Rotary Club of Gloucester Council Meeting Minutes Monday 9th September 2019
Club Number 19313 | Charity Number 274097
1. PRESENT
Matt Cass (MC) Angela Seddon (AS) Amanda Chamberlayne (AC) Richard Wright (RW), Jeremy Keck (JK), Colin Rogers (CR), Mandy Chong (MaC)
2. APOLOGIES RECEIVED
Julian Farr, Chris Soane
3. MINUTES
The minutes of the 9th July 2019 meeting were approved and signed by President Matt Cass
4. MATTERS ARISING
Health & Safety and Risk Assessment officer is to be Chris Rawlins and our Youth Leader representative with District will be Peggy Cooper.
First Aid Kits for Rugby car parking – basic first aid kit to be held with the cash bag, and MC will arrange for 2 small kits to be purchased from Rob Hall. It would be useful to have a list of current qualified first aiders within the club.
Trustees of the Rotary Club of Gloucester Trust Fund confirmed as The President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary and should not be confused with the Children’s Trust Fund.
5. PRESIDENTS REPORT
MC wished to minute his thanks to everybody who attended Gloucester Day on Saturday 7th September with 9 Rotarians and 8 Inner Wheel ladies attending. Thoughts on purchasing Rotary sashes ready for the Centenary and other special occasions for ‘stewarding’ were discussed.
The joint fundraiser with Inner Wheel at the Nepalese Chef on Wednesday 23rd October at £20 per person. Amanda Chamberlayne is co-ordinating Rotary members and will liaise with Inner Wheel on numbers.
Thursday 24th October is End Polio Day and the Cathedral is being lit up purple all that week. Rotary are promoting this with a purple crocus lapel pin. Julie Cook from Gloucester Quays is hoping to organise a Rotary Gazebo where the clubs could join together with a rota to help to sell the pins. JS will email DG Judy Powell to find out when the pins may be available with a view to ordering a box of 100 for Gloucester Club.
JS has received two emails offering an opportunity to go to Delhi for the last National Immunisation Day and one which also includes a bicycle or four wheeled vehicle trip as part of the immunisation week. Anyone interested in finding out more should let JS know.
Stamp collection – all stamps go to Inner Wheel for the Leprosy projects, and the plastic milk bottle tops go to Dundry Nurseries where they are sent off for recycling to raise money for guide dogs for the blind. President Matt would be delighted to receive anyone’s stamps and milk bottle tops to pass on to the relevant organisation. Ring Pulls are still being collected by Walls Club on our behalf.
6. IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
no report received
7. PRESIDENT ELECT
no apology and no report received
8. JUNIOR PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Conference – 34 people attending for the weekend. RW reminded that each member must apply and register to attend the actual conference and dinner directly with RIBI Oliver Lister, as per the flyers.
9. SECRETARY’S REPORT
New member– Mr Frank Skelly. As he had resigned from his previous club he would therefore need to complete an application to join Gloucester and a 7 day letter would be sent to club members in accordance with procedure. AS has requested this from membership chair Julian Farr.
10. TREASURER’S REPORT
nothing to report as everything was looking pretty good.
11. COMMITTEE REPORTS
MEMBERSHIP
report received from Julian Farr with an update on an aim to recruit and retain 5 new members per year. The committee wanted the club to be reminded that it was the responsibility of all members to try to introduce prospective members to the club and not just the membership committee.
COMMUNITY AND YOUTH
report received from Richard. Updated reports and acknowledgements have been sadly lacking from some of those organisations who have received awards from us which was a shame. Plenty of community initiatives in the pipeline – Carers, Friendship Café, Salvation Army Xmas Boxes, Gloucester Music Festival and it was reported that the Rotary Community Awards was now back in the hands of Clive Hannis aided by Chris Rawlins.
An idea is being reviewed with regards to repainting the railings around Gloucester Park – schools could be allocated a section of the railings and could then attach pictures displaying their work.
Youth Initiatives in the pipeline include- RYLA and the two candidates will speak to club on 20th September. Kid’s Out Winter Event – 400 children to a Panto at the Olympus Theatre with a Christmas craft workshop.
