If your committee is spending more time arguing about the agenda than actually running your organisation, you’ve found the right podcast. Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee are governance consultants who’ve seen it all — and they’re here to help.
Real advice for real committees – no theory, no fluff
Sporting clubs, community groups, associations of all kinds – we’ve got you.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Some committee rooms are haunted. You can feel it the moment you walk in. Tonight, Kate and Kate name thirty governance monsters — from the Zombie Decision that’s been shuffling around since 2020 to the Frankenstein Constitution held together with someone else’s bolts — and tell you exactly how to get rid of each one. No garlic required. Just good governance. After dark.
The Treasurer opens last year’s budget, works down the spreadsheet, and adds a little CPI to everything. The committee approves it. Everyone feels comfortable. Except nobody has actually budgeted for the year ahead — they’ve budgeted for last year, plus a pay rise. Your budget is the first draft of the story you’re planning to tell. Let’s make sure it’s the right story.
Once upon a time, there was a committee that thought their finances were fine and dandy. Three months later, they couldn’t pay their bills — and the story was right there in the numbers the whole time. Nobody knew how to read it. This episode teaches you how.
There’s a reason people joke about being elected Treasurer while they were in the bathroom. But here’s what nobody mentions: the Treasurer isn’t the only one at the table who’s financially responsible. Every single committee member is. Whether they understand the reports or not. The Financial Confidence series starts here.
Kate has spent forty years working in and around not-for-profit and membership organisations — as a CEO, Director, and independent consultant. She’s seen governance done brilliantly and seen it done badly, across organisations from swimming pools to architects and AIDS charities and has spent the last decade helping Committees find their feet.
That breadth is what she brings to The Committee Room: practical, no-nonsense advice and a genuine belief that good governance is just common sense, applied consistently.
Kate McPhee has three decades of hands-on experience helping small clubs and associations get more done with less stress. Her background is gloriously eclectic — local government, state parliament, four children, forty-plus years of volunteering — and she’s project-managed the establishment, restructure, merger or dissolution of more than forty organisations.
She’s also the author of Just a Tick, a plain-English governance guide for committees and boards, and Principal Industry Consultant for Clubs SA’s Club Development Program.
