutions to common problems. We're certainly not going to try.

We'll have to be satisfied with general principles. The first of these is this:

1. If you're not satisfied with the general principles, you're going to have trouble running a community group.
2. It's all about people. Work with them.

This book covers the simple secrets of successful community groups; what they are, and how you can benefit.

What's inside?

• Governance
  • The mission
  • The constitution
  • The board and the CEO
  • The AGM
  • Directors’ duties
  • Founder’s syndrome
  • Diversity
  • Board solidarity
  • Conflicts of interest
  • Should you pay your board members?
• Fundraising
  • Grants
  • Sales
  • Partnerships
  • Social media
  • Borrowing good ideas
  • Events
  • Capital campaigns
  • Memberships
  • Fundraising traps
• Getting your message out
  • Lobbying
  • Values
  • Selling the sizzle
  • Outreach
• Annual reports
  • Cutting through
  • Celebrities and influencers
  • Community audits
  • Stakeholders
  • Volunteers
• Getting things done
  • Negotiation
  • Planning
  • Delegation
  • Complaints
  • Conflict management
  • Speaking
  • Ethics
  • Auspicing
  • Marketing
  • Evaluating
• Dealing with problems
  • Crises
  • Disputes
  • Malcontents
  • Fraud
  • Board failure
  • Risk management
  • Aging out
  • Merging
  • Closing down
• So here you are

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A Month by Month Diet of Governance, Management, Marketing & Fundraising Activities for Community Groups

This book aims to help your organisation to plan its annual activities.

But it's more than a dull roster of tasks you have to tick off to meet your bare minimum regulatory obligations.

It's a year's worth of ideas, tips and resources designed to help you get the most out of your meetings, your activities and your people, much of it presented as easy-to-digest lists.

For example, the March chapter brings a board review checklist; seven tips for grantseekers; seven free marketing methods; seven ways not to get robbed blind; and seven innovation drivers.

Ultimately, all the activities are all aimed at helping your organisation to do one thing: to fulfil its mission.

And the title? This is a book you can gorge yourself on. Bon appétit.

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A makeover for community groups that want to lift their game

As not-for-profit boards go, you're competent. You get the job done.

Under your benign supervision the organisation jogs along from day to day and month to month and year to year without much fuss, and without much change. You're not breaking new ground, and you're not going out backwards. But...

Shouldn't there be more to life? You do seem to spend a lot of time on unimportant items.

The mission, somehow, doesn't come up often: either everybody instinctively knows everything about the organisation's vision for the future or it's somehow drifted into the too hard-basket and been covered up with junk mail.

As a board, you're supposed to feel that vision and to be able to communicate it. It's your piercing gaze that's supposed to part the mists of uncertainty and lead the organisation on to the sunlit uplands of successful achievement. And that doesn't really seem to be what the last few meetings were about.

Are you a board at all, in fact, or are you just a group of people sitting around a table?

Do you have a common understanding, a common purpose, a common direction? Is your board more than the sum of its parts?

Even a board that has worked well in the past can become run-down or lose its focus. Are you coasting? Your board, you may well decide, needs new energy, new drive, new purpose. The chair can't do it all singlehanded. Neither can the CEO. The whole board, as a whole, must lift itself and start looking around.

This book is pilates for your board - a pick-me-up that will leave you more flexible, more nimble, healthier and stronger.

What's inside?

• Part one: The ideal board
  • Membership
  • Functions
  • Servants
  • Procedures
  • Size
  • Subcommittees
  • Ethics
  • Relationship with the staff
  • Relationship with the CEO
• Part two: Board self-evaluation
  • What can members agree on?
  • How these questionnaires can help
  • How does your board measure up against the ideal?
  • What problems do directors actually complain about?
• Part three: Fixing it
  • Are the right people on your board?
  • Office bearers
  • Purgatory is other people
  • Removing unproductive directors
  • Providing strategic direction
  • Meetings
  • Staff
• Part four: Bringing it all together

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Recruitment: it's a minefield. In between updating position descriptions, conducting interviews, checking references and negotiating salaries, how's a time-strapped not-for-profiteer to get any other work done?

This book highlights the importance of taking a strategic, structured approach to recruitment, and walks readers through the process step by step, particularly as it applies to NFPs.

Co-written by Our Community and legal firm Moores, which has an inhouse team of lawyers dedicated to not-for-profits, the book explains how to undertake best-practice recruitment and avoid pitfalls such as discrimination claims.

Specialist subjects such as recruiting a CEO, and recruiting volunteers and interns, are covered in detail.

And sample policies and templates covering topics such as selection criteria, interviews, reference checking and induction are handy inclusions.

What's inside?

• The not-for-profit difference
• Getting started with recruiting
• Salaries and benefits
• Getting the word out
• Shortlisting candidates
• Checking references and other sources
• Coming on board
• Recruiting volunteers and interns
• Recruiting a CEO
• Parting ways with a CEO
• Appendices: sample policies, sample forms, and more

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