The
Swanage Grammar School Association – where do we go from here?
From
the Chairman on behalf of the Committee
By the time of the next reunion in 2009 SGSA will have come
of age. With nearly 300 members and funds
of around £10,000 in its general accounts the Association is financially sound.
What other similar organisation do you know that holds 7 years
subscriptions in reserve? The sub
has always been £5 per annum and there is no need to increase it.
After 21 years age seems to be becoming an issue – not the
age of the Association but the ageing of its leadership.
Those heavily involved in the organisation of the last reunion found it
pretty taxing and some of the key players have since either become less robust
themselves or have felt the considerable pressures of supporting elderly
parents, or both. With this very much in mind the Committee discussed the way
forward at its meeting this month.
Apart from the welcome support of new Honorary Treasurers the
key Officers of the Association have been unchanged for nearly two decades.
It has become clear to the “old lags” that we have to face the need
to plan for the future. We
have, over the last three reunions, tried very hard to get new younger members
into the Committee to ensure that the Association has a longer term future, but
with a few exceptions there has been little interest and there is no obvious
“new generation” waiting in the wings. This may be because the “old guard” committee is tight knit and
dominant and has failed to welcome new blood. We hope not. It
is our perception that the view of the School amongst its alumni changed with
those who left in the latter part of the sixties and we have never really made
contact with most those leaving from (say) 1967 onwards.
Of course, the closure of the school in 1974 draws a natural line under
things and even if we successfully revitalise the committee with those from the
last decade the present situation will probably recur in ten more years.
Much the same situation has affected “The Swan”.
As members know, this was originally an annual publication and was made
up from a steady flow of material, which seemed to appear in sufficient volume
to provide Dick with that essential raw material which even an Editor of his
calibre needs to create a meaningful magazine. The
hard reality is that twice in the last decade we have not been able to publish a
Swan because of lack of material – you can only recycle archives to a limited
degree.
While we recognised this formally in the Constitution at the last
reunion General Association Meeting so there is now no formal link between Swan
and subscription, many members still expect to get one annually.
Of course, in years when there is no Swan the main Association funds
simply rise by the value of the subscriptions as we have no other significant
expenditure. A Swan will be produced in
2006 but this will only be achieved because some effort has been put in to
telephone potential contributors and “encourage “ them firmly to write
something. The Swan seems no longer to be
self-sustaining although it will temporarily be helped by some hitherto
unpublished material which has come to light from Gwen Rawling’s papers in the
last few months.
Of course, the Association has had its spin-off groups.
The local group flourished for several years, with a small team leading
it, but these stalwarts have needed some time to themselves and it has been in
abeyance recently, although it has just reappeared.
The Charity group was set up with a major objective of giving away some
of the Association’s surplus balances – but has actually generated more
funds than it has spent and it currently has a balance of over £1100.
The present Chairman, Hon. Secretary, Hon. Membership
Secretary and Hon. Editor all feel that they should stand down after the next
reunion. This means that if decisions
about the future of the Association are to be made at that reunion a debate
needs to be opened now and that is the reason for this paper.
For a new leadership for the Association to come forward in time to take
over at the next Reunion in 2009; if this new leadership feels that there is a
need fundamentally to change the nature of the Association then it would need to
formulate such proposals in time for them to be considered and agreed (or
rejected) at the General Association Meeting to be held at the Reunion. There might, for example, be a wish to continue the Association as a
purely local group.
One of the consequences of having a routine General Association
Meeting only every five years is that changes have to be worked up ready for a
decision by the membership at that meeting
For the Association to be wound up at the next reunion – this has been
described as the “go out with a bang not a whimper” option. Whichever option we follow we also have to deal with the
Association’s balances which are clearly grossly in excess of our needs.
We have tried to give money away but have not really succeeded in getting
local schools to take money other than as a contribution to general funds, which
did not seem appropriate. As members will
remember, the Constitution provides that the Committee may decide but we feel
that a change in policy like this should be considered by the wider membership.
The Committee’s view is that there is no real justification for
the Association to hold funds in excess of the cost of one Swan and the
“up-front cost” of a reunion.
Together this means that we really only need a working balance of about
£3,000. Again there are several
options:
Dick is close to producing an History of Oldfeld and soon will also
produce an History of the School. We
estimate that giving a free copy of the latter to every paid up member and of
the former to every Oldfelder and to anyone else who wants one will use up
around £1,000.
We could use some of the outstanding balances to subsidise the next
reunion (perhaps paying for the overheads but not the food – a completely free
reunion would be difficult to run because people might expect just to turn up on
the day so organising numbers would be difficult).
Your Committee has always set its face against using general funds to
subsidise, rather than just to underwrite, the Reunions on the basis that those
who are too far away to come should not subsidise those who can come.
As a result, over the years, Reunions have about broken even.
We need to know what members feel about this use of the funds.
We could return the outstanding balances to current members – about £30
per head – perhaps reduced by deciding now that all members are life members
and that no further subscriptions should be collected. Some people feel that this would collapse the Association, as people do
not value what they do not pay for. It
would also be a considerable administrative task, as we would have to deal with
the cancellation of all the Standing Orders.
We could widen the net for choice of recipients of our charity and give a
substantial donation either to a single local school (for which we would like
them to appear at least a little interested) or to an organisation dealing with
children in the wider world. We have
supported Casa Alianza in the past and there are any number of organisations in
Africa, Asia and South America that would make good use of the sums we have to
spare. However, some members have in the
past made it clear that they prefer to choose their own Charities and giving
money in this way would be very tax inefficient in these days of Gift Aid.
We could always send the Honorary Officers to the Caribbean for a
week’s holiday!
The best answer will probably be some combination of the above.
The Committee debated these matters at length at the meeting.
There was some optimism amongst our two “least elderly” members, Joan
Dragon and Mary Hansell, that a new generation could be persuaded to take over.
What we have agreed to do is this:
Put this article in the Swan so everyone is aware of the issues.
Invite all members to think these matters through carefully and contact
any Committee member if they wish to discuss or if they need further information
on what is involved, workload etc.
Committee Members are listed in the Swan.
Hold an Extraordinary General Meeting in Swanage next spring to discuss a
way forward. We appreciate that only a
proportion of members would be able to make such a meeting but we feel that this
needs broader discussion than just the Committee.
Special arrangements would be made to ensure that those attending had the
benefit of the views of those unable to attend if these are sent in to us.
We would very much hope that from the EGM would emerge:
A consensus on what the shape of the Association would be in the future.
A group of people willing to take over as Officers of the Association.
Assuming that a) and b) are fulfilled then we would suggest that the potential new Officers shadow the existing Officers in the run-up to the next reunion (planned for end-June beginning July 2009). We would try and pass on our experience of what works. Several of the Officers would be content to continue to serve as ordinary Committee members if asked to do so.
We want to emphasise that the old Officers will stand down. There is a tendency in organisations like ours to do nothing and hope to browbeat the incumbents into standing again. This will not work so if the members want the Association to continue in its present or some other form they will have to take up the baton. If the organisation does not have arrangements to continue the Officers are bound under the Constitution to take appropriate steps, which will have to be ratified at the 2009 GAM, and we very much hope that we do not have to do so. If we do have to go out in 2009 we will certainly try to do so with a bang not a whimper, but we would much rather not go out at all.