A new structure for NZCF
5 Feb 2025
As 2025 gets underway, the NZ Choral Federation | Te Kotahitanga Manu Reo o Aotearoa is settling into a new operating structure.
Following several months of ongoing discussions amongst our Board, our National Advisory Committee, our regional committees and the wider choral community, NZCF has made a significant change to its structure to enable a more streamlined and consistent delivery of events throughout Aotearoa.
As of 2025, we have shifted from our previous structure with a national office and 10 separate regional committees to become more centrally organised. The new structure has an increased national staff (meet our new team members here) supported by events coordinators in each region who will lead our teams of volunteers for The Big Sing, The Kids Sing, SingFests and regional workshops. This way, we’ll be able to deliver more choral activity in each region, which will build and strengthen our collective singing community across the motu.
Regional voice
The role of regional Chairs will be replaced by Regional Representatives who will be elected by the regional membership using the same voting process as that used for NZCF Board elections. Each Regional Representative will be a member of the National Advisory Council (formerly known as the National Advisory Committee). We’ll be calling for nominations for the role of Regional Representative at the end of February. Download our Regional Representative role description.
Formal committee meetings and regional AGMs will be replaced by a more relaxed annual or bi-annual hui/forum in each region, led by the Regional Representative. These hui will involve conductors, singers, administrators and other members of our choral community discussing how we can best engage and cater to groups and singers both within and outside our membership.
Vital volunteers
The world of volunteerism is changing, with fewer and fewer people able to commit large chunks of time to unpaid work. Under this new structure, volunteers in each region will no longer need to attend regular committee meetings and can get involved on a per-event basis, allowing them to commit to the projects they love without an obligation to help plan other events. These changes will take the pressure off our extraordinary volunteer teams, so that they can give their time to regional events in a more flexible way, supported by paid roles in our national team and in the regions.
We’re deeply grateful to those regional committee members who have devoted their time and skills to NZCF for many years and sincerely hope they will continue to enjoy playing a vital role as members of event-specific committees and support teams convened by the Regional Coordinator(s) for festivals such as The Big Sing, The Kids Sing and SingFest.
Revised Constitution
The changes to our structure are captured in the new NZCF Constitution, voted in unanimously by the membership on 14 October 2024. You can download the new constitution here.
We’re excited to move into this next chapter for NZCF, committed to our vision of Aotearoa as a singing nation.