We recently supported the annual Young Musicians Recital at Stowell Park with The Brympsfield Music Society and 6 of our Club members went to the concert on Saturday – Colin Rogers reported that this was one of the most amazing concerts, the youngest musician was about 10 years old and the standard of music and singing was phenomenal and it was a shame that more members from the club weren’t aware of it.
We are also supporting 6 schools for the Young Voices event at the NEC – help with transport costs to attend
FUNDRAISING
Amanda raised the fact that we will be short of about £8k this year from our budgets, as the spaces at Imperial have now been taken up with the building of an Aldi superstore. Numerous attempts have been made to engage with Tesco and the Council and it was suggested that AC speak directly with Richard Graham MP to see if he can support our quest for the land for car parking on match days. It was also confirmed that Pam Tracey is also in charge of the open space and AC will approach her. We do have the Gala Club which will provide us with 50 spaces but volunteers will be needed to man it.
The Christmas street collection licenses have now been received for Gloucester and we are just waiting for our licenses Tewkesbury. MC is working out a new route for Longford area for this year and JS will continue co-ordinating the Stores collections at Christmas.
Any new initiatives for fundraising ideas from club members would be welcomed by AC.
SPORTS AND SOCIAL
Colin submitted his detailed report which included District Skittles, District Boules, Club Walks, Three Clubs Golf, Theatre Visits, Outside Visits, the joint event at the Nepalese Curry house with Inner Wheel, Snooker Cup, New Year dinner on 11th January 2020 and the District Quiz. We have also had an offer from a band called Who’s Stoned who are willing to perform for a charity event and Colin would look in to it for a future fundraiser. CR would like to re-launch the Art Competition for members which is just for fun, and art boards will be made available once again.
The Old Folks party in April Jeremy Keck would like to send out letters to last year’s attendees to see who would like to come this year but needs some freepost envelopes to do this. The venue is still to be confirmed.
CR reported that there is also a Choir who would like to perform for us if there is an opportunity, it was suggested that this would be good for the Tree of Lights or at our Store Collections.
INTERNATIONAL
JS met with the committee on Friday to set out the way forward. Last year we had a speaker about Leprosy and the club agreed to sponsor some training with a matching District Grant and the committee wanted to find out whether it was still available, and where the agreed money was now coming from of £750 per person. MC will approach Ian Stuart to see whether the matching grant has been used elsewhere by Club for centenary purposes or if still available.
Discussion by the committee was given regarding the previous annual allocation of £3k on Aquaboxes which has stopped and it had been agreed that the budget would be rolled over to support water pumps.
Charity Speakers normally receive a cheque with no other involvement from the Club. Proposal is to get a bit more involved where possible and would look into what. Council reiterated that we do not wish to have too many Charity speakers but a more of those with a general interest as speakers.
Peggy Cooper has asked about a project in Jamaica and is looking at Rotary Clubs in Jamaica to possibly co-support a project.
A project for a medical centre in Nepal will be researched further and a budget for next year put together.
On the 29th October there is a Foundation Information meeting and it would be a great opportunity for members, and especially our newer members, to join JS to find out more about Foundation.
Budgets of anticipated and planned spend needed to be submitted as soon as possible to Treasurer for this year to enable accurate accounting.
FELLOWSHIP AND HOUSE
The committee have now met and a three month rota has been drawn up so that everyone on the committee know when they are on duty. There should be 3 on at any one time.
It was confirmed that all new members joining Rotary are co-opted onto House immediately thereby enabling them to get to know members quickly. It was agreed that they should remain on the committee until the end of the Rotary year from when they joined or for a minimum term of 6 months whichever is the shortest.
WEBSITE
It is requested that the Speaker Finder submits a one paragraph synopsis on their speakers topic to Jeremy Keck as soon as possible after the speaker date so that it can be uploaded to the club website for those members to read who were unable to attend.
12. AOB:
CENTENARY – The Centenary plaque is now up at the Quays from the Commercial Road entrance.
President Matt showed the planned designs for the ticket for the Centenary Dinner and weekend.
As the 100th anniversary of the club falls on the 6th December this year it was agreed that we would celebrate in some way on Friday 9th December at Club and we would have a Carvery for lunch.
A Centenary Photograph would be organised. Colin Rogers would make arrangements for 2020 to have as part of a Friday club meeting in the main hall of the Wall’s Club.
DATE OF NEXT MEETING: Monday 14th October 2019