Testimonials for KnowHow

With council finances much in the news of late, the first of the Local Government KnowHow courses - Financial Governance 101 - has received some great feedback:

 

Elected members attending the course commented:

"The interactive outline for this day was great" - Julie Geange, Kaipara

 

"All the notes are very useful.  The day was well structured - good breaks and challenging exercises"  - Graham Taylor, Kaipara

 

"I would strongly recommend the course and the facilitators and would urge all elected representatives to go" - Joe Carr, Northland Region

 

The Local Government KnowHow programme is a joint initiative from Local Government New Zealand and the Department of Internal Affairs with assistance from the Society of Local Government Managers (SOLGM).

It has been specially designed to ensure elected members are supported with skills that will help them better fulfil their roles within the community. Each topic aims to provide vital information for newcomers and refresh the knowledge of existing members.

Understanding the finer detail of council finances better was a high priority topic among members surveyed last year for their thoughts on training needs, so we developed a Financial Governance 101 course with the help of our reference groups and Victoria University senior lecturers.

 

It offers an intensive and hands-on financial course for up to 20 participants and focuses on skills and terms specific to financial governance in a local government context:

  • accounting and asset management
  • balance sheet management
  • financing choice.

The first course was run in Whangarei in April, and a further 20 Financial Governance courses will run at centres around New Zealand between now and November: Two of the June courses have been fully booked for some time and others are filling fast.

Additional courses on decision-making, governance - and advanced financial governance - are being scoped and developed, so keep checking the website for updates.

Key links are:

Meanwhile, keep the feedback coming.  We welcome your thoughts and any suggestions for  courses, or course improvements, so we can be sure you get the most from every session.