Grow
Growing is not doing more. It is doing the same reliable things across more of the shire, with more people sharing the load. Work gets added only where there are hands to carry it.
Not just the main town
Every branch has a home base and a set of other communities. Augusta is not a suburb of Margaret River, and Cowaramup is not an afterthought. The way a branch avoids becoming a main-town club is simple: it goes to them. [SET: swap town names if reusing for another shire.]
The other places do not need a full formal meeting. They need someone to turn up.
What turning up looks like
- A coffee and a conversation.
- A pop-up listening session for an hour.
- Going to something that already happens, instead of inventing a new event.
- A small roundtable with one organisation.
- Something run with a local partner rather than by us.
Use the gatherings that already exist. People’s time is the scarcest thing this branch will ever have.
A reasonable standard
- At least two things outside the main town each year. More if we can.
- A simple list of which communities we have been to and which we have not.
- An honest report at the electorate forum twice a year, gaps included.
Where we have actually been
Every branch says it represents its whole shire. This is the one page that checks. It starts almost empty on purpose, because at the beginning it is almost empty.
The dashed outlines are not decoration and they are not a failure. They are the working list, and they are drawn rather than left off because a community you have never visited will not appear on a map of the places you have. A branch that fills in two of them a year is representing its shire. One that fills in none is a club in the main town.
Blank template. Filled in by the branch and reported at the electorate forum twice a year. [SET: confirm the town list for this shire.]
Our shire, in our own words
Every locality in the shire should end up in one of those two lists. The second list is the more useful one.
Pick a year you can actually do
No branch is expected to run a fundraiser, a policy forum, a business breakfast, a youth event, a festival and a summit in its first year. That is how volunteers get burnt out and branches quietly fold. The level should match the people who are actually there.
One thing a quarter
Four outward-facing things a year, plus meetings that happen when they say they will. For a branch in its first year, this is a good year. Not a compromise, a good year.
Six things a year
Six worth doing, at least two outside the main town, with quiet months deliberately left in between.
The full rhythm
Something most months, for a branch with the numbers to sustain it. Years away for a new one, and that is fine.
What a busy year can look like, for reference only
| Month | Activity | Start planning | Usually needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb | Planning day | 4 weeks out | A venue |
| Mar | Membership drive | 4 weeks out | Help with the comms |
| Apr | Community project | 8 weeks out | A partner, insurance, budget, safety check |
| May | Policy forum | 8 weeks out | Venue, approval |
| Jun | Nothing | Deliberately nothing. Rest is part of the plan. | |
| Jul | Thanking the volunteers | 4 weeks out | A small budget |
| Aug | Business breakfast | 8 weeks out | Venue, budget, a partner |
| Sep | Something with young people | 10 weeks out | Safeguarding checks, consent, approval |
| Oct | A presence at a local festival | 10 weeks out | Insurance, volunteers, branding approval |
| Nov | Nothing new, plus the “what should we stop doing” review | Honesty | |
| Dec | End of year get-together | 4 weeks out | Venue, budget |
Move all of it to suit vintage, harvest, fire season and the summer tourist peak. A calendar that ignores when this shire is flat out will not survive its first year.
The six things a branch is for
Not six jobs to do at once. Six ways of checking a branch has not gone lopsided. Read across the row: what good looks like, the first small step, and how anyone would know it happened.
| What good looks like | First step | How we would know | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | Local organisations know us and find us useful, and we work with them rather than through them. | Contact five of them, to listen. | Five sets of notes, and one that comes back to us a second time. |
| Leadership | Someone new leads something every few months, with help and honest feedback. | Decide who chairs the next meeting. | A new name at the top of an agenda. |
| Ideas | Local thinking gets written down properly and travels up to where decisions are made. | Run one workshop that ends in a decision and a name. | One written idea with a problem, evidence and a suggested fix. |
| Representation | We notice things early, send them to the right place, and go back to whoever raised them. | Start the list of local issues. | Every live issue has a status and a date to check it. |
| Membership | Newcomers are welcomed by a person, not a form, and offered one small thing to do. | Decide who does the welcoming. | Almost everyone who wanted a follow-up got one within two days. |
| Getting things done | We finish visible, useful work in this shire. | Choose one job we can finish in 60 days. | A short account of what was done and who took part. |
What we mean by the words
Every organisation says it is welcoming and community minded. Here is what those words have to mean here, or they mean nothing.
Welcoming
- Newcomers are greeted by name before the meeting starts.
- Nobody sits on their own.
- Acronyms get explained the first time somebody uses one.
- A follow-up goes out within 48 hours.
- Everyone new is offered one small thing to do, and it is genuinely optional.
Community first
- Every meeting has a local issue or a local voice in it.
- We do things out in the shire, not only around a table.
- Somebody’s problem is never treated as a chance to sign them up.
Locally led
- The people in this shire pick the priorities.
- The electorate team supports and connects, it does not direct.
- Anything said publicly in the branch’s name goes through the proper process first.
Practical
- Every discussion of a problem ends with what it is, what we know, what could be done, who is doing it, and when we check.
- No more than three jobs leave a meeting.
- Last meeting’s jobs get reviewed at the start of the next one.
Trustworthy
- What we agree gets written down.
- We follow up when we said we would.
- We check things before we publish them.
- We tell people plainly when we cannot help, instead of going quiet.
How we will know it is working
Most groups measure the wrong thing. Attendance and the size of a contact list look impressive and say almost nothing. Worse, no branch controls whether a government or a council actually fixes anything, so a branch that scores itself on that is measuring luck.
So it splits in two. In the first year, pick five of these, no more, and look at them every three months.
Things we control
| What we count | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Newcomers personally welcomed | All of them. Not most. |
| Follow-ups sent within two days | Nine out of ten |
| Conversations out in the shire | Five in the first 60 days |
| Jobs finished by the date we said | Four out of five, or honestly renegotiated |
| Communities visited outside the main town | Two a year |
| New people given something real to lead | One every few months |
Things we can only influence
| What we watch | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| People who come back a second time | First visits are easy. Second visits mean it was worth it. |
| Members still active after six months | Tells us whether we gave people something worth doing. |
| Organisations that work with us again | The clearest sign we were useful rather than just present. |
| Issues that actually moved a stage | Movement is ours to claim. The final outcome usually is not. |
| People who say they felt useful | We ask directly at three months. It is the question that predicts everything else. |
Ten things worth getting right in year one
Starting points, not commandments. Change them to fit the shire, and write down what was changed and why.
| What it means | By when | |
|---|---|---|
| Get moving | Three jobs have names and dates on them | End of the first meeting |
| Make people welcome | Nearly everyone who asked to hear back, heard back | Within two days, every time |
| Listen first | Five local organisations have been asked what they see | Within 60 days |
| Be useful | One modest thing for this community is finished | Within 90 days |
| Share it around | Someone outside the committee has led something | Within 90 days |
| Cover the shire | At least two communities outside the main town have had a visit | Within six months |
| Be reliable | Four out of five jobs done, or honestly renegotiated | Checked quarterly |
| Look after people | Nobody is carrying more than they agreed to without it being noticed | Monthly |
| Keep people | Someone actually looks at who is still active, and asks why | At six and twelve months |
| Close the loop | Every live issue has a status and a date to check it | Monthly |
All five parts of the playbook