Committee Update 16 July 2021

Committee Update 16 July 2021 

Further to earlier statements from the committee, and a commitment to share information as and when we are able, the committee has the following updates. 

Committee members 

It is with sadness that we report that Ben Spokes has resigned from the role of Rallies Secretary due to time constraints. Ben was doing a cracking job reorganising how we run rallies and also, in conjunction with his wife, Michelle, put on the extremely successful and enjoyable rally at the beginning of this month. We will miss both of their contributions and ideas and will, without shame, continue to pester them for ideas, help and other contributions going forward. 

Clearly, this has left a hole in the committee’s capabilities and as such, there has been a minor reshuffle. We are very pleased to welcome Julie Strong and Mikala Burdett onto the committee. These two bring an enthusiasm and a massive amount of experience to the roles. Julie will be taking on the Membership role, with Jamie Robson moving to concentrate more on the duties of looking after IT. Mikala will be looking after our Social Media presence. We have bullied James McLean into taking on the rallies role in addition to his duties as the club’s Chair. 

The specific roles are, therefore. 

• James McLean – Chair and rallies 
• Alasdair Robson – Vice chair 
• Pam Petre – Treasurer 
• Lucy Robson – Secretary 
• Julie Strong – Membership 
• Mikala Burdett – Social Media 
• Cameron Burns – Editor 
• Jamie Robson – IT 

We would like to say that we are always looking for more help on the committee. If you are interested and have some time, please let any one of the current members know. 

Constitution 

One thing that the committee is painfully aware of is that we are making changes, such as the reshuffle above, on the basis of the current Constitution. This document defines the terms of how the club is run and what powers the committee has. The current Constitution is quite old and is, frankly, no longer fit for purpose. As such, the committee has formed a working group under Jamie Robson to review and redraft it. He has persuaded Nigel Gurney to help so far but would welcome the input from one or two others. We want to draft a robust document that works for us going forward, so we’re looking for diverse options, within the core purpose of the club. Please contact Jamie ([email protected]) if you can help. 

AGM  

The other aspect that we have to address is that everything that we do as the committee relates to running your club. The club is obliged to hold Annual General Meetings – the operative word here being “annual”. It did not do so in 2020 nor (so far) in 2021. We intend to fix that and are working on organising a rally/AGM sometime around mid-October. We are looking at a venue in Hampshire and will confirm it once sorted. In addition, we will be looking to live stream the meeting so that those of you unable to attend will be able to follow events. Once the logistics are sorted, the appropriate notices will be sent out. 

Those notices will include instructions for nominations for committee positions.  

Magazine 

In view of the overwhelmingly positive response to the club’s magazines in the survey, we have asked the editor, Cameron Burns, to review what we can provide going forward. Cam will also be looking for assistance with this, so if you have ideas and are prepared to contribute, not necessarily just to the content, but actually to what we provide going forward, please contact him ([email protected]). 

Membership Subscriptions and New Members 

When we suspended taking membership payments and accepting new members it was because there was serious doubt about whether the club would survive and in good faith, we did not think that the club should be accepting money for a service that it could not provide. 

Since then, a couple of key factors have changed that view. 

• While the club has debts regarding the ECCR payments, we never felt that it would be fair to service these debts from RCC subscription payments. We have had it confirmed that we are able to treat ECCR and RCC as different, ring-fenced “pots” and that we can continue to run the club on its own operating funds. 
  This does not mean that we will not be doing our utmost to ensure that the people who paid money for the ECCR get the maximum refund of those funds that we are able to find. Merely that we are allowed to treat the two separately.

• We have introduced a new membership system which allows us to service the members more efficiently and to introduce new payment mechanisms. The club's PayPal account is being closed, which should finally put an end to the unexpected subscription payment problem. The membership system sends renewal notices a couple of weeks before and it will support both direct debits and one-off payments. 

There are a few hoops we still have to jump through but we intend to be reintroducing subscriptions in the coming weeks. This will involve an e-mail asking you to set up a direct debit for your renewal date if you choose to do so. If you want to pay manually through the website, you can do that and will get the reminder 50 weeks later to do so again. This functionality returns the control of your subscription to you. 

We still have some data issues, most notably with regard to subscription renewal dates. As such, we will be running likely a year-long exercise to correct these. If your renewal is over a month away, don’t fret about it, we will have it fixed before it gets to your time. 

An additional challenge that we face is engagement from members in the new membership system. Some of the members we have e-mailed have not opened any emails. This is likely due to spam filters or out of date e-mail addresses but we need to get this corrected. Out of 800+ supposed members, we have confirmed just shy of 300. We would ask you all, as this is a friendly club, to ask other people you know if they have received their e-mails and if not, urge them to get in touch with Julie Strong ([email protected]) who will be happy to help. 

New Domain Name 

The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that we have implemented the new RetroCampingClub.co.uk Domain. While this is our primary Domain going forward, the RetroCaravan.co.uk one will continue to work indefinitely, so either will do for e-mails and for the website. 

And Finally 

The whole committee really appreciates all of the messages of well-being and support for what we have been trying to do.  

This is your club and we all want it to grow and be strong in the years ahead. Much like the whole world, the past year and a half have been a rubbish time for the club but there is light at the end of the tunnel. We think we have passed the point where the club would just collapse and that it will survive and thrive from now on. This is not only down to the actions that the committee has taken, but down to you, your patience with all of the bullshit, your faith and your desire to see the club survive. Thank-you.