Sharron Came, President
We had our AGM earlier this month; thanks to everyone who attended and for all the positive feedback we received on the annual report. Congratulations also to the members joining the committee for the first time: Mike Phethean, Mike Gilbert and Debbie Buck.
I know some of you have not managed to read the annual report and we certainly didn’t dwell on it at the AGM. The annual report is important as it represents our best efforts to give a snap shot of the health of the club. Those of us focusing on the smooth running of the club use it to figure out what our priorities should be for the coming months.
2012 was a year of consolidation. This is reflected in the year’s highlights:
- Further improvements to the website, improvements for which, I’m pleased to report, we have received plenty of positive feedback.
- Continuing to replace paper processing with electronic processing where this is cost effective for the club. For example, the lodge booking system, electronic invoices for membership and changes to the constitution to provide for electronic notice of meetings.
- Another year of smooth trip delivery. As I stressed last year, this is not something that can be taken for granted, it requires a tremendous amount of hard work and patience on the part of Chief Guide Amanda Wells and her team working in closely with Assistant Chief Guide Richard Lardner, Transport Officer Gareth Morton, Gear Custodian Pete Gent and his team and our trip leaders.
In the 2011 Annual Report I suggested that if various initiatives we had begun implementing were working I would expect to see:
- membership remaining steady or growing and more members staying with the club (less churn);
- increased trip participation;
- greater club night participation;
- greater usage of the lodge and vans; and
- plenty of volunteers stepping forward for the tasks that need to be done to keep the club running.
To the extent that we are able to measure our performance against these indicators the results are mixed. We appear to have made some modest gains particularly with respect to reducing membership churn. In 2012 we almost doubled the number of new members. While this result did not quite match the number of members we lost we came very close suggesting we may be on the way to reversing our pattern of net membership decline which until this year was tracking at an average of 20 members per annum. On the other hand at least some of the credit for this result will be due to our relaxing the member eligibility requirements slightly (from 3 overnight trips to 2). We currently have 448 members.
Churn is something we have to manage. People move to different parts of the country or overseas or into different life stages. A small but significant portion of our members are not Kiwis and do not intend to stay here so inevitably they join us on a temporary basis. Also, people have a wide variety of interests and not much spare time so everyone has to prioritize. Once you have met a few people, made some friends, learnt some skills and bought a car the need to belong to a tramping club like ours declines. This is why member engagement and building a sense of community is so important to the sustainability of our club. This year we turned 65!
The number of tramping trips that ran in 2012 increased for the second year in a row and we experienced less trip cancellations. Overall trip numbers were down slightly on 2011 meaning participation is down but only fractionally. We remain predominately a tramping club in terms of trips offered. Unsurprisingly this trend reflects our central purpose and member interest although we would run more kayaking and cycling trips if we were able to attract members with the specialist skills required for leading these trips – their popularity suggests demand outstrips supply.
We experienced the biggest growth in family tramping which is great news, particularly if we can get these young people to stick with the club. Mike Gilbert and his team have worked hard to ensure trip supply matches demand and that our trip systems are designed to accommodate the needs of family groups without compromising safety. I take particular heart from this development as I think it serves as a useful model if we are to retain or grow our current level of trip participation more broadly.
Our assets are in reasonably good shape. Lodge income was up slightly this year although we still made a loss largely due to the fact that we face rising costs for items such as insurance and power and we have a booking system and a maintenance program to pay for. The challenge of getting better lodge utilization, particularly in summer remains with us and we will be looking to try some innovative pricing options, booking rule changes along with targeted promotion. Paua Hut is enjoying relatively good utilization. This hut is available free of charge for use by members. Good to see the members making use of it!
Van usage is up slightly on last year. South Island usage in particular has increased which is pleasing. One of the main reasons we have vans is to enable members to travel to places relatively cheaply and having our own vans helps with this. We face ongoing maintenance and storage costs which we endeavor to cover through the trip fees.
Our financial position remains relatively healthy with no large unexpected payments coming our way. We continue to keep a good reserve for when we need to replace the vans or gear or make significant investments in our existing assets.
Attendance at the Wednesday nights was down slightly presumably reflecting the entertainment preferences and life stages of the membership. Family trampers, for example, are probably tucked up in their beds at 8pm at night. The introduction of a slideshow roster accessible from the website will hopefully help with booking and promotion of club night entertainment. We have also established a small team of people to keep the Wednesday nights running so the burden does not rest with a single individual.
We don’t have a single scientific way of measuring member engagement although we are now able to measure aspects such as visits to our website and length of time spent there. Our website analytics suggests good engagement with that platform. We have been able to find people to undertake most of the tasks required for running the club and members have turned out for key events such as the EGM, and new member’s night which indicates reasonable engagement.
My intuition is telling me we have made some gains in this area but there is room for improvement. We still have relatively few people doing the bulk of the work running the club with a larger group essentially free loading off that effort. The three challenges we face are i) finding ways to make it easier for people to help out; ii) simplifying our systems so less helping out is required; and iii) getting members with specialist skills to step up – we are always looking for people with IT and accounting skills. The ”informal small group participation” model we have adopted for looking after the Wednesday nights and for making improvements to the website is one that we will likely look to utilize to get more done in other areas of club administration.
Once again every single person on the committee worked really hard individually and very effectively as a team to ensure the smooth operation of the club. Good to know that the President is not indispensable. I was out of the country for 6 weeks and club administration ran like clockwork. I would like to thank everyone on the committee for their contributions. I continue to appreciate having the opportunity to work with such a co-operative and constructive group. Between us we have a good mix of skills and competencies and it has been a great comfort to me to have people on hand to compensate for my weaknesses.
While I’m at it, I’d like to thank Mike Gilbert and Tony Gazley for their work as Webmaster and Journal Editor respectively. These roles are off committee but this does not mean they are unimportant. How well these roles are performed has a huge impact on club life and how we look to prospective members. Thanks also to the club members who toil away co-operatively and quietly behind the scenes helping out with the large number of small, odd or small odd jobs that need to be done to support the smooth running of the club.
Gareth Morton and Jenny Beaumont have stood down from the committee after 4 years of service. They will be greatly missed and I wish them well. They have made a huge contribution to the smooth running of the Club and will likely continue to do so informally.