Dear all,
Recent resignations of trustees have enabled us to find new people who would like to join us on the board of trustees. In addition to this I have considered changing the constitution, we have not looked at this for over 20 years now. Many things in the constitution can remain the same but other things like the number of trustees can change and the considerable large funds within research accounts can be looked at again so it can be better used to support the families and people with Worster-Drought Syndrome. This is your opportunity to make these changes.
Why now? We have remained pretty much the same for so many years, with the same things happening but times have changed. Social media wasn’t even invented when the charity was set up. With so much information is available online now we are not really become a resource for that information, We have found ourselves mainly running family days for the younger children, while this is still beneficial for new and younger children it does leave a huge part of people affected by Worster-Drought out, this has also been shown by the drop in the numbers of our membership as a lot of you have taken to finding out information via social media and searching online.
What does this mean for the charity going forward? This really depends on what you all would like. The current constitution doesn’t really reflect everything we can do now and under the current trustees it only meets the minimum requirements set by the charities commission. That said there is still a real risk of the charity closing and giving the money to a like minded charity. So many people have spend a lot of time raising money for us, it would seem a shame for the money to go to another charity rather than supporting us all. Giving this information my personal view as your chairman would be to use the money to enable the charity to grow and arrange some more events around the UK so each and every one of you can benefit from it.
We cannot do this without you, I have spoken to some of the remaining trustees and members for their views this week. The view I have got back was to the charity to become more of a supportive role but in order for us to do this we need to think more local. With Worster-drought being so rare our membership is spread thinly around the country so arranging anything that pleases everyone is challenging. Experience has shown me that there are pockets of members around the country that due to their location don’t or can’t get involved like the Southeast and West of the UK and up north, this is a shame as both of these areas are beautiful parts of the country and have and have a lot to offer for days out. At the last committee meeting it was decided to create a private local WhatsApp group for us to arrange things on the fly without having to go through the whole process of contacting everyone to arrange events, The charity can then support you in anything you need to make these events happen with funds etc.
Below I have created a feedback form for you to give me your suggestion so it can be added to list of things we can do to support you. In addition to this I am keen as your chair for you to contact me within the next week, if you do not feel able to fill out the form just drop me a message any way that suits you and we can speak on the phone, Like I say I have done this with some people already. If no one steps forward then there is a real risk that the charity would have to close but I will try my best to make positive changes to the group but I need your help in doing this.
Mark Mayer
Chairman