Introduction to VOICE forms and templates

Valuing Organisational Improvement and Community Excellence (VOICE) has been designed to assist Indigenous Non-Government Organisations funded by the Department of Communities and Disability Services Queensland to strengthen their office administration and management practices.

While the target audience for VOICE is Indigenous-managed non-government organisations, the content should also be relevant to all non-government organisations. It should also be a useful resource for departmental staff with contract management responsibilities regarding the funding of community organisations.

VOICE includes the following documents and web links:

• Topic Guides introduce key topics and competencies/ skills in running a community organisation. They include key points to consider when undertaking that task.
• Policies and Procedures provide a suggested policy statement which an organisation may choose to adopt and a practical set of procedures to implement that policy.
• Templates are blank forms that could be refined and used to support implementation. Samples are also provided to show how a completed form might look.
• References and Resources list references to other websites and publications.

The content provided on VOICE includes some basic office administration documents and documents that are grouped in the three categories proposed for new standards for community services: people using the service; people working in the service; governance and accountability. While there is a good match between these documents and the specific proposed standards, some of the resources on this website may not be detailed enough to meet the standards required under the proposed regulations. In these cases, and cases where policies and procedures included in the regulations are not found on this first version of VOICE, other resources will be made available on the Community Door website.

• Office Administration

This section contains documents relating to basic administration and general office administration functions, such as communication, filing, organising and running meetings, setting up registers and employing staff. There are also basic style guides and templates for documents such as letterhead, faxes and reports.

• People Using the Service

This section contains documents that support the organisations engagement with its local community and the support it provides to clients who access the service. Documents have been grouped under the sub-categories of community and client.

• People Working in the Service

This section includes documents that relate to recruiting and supporting staff and volunteers. There are also some documents relating to workplace health and safety.

• Governance and Accountability

This section includes documents that support good governance, covering areas such as: strategic planning, roles and responsibilities of management committees and financial management.

References to specific positions in documents

The documents contain references to specific positions in organisations, such as employees, administration officers, program supervisors and Managers. These are intended to be generic references and it is acknowledged that this may not apply in many cases. For example, some employee or administration officer tasks may in fact be undertaken by Management Committee members or other volunteers in the organisation.

To access information

• Select the category button in which you would expect to find the information.
• Select the type of document needed to access a list of documents. The resources which can be accessed are highlighted in colour.
• Select the document you need in order to open it as an RTF or Microsoft Excel File.

To save documents

The documents provided on VOICE can be used in their current format or can be adapted to your organisations needs. Organisations can place their own logo on all templates by deleting the logo placeholder and replacing it with their own.

Complete the template by typing in required information. Save the completed form to your local network or hard drive following your organisations file management procedures.

Feedback and relation to other resource documents

This is the first version of VOICE. It is intended to introduce a range of office administration and management topics and link users with more detailed complementary organisational development resources that are available in the market place.

While VOICE has been through a user-testing and editing process with a range of stakeholders, including members of the Indigenous community sector, it is just a start and we value any comments or suggestions that you may make for a future version of this information resource. We would also like to include more examples of good practice in future versions of this resource.

If you would like to provide feedback, make suggestions on future content or provide some good practice examples, please email the Strengthening Indigenous non-government organisations project team on:

Email: singo@communities.qld.gov.au

Your feedback is appreciated.