Rambling On At The Board Meeting

The Board meeting was held at the weekend and here is an update on what was discussed and some of the resolutions you will be voting on at the AOG in August 2017.

We can now reveal the proposed new name for the club, Venture Out. The members will have a straightforward option of choosing Venture Out or GOC and if you want to discuss these options, a forum has been started here.

On discussing the club finances, we struck a balance, expecting an increase in the number of members and wanting to keep below the VAT threshold, therefore we propose the following:

Membership fee to increase to £17 per annum

Cost of the magazine will increase to £20 per annum

There will no longer be a discount for joint membership

New members joining GOC will no longer be able to apply for joint membership

You may remember we told you the membership dropped by 2% last year so we are really pleased to be able to tell you that within the first quarter of 2017, the number of members has increased by 2%. Thank you to everyone on the Board, the Group Coordinators, Event Leaders and friendly, welcoming members for following initiatives and making a difference.

Jon took us through his multi-step plan that is designed to help struggling groups and get all groups to the same level of excellence. We rely heavily on Group Coordinators to make GOC function so Jon is giving them a lot of support and will be conducting a face to face session at the AOG, with them, to get further feedback from the Group Coordinators on how we can take the club, still further forward.

One initiative is to offer free membership as a thank you to those who go that extra mile for GOC. We will release more on this when the final proposal is drawn up.

We discussed how to encourage more volunteers to help with running GOC and identified the need for a magazine editor, video producer, marketing lead, website tester, advertising lead amongst others. Without filling the roles the club will not flourish and without a dedicated magazine editor we will not be able to continue providing OutDoors at the current standard.

We welcomed Edward Voelcker (Ned) onto the board. Ned is working through a handover process with Nick so that he is able to take over as Treasurer by the AOG.

We hope you found this update on how your club is run interesting and do not hesitate to get in touch if you want to learn more or would like to volunteer.