Connected Murihiku - 2024 Activity Report

Connected Murihiku Activity Report December 2024

 The work undertaken through Connected Murihiku in the last 12 months includes: 

 Community-led Engagement: 

• Developed a Strategic Approach & Work Plan based on insights gathered through conversations, surveys, networking and assessing available information. 

• Facilitated hui for people working with volunteers – 12 people attended including from Te Anau and Gore 

• Attended Waimumu Field Days for 3 days 

• Project Lead connecting across the region with organisations including meetings in Te Anau, Riverton, Tuatapere, Lumdsen, Winton, Gore and Otautau. (10 SDC and 11 GDC) 

• Discussions with organisations on their organisational needs – 107 meetings and 19 network meetings attended 

Visibility: 

• The establishment of a website: www.connectedmurihiku.co.nz as a one stop shop of information and resources 

• One major update to the website 

• Three Local Stories added to the website 

• Road Show about the website to 5 regional communities and 2 in Invercargill, as well as speaking at 5 network groups 

• Monthly newsletter to database to distribute information – June to December 

• Grow Connected Murihiku database – 140 June, 185 Dec 

Advocacy & Insights: 

• Submissions to 3 councils LTPs 

• Survey to better understand the needs – 46 respondents 

• Facilitating conversations around funding needs and working with volunteers – see notes below 

• Access to Strategic Grants platform through ES – 51 clicks on the link through the monthly newsletter Aug-Dec 2024. 

Capability Building: 

• Provided access to the community to Strategic Grants funding portal via ES - increased 6 to 27 users. 

• Identifying more specific areas where support for community organisations would be of value: 
  • Visibility 
  • Connection 
  • Governance and board upskilling 
  • Working with volunteers 
  • Funding 
  • Data and research 
  • Cultural capability 

• Identifying gaps in training, support and information available to community organisations – See survey summary below. 

• In person hui in April 2024 at Murihiku Marae with a focus on cultural capability – 47 attended, great feedback received. See below. 

Volunteer South Hui – 24 April 

11 people from Gore, Te Anau & Invercargill attended. 

Direction from the meeting: 

• Desire to focus on supporting organisations with volunteering issues 

• Desire for Connected Murihiku to continue to facilitate conversations with the sector including considering setting up a steering group to drive the work 

• Explore opportunity for Connected Murihiku to fund training opportunities in Murihiku 

Murihiku Marae Hui 29 April 

The focus of the hui was to grow people’s understanding about Te Tiriti and empower people to grow their organisation’s capability in honouring Te Tiriti. It was also an opportunity to connect new people and organisations and for networking. 

70 people registered for the hui, due to illness and last minute changes 47 attended. 

The day included a mihi whakatau, talk about Murihiku Marae by Evelyn Cook, presentation about Inclusive Aotearoa Collective and the Voices form the Front Not a White Paper by Anjum Rahman, update on Connected Murihiku work by Becs and Te Tiriti workshop with Keri Milne-Ihimaera and Pania Coote. 

Excellent feedback was received on the day from participants. 

A short survey was sent out following. 24 replies have been received. 

21 rated the event 4 or 5 stars. 

Participants were asked to provide any actions they would take (personally or as an organisation) following the event: 

• Use Te Reo more including karakia and greetings 

• Revisit or create Te Tiriti policy 

• Grow connections with runaka 

• Share resources with the team 

• Understanding that small steps are better than no steps 

• Cross the bridge 

• Motivation to increase cultural capability 

• New learning and understanding 

Participants were also asked about other key insights and whether they are relevant to their organisation: 

• 22 selected collaboration and engagement 

• 16 visibility 

• 14 governance and data and research 

• 10 health and safety and volunteers 

General feedback: 

• Great opportunity for networking and connecting 

• Concern about duplication 

• Recognition of different need of different parts of the community and region 

• Liked that there were tangible takeaways from the event. 

CM Survey results Summary (November): 

Governance and board upskilling:  

Top areas of support required: Board roles and responsibilities 27; Governance including good governance 26; Strategic planning 28  

Comment on barriers:  

“Time and resources. A lot of governance is run by volunteers, and often times can mean they need to take time off paid work to attend training and work around family commitments. Training can be expensive, community organisations normally have tight budgets meaning less opportunities are available.”  

 Working with volunteers:  

Top areas of support required: Attracting volunteers; developing roles and responsibilities; place to advertise roles; adapting org to be volunteer friendly; templates  

Barriers to organisations working with volunteers:  

Consistency and reliability from volunteers - train and then leave or don’t follow through  

Skills of volunteers  

Time  

Compliance eg H&S  

Dynamic and/or rub between paid role and volunteer role  

Funding:  

Top areas of support required: Finding funds and other ways to raise funds (30+)  

Barriers  

“Everyone is different, wants different information, for different reasons and criteria and different times.”  

“Most community groups need certainty year on year to cover their basic operational overheads. More and more funding is project based adding extra strain on community groups to add services to an otherwise underfunded and under resourced organisation. More funders accepting that core work done well can be more effective than looking for constant innovation.”  

Also comments re overheads not being funded and needing certainty for employing staff.  

Time for doing forms especially when volunteer. 

Website traffic 

1 June to 31 Dec 2024: 

3.6K Page views; 1.3K Unique Visitors 

264 found the page through Search (the rest through direct links – probably the newsletter, as traffic spikes when newsletter is sent out). 

Following the Home page and Who we are page, the main pages of interest have been the Governance and Board Training and Local Stories pages. 

Newsletter data: 

Mailchimp Monthly newsletters are opened by more than 50% of recipients (eg 55.9% in Nov, 58% Dec). 

Click rate sits between 10-18% each month. Total clicks averages at 90 each month. 

Newsletter is opened between 250-320 times each month. 

Both the website traffic and newsletter insights provides a good baseline to build on.