PODCAST · business
The Committee Room
by Kate Hartwig + Kate McPhee
Practical, commonsense governance advice for volunteer committees and NFP associations across Australia. Hosted by Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee — two governance consultants who've seen it all and are here to help.
Episodes
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Ep 25 Planning your Numbers
Show Notes A budget built by adding a percentage to every line from last year looks sensible, gets approved, and still doesn't answer the questions that matter. What are we doing differently this year? Are membership numbers changing? Is there a new program, or something that's about to need...
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Ep 24 Reading the Numbers
Show Notes Your financial reports are telling you a story. Every month, three chapters land on your committee table — the Balance Sheet, the Profit and Loss, and the Cash Flow. Each one tells you something different about how the organisation is doing, and you need all three to see whether the…
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Ep 23 Who Minds the Money?
Show Notes The assumption that the Treasurer carries the financial responsibility so everyone else can relax is one of the most persistent and damaging myths in committee governance. It's wrong, and it costs organisations. This episode covers the myth of not-for-profit, what financial...
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Ep 22 Special Guest Interview
Whether you're managing a disciplinary matter, responding to a member complaint, or making a decision that affects someone's membership, the principles of natural justice apply — whether your Constitution mentions them or not. In this episode, a recently retired Magistrate explains what natural...
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Ep 21 Compliance Basics
Show Notes Compliance failures are rarely dramatic. They're just things nobody wrote down and nobody was tracking — quietly unmet obligations sitting in the background until something outside the organisation triggers a very uncomfortable discovery. The goal of this episode isn't a mountain of...
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Ep 20 Changing the Rules
Show Notes Changing a Constitution is not as difficult as it feels. The process has specific requirements — notice, approval threshold, registration — but none of them are insurmountable. What's more useful than knowing how to change the Constitution is knowing what should be in it in the first...
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Ep 19 Your Founding Document
Your Constitution is binding on every member of your organisation whether they've read it or not. That's not a technicality — it's the foundation of everything the committee does. This episode covers what a Constitution actually is, the three layers of what goes in it (mandatory, best practice…
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Ep 18 Your Questions Answered 2!
Show Notes The questions that keep coming in are proof that the situations committees face are remarkably consistent across organisations of all kinds — and that most people are navigating them without much support. In this second Your Questions Answered episode, the Kates work through eight more...
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Ep 17 When Members Call the Meeting
A requisition arrives on the Secretary's desk — twenty-two financial members requesting a Special General Meeting. The President's first instinct is to ignore it. The Secretary's first instinct is to panic. Neither is the right move. This episode covers what an SGM is, when members can call one,...
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Ep 16 The Big Night
Most AGMs bomb not because the organisation is failing but because the preparation wasn't done. The wrong people didn't know their roles. The constitution hadn't been checked. The annual report was written the week before by one person. Other Business opened and the meeting went off-script for...
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Ep 15 Writing it Down
Show Notes Most committees treat minutes as an afterthought. Someone volunteers to take them, types up a rough summary, emails it around before the next meeting, and hopes for the best. But minutes are a legal document — and failing to keep proper ones is an offence under Australia's various...
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Ep 14 Making the Call
Most committees don't avoid decisions because they're lazy or incompetent. They avoid them because they want consensus, they don't want conflict, and they keep hoping that if they wait long enough, everyone will come around. They won't. And in the meantime, the issue gets bigger and harder to…
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Ep 13 Running the Room
Show Notes You can have the best-prepared agenda in the world and still have a terrible meeting if nobody's running the room well. The chair's job is active, skilled and often underappreciated — and it's not just about following the agenda. This episode covers start to finish: from the two...
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Ep 12 Before You Sit Down
Show Notes All the good governance in the world only comes to life if your meetings work. And the work that makes a meeting run well happens days before anyone walks in the room. This episode kicks off the Smarter Meetings series with everything that needs to happen before the meeting starts —…
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Ep 11 Bastille Day Special
Show Notes Succession planning and performance review sound like the kind of governance topics that get added to the agenda and then quietly moved to next meeting. This episode makes the case that they're not optional — and uses the most dramatic governance failure in European history to prove…
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Ep 10 Your Questions Answered!
Show Notes The questions that come up in committee rooms are remarkably consistent across organisations of all kinds. The secretary who takes biased minutes. The quorum that can never be reached. The long-serving leader who's not doing a bad job but nothing ever changes. In this episode, the…
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Ep 9 Who Can Do What?
Show Notes Clarity about who can decide what isn't bureaucracy — it's how committees avoid expensive mistakes and missed opportunities in equal measure. A delegations register doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to exist, be accurate, and be known. This episode covers what goes in one…
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Ep 8 Many Hands Make Light Work
Show Notes Committee overload is one of the most common problems in volunteer organisations — and the answer isn't working harder, it's building smarter structures. Portfolios, subcommittees and working groups are three tools that every committee can use to share the workload, draw on skills from...
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Ep 7 Bringing People In
Episode Description You can run the best election process in the world and still have new committee members who are still finding their feet six months later. The difference between a new member who contributes from day one and one who takes half a year to get up to speed usually comes down to…
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Ep 6 Questions are Gold
Episode Description Most committees have a story like this one — the meeting where everyone noticed something and nobody said a word. In this episode, Kate H and Kate M tackle the governance failure that hides in plain sight: the question that didn't get asked. They dig into why people stay…
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Ep 5 Choosing Your Committee
Episode Description The annual general meeting. Four usual suspects nominate each other, a hand shoots up from someone nobody recognises, and seven people are declared elected to enthusiastic silence. Sound familiar? In this episode, Kate and Kate explain why nominations from the floor are one of...
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Ep 4 Care, Loyalty and Obedience
Episode Description Care. Loyalty. Obedience. Three words that sound a bit like an old-fashioned wedding vow — but it turns out they're the foundation of every committee member's legal duties. In this episode, Kate and Kate unpack what those duties actually mean in practice, what happens when...
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Ep 3 What’s your job, exactly?
Episode Description You've been elected to the committee. You're keen. You turn up to the first meeting. And then... nobody really explains what you're supposed to do. In this episode, Kate and Kate unpack what it actually means to be a committee member — the three dimensions of responsibility…
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Ep 2 Who’s in the Committee Room?
Episode Description You know that committee where half the people have been there for decades and nobody can work out why the whole thing feels stuck? In this episode, Kate and Kate tackle the question most committees have never really answered: who should actually be in the room, and why does it...
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Ep 1 Governance – The Big Picture
EPISODE DESCRIPTION It's 8pm on a Tuesday. The meeting started late, Dave hasn't read the agenda, and three decisions in you already know you'll have to reverse two of them next month. Sound familiar? Welcome to The Committee Room. In this first episode, Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee — yes…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Practical, commonsense governance advice for volunteer committees and NFP associations across Australia. Hosted by Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee — two governance consultants who've seen it all and are here to help.
HOSTED BY
Kate Hartwig + Kate McPhee
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Committee Room have?
The Committee Room currently has 25 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Committee Room about?
Practical, commonsense governance advice for volunteer committees and NFP associations across Australia. Hosted by Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee — two governance consultants who've seen it all and are here to help.
How often does The Committee Room release new episodes?
The Committee Room has 25 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Committee Room?
You can listen to The Committee Room on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Committee Room?
The Committee Room is created and hosted by Kate Hartwig + Kate McPhee.
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