Zero Emissions Noosa Inc. (ZEN Inc.) Annual Report · ATTACHMENT 1_ZEN Inc. Report on Partnership Alliance Agreement to Council 2024

awareness in the Noosa community of ways to save money and reduce emissions.

The Communications Package was to assist ZEN Inc. with website updating/revision & marketing
advice for ZEN Inc. generally & the EV Expo or similar, in addition to education and advocacy about
emissions reduction to the Noosa Shire community, including ZEN Inc’s project work, through
various media channels.

This was only partially used to engage a Marketing and PR business to develop social media tiles to
promote the Expo to help improve the geographic and demographic reach of ZEN Inc., with
disappointing results. Hence, that business was not engaged any further to assist in implementing
the full Communications Package from June 2024 on. Also, due to HR issues with the ZEN Inc’s
employee in the Admin./Coordinator role, and the recruitment of the Program/Project Manager
role, ZEN Inc. was unable to appoint a suitable business to implement the Communications Package
until early 2025.
Hence some Year 2 Council Alliance Partnership funds that should have been used for in 2024 have
been carried over for use in 2025.

The desired outcome of having the Administration/Coordination position with some
communications assistance was to enable the ZEN Chair to spend more time working at the strategic
level to develop collaborative relationships and be involved in strategically important projects, e.g.
to step into the project leader role for the Community Battery project as long-time volunteer project
leaders stepped back and to step back from the lead role in the Expo organisation each year.

As it became obvious during 2024, that the skill set of the person in the Administration/Coordination
role was more communications aligned than administration aligned and also to help fit in with the
employee’s family needs, the number of work hours the employee worked, were reduced at her
request. Hence, the support from this role to the ZEN Inc. Chair in particular, was less than expected.
In addition, as the ZEN Inc. Chair is also Chair of the Communications and Advocacy Committee,
being diverted to deal with HR issues meant that the appointment of another media and marketing
organisation to work with ZEN Inc. has not been possible until early 2025.


Following the Alliance Partnership Funds being raised to $125,000 per year for years 2 & 3 of the
agreement from July, 2024, this enabled ZEN Inc. to employ a Program and Project Manager in Nov.,
2024 for 19 hours per week, as well as the same person in the Administration /Secretariat role for
10 hours per week. These roles were established to help keep the organisation working, and take
the majority of admin. work and some project work from the volunteer ZEN Inc. Chair, who has
been working as a volunteer CEO for 40 – 50 hours per week.

As these positions were only filled in Nov., 2024, it was too early to include an evaluation of the
effectiveness of these roles in this report for 2024, but there are some very promising signs for ZEN
Inc. with the new employee.




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