COMMITTEE STRUCTURE AND PURPOSE

The steps to effective committee governance and leadership

Committee governance and leadership excellence is not easily achieved. Volunteer committee members face inherent difficulties in creating positive and effective teamwork and blending the many demands on their club. To stay in tune with the manner in which players are looking to engage with our sport needs to be addressed with competent leadership and governance. The success of committees today rely on sound planning, prudence and risk management.

1. Committee functionality

Good governance is having a committee structure with a clarity of purpose directly influencing the committee functionality and the ability to attract and retain suitably qualified members.

An effective committee has a clear vision and understands the purpose and future direction of the club. An important function of the committee is to plan organisational strategy and direction, and develop a strategic plan that will guide the committee and members to achieve identified objectives.

It is important that all key stakeholders and members are consulted through the strategic planning process to ensure future strategies address the most important issues facing the club and wider community.

The Strategic Planning Process – a step through process from start to finish (.pdf)

Example of a one page Strategic Plan (.pdf)

Outline of club committee structure and roles (.pdf)

How to run effective meetings (.pdf)

Templates

Editable Strategic Plan (Word doc)

2. Election and Appointment

One of the biggest challenges for clubs is to ensure that their committee is both representative of its members and appropriately skilled and experienced to govern.

Many clubs use the “tap on the shoulder” method of recruiting committee members. Investing time and planning in an election and appointment process will allow committees to be more successful in identifying the required skills. In addition to this, improved communication of positions available will place clubs in a much stronger position moving forward.

Committee member profiles, including a profile of each committee member on your clubs website is a good way to highlight the skills, attributes and personalities on your committee. It is also beneficial for potential applicants to consider where their skills might fit and how they complement the existing committee. Having women represented on your committee it is an effective way of promoting more females into leadership roles in a sector where they are often underrepresented. Tennis NZ is introducing a minimum gender requirement of 40% women on regional/assns. boards as a regulation attached to their constitution, a goal for all club committees.

Recruitment Plan, step by step (.pdf)

3. Induction

An induction pack will ensure new committee members access key information about the club. Many committees develop a specific pack or online hub that contains these documents, providing a reference not only for new committee members but to all members throughout their term. This is simply to ensure new members come up to speed and can contribute to the committee’s work as soon as possible. Even experienced committee members can find joining a new committee challenging. Contents should include, but not be limited to:

Information about the club (e.g. History, committee structure, contact details key members)
Recent meeting minutes, current meeting schedule & financial statements
Strategic plan
Constitution
Club policies & (health & safety, coach contracts, competition selection, member surveys, decision making process, code of conduct etc)

Induction for all volunteers is equally important and a volunteer welcome pack is an important part of volunteer management. It gives the volunteer important information about their new role.

Things to include would be: