AGM

Some brief thoughts from the AGM...

Important to note: their AGM is more of a public meeting than an AGM like ours. The individual sections still feed back and they elect a new executive committee, but parents are invited and investitures, award certificates and badges are also given out/done.

- For the section reports, there was a written version for the minutes, but where children were present, the leaders got the kids up and asked them what had been their favourite part of the last year. Admittedly, this was only Beavers, but seemed to go down well.

- Looking at their financials, they raised £300 from a family camp. If we wanted to raise money for the land or roof, maybe we should do an another alumni camp? Charge people to attend and be frank - say that it's in order to raise money. I think people would attend with the right branding.

- I've mentioned this before but the Greenwich group pays subs termly and online. It's £25 per term. This was a large topic of the AGM because people don't log on to pay it. UPSIDE: When it is paid online, the group can then claim gift aid off it also. DOWNSIDE: A serious number of parents do not pay it and it's difficult to chase up.

- There was a large parent population at the meeting. Partly because of Beaven investitures. UPSIDE: More parent participation in group - they used the AGM as an opportunity to stress they needed more leaders. DOWNSIDE: Many left after their kids had been invested or awarded badges - and for those who stayed, the meeting often became a shouting match between people speaking in the meeting and the kids playing games at the back.

- In the section reports, each section outlined one thing they would like to improve on for next year (e.g. attendance rates/ discipline, etc etc)

- I had a chuckle when the Explorers leader (so, 15 year olds ish) stood up and said "They are pretty independent when they camp as they do some of their own cooking" PAHAHAHA.

- There were not any competitions for positions on the group exec so I'm not sure what would have happened if 2 people ran to be 'scrutineer' (for example). Would parents get to vote too?

- They sell their merch at charity days - maybe we should sell our scout hoodies and Liam's/Ben's camp t-shirts at the fete?

- There was cheese and wine at the end. Point is, they were grateful people attended and this gave leaders an opportunity to talk to leaders properly.

Final thought, at first I thought it was great that parents were invited, but like most things in life, it's more complicated than that. The format of the meeting was a table at the front consisting of the group chair and secretary and then everyone else sat in rows opposite - almost like a courtroom. There wasn't much opportunity for discussion because of this (but there also wasn't much to discuss). Section leaders came to the front and read their reports. As did the GSL. It was clear the evening was used to show parents that things are well organised but help from them is required - not sure how effective this was though as many parents were only there because their child was getting a badge. Again, disproportionate number of Beaver parents there - maybe we could be focussing on recruiting Beaver parents as leaders as their child will be in group for longest - however, aforementioned, many might have just been there because their kid was getting a badge or summit.

Apologies for typos or grammatical errors, it's been a long day and I went to the pub with the Scout leaders afterwards.