The Hive Collective - a year in review

I know it's not *really* the end of the year but with our AGM done and dusted, we recently shared our annual 21-22 Chair's report with our newsletter subscribers and it's pretty EPIC.

It’s been another amazing year with The Hive and we are so happy to be looking back on all of the opportunities and achievements we’ve created together!

The Hive Collective - A year in review (2022)

Originally published on our website here. Looks 100% prettier on our website so please check it out!!

THE HIVE COLLECTIVE “PLAN ON A PAGE” STRATEGY & DEFINING OUR VALUES AND MISSION STATEMENT.

We hosted our annual strategy workshop with the board in December 2021 and developed our first Plan on a Page strategy for The Hive Collective.?

We also agreed on The Hive’s core values and workshopped a mission statement.

OUR VALUES :

● Connect – We work to build a respectful, fun and inclusive space for women to make friends and genuine connections.

● Empower – We support, encourage and inspire our community to grow both personally and professionally.

● Collaborate – We share our knowledge and work in synergy, both to learn and to foster opportunities.

MISSION STATEMENT :

The Hive Collective is a Tasmanian not-for-profit that empowers women through connection, support and collaboration. We are a community-led organisation, run by women, for women. Our mission is simple, to create an inclusive collective where women can be inspired to learn, grow and make a positive impact, not just for themselves, but in their workplace, their community and for each other.

We have since updated all our external communication to reflect the above. We are now also able to provide a succinct explanation of who we are when people ask us as well as use it when presenting to other community groups.

THE HIVE COLLECTIVE ANNUAL EVENTS

We continued to deliver four events to the community covering a range of topics. In our previous event surveys we received feedback from Hivers saying they enjoyed attending a variety of events mixing between guest speakers, panels and workshops. Taking on the feedback we have delivered events with all these elements. The satisfaction of our events are high with the majority agreeing that they are seeing themselves attend future events.

We introduced a new board role “Event Manager”. The Event Manager has the responsibility to manage the annual Hive events. This has been a welcomed change and allowed the skills of the board to further develop. We were excited to have Amelia Griggs join us as our first Event Manager. With her help we have elevated The Hive’s events to the next level. We are so grateful to have her on the team.

Furthermore, this year we have focused on our own board member’s professional development. This saw Erica Jolly, Amelia Griggs and Nikia Shaw each host their own Hive event. They both truly succeeded in their roles and made it their own - we are all incredibly appreciative and proud.

WEBSITE & DIGITAL

Annie Gatenby did an incredible job designing the website along with support from Nicole McTye and the wider team. We are now able to point people to a website where they can find information about The Hive, our events, subscribe to our newsletter and contact us if they wish to learn more.

We cannot emphasise enough how much it means to us to finally have a website. It was one of our key achievements set out in the strategy and we are pleased to see it live. Over the next 12 months we will further work on the website and consider it an ongoing BAU project that is never complete but rather something we are maintaining and improving on an ongoing basis.

The website will be a pivotal point in our digital presence campaign as well as providing an integral part of membership community and collateral offering.

SPONSORSHIPS & GRANTS

We secured our first grant in 2022. The Hive was a successful recipient of the International Women's Day Small Grants Program 2022 offered by the Department of Communities. This is a big milestone for The Hive as we have worked towards diversifying our income streams. Special thanks to Izzy Spizick who worked tirelessly on putting a number of applications together. The grant was used to deliver our International Women’s Day event with now Commissioner of Police, Donna Adams. Earlier this year Izzy left the board after securing a Colombo scholarship and moved to Singapore to study abroad. Nikia Shaw took over her role and has done an excellent job picking up where Izzy left and making her own mark. Nikia is hoping to secure another International Women’s Day Small Grant for our next year’s IWD event.

Our event with Donna Adams was marketed as The Hive’s International Women’s Day event. This approach also led to two organisations purchasing 10 tickets each for their staff. The Department of Treasury and Finance and Conference Design each offered the event to their staff as an opportunity to raise awareness about IWD.

AWARDS, RECOGNITIONS AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

The Hive Collective was yet again announced a semi-finalist in the Tasmanian Young Achievers award, in the category Create Change. Nikia did a wonderful job putting the application together and it was great to see the recognition come through.

As per our strategy, we have also looked at ways to increase our community engagement. This year we were invited to present about The Hive to the local community group Coding Sisterhood (CS) at their “first birthday party” celebrating turning 1 year. The Hive joined CS on the night giving a speech about Hive and inviting their members to our events. In a similar vein, Linda was invited to attend UTAS Business and Economics Society (TUBES) International Women’s Day event as a panellist along with Amanda French, CEO Dress for Success and Allison Merridew, Audit Consultant, WLF Accounting and Advisory.

MEDIA

Engaging with mainstream media has long been a goal and this year The Hive Collective was invited to ABC Radio for an interview with Mel Bush. Linda, Annie and Erica went to the ABC offices and it was a great experience. This event was a lot of fun and we hope to do more of it in the future to help reach a wider audience and talk about The Hive Collective.

PARTNERSHIPS

The Hive Collective set up a pay-it-forward feature in our ticket sales which enables Hivers to donate money towards free tickets for women who may not be able to afford tickets themselves for various reasons. We, in turn, set up a partnership with Multicultural Council of Tasmania (MCOT) and Dress for Success (DFS) where we are able to donate tickets to each event. Each organisation will then distribute the tickets to women in their network. The feature allows us to become a more inclusive community group where the ability to purchase an event ticket is no longer seen as a potential barrier to attending.

Our Event Manager, Amelia also set up a partnership with Movenpick to host a set number of events in their Hotel. Having access to venues has long been a challenge for the organisation and these kinds of partnerships allow us to have one less thing to worry about when running our events.

We have formed partnerships focusing on the science and technology sector engagement and are continuing to grow as we create community sponsorship with the Coding Sisterhood.

GOVERNANCE

We continue to develop solid governance structures for The Hive. In 2022, Linda attended a workshop on “Grassroots Community Governance” covering all aspects of the governance frameworks such as effective board meetings and decision making, succession planning, the roles of directors and office bearers, leadership, community engagement, essential policies and procedures, finance and budgeting, and strategic planning. One take away from the workshop was to update our board papers to include a number of ongoing standing items such as the strategy and to include board communication with external stakeholders. It also provided good basic information about setting up committees, something we initiated later that year.

2022/2023 ONWARDS

We are looking forward to another year with The Hive and are very excited for 2023.

The next 12 months will see us mix up the annual plan even more with new surprises, partnerships and initiatives along the way for our Hivers.

Originally published on The Hive's website here.

About The Hive Collective

The Hive Collective is a Tasmanian not-for-profit that empowers women through connection, support and collaboration. We are a community-led organisation, run by women, for women. Our mission is simple, to create an inclusive collective where women can be inspired to learn, grow and make a positive impact, not just for themselves, but in their workplace, their community and for each other.

Join us!?www.hivecollective.org.au