Galloway Woodturners

Draft Minute of the Annual General Meeting

Tuesday 11^th October 2016

Held in The Workshop at 6.30pm.

1. Members present

34 members were present at the beginning of the meeting and a few members arrived thereafter.

2. Apologies for absence

Rolf Buwert, Steve Dunn and Jamie Copland

3. Minute of the previous meeting

Accepted by the members as read.

4. Matters arising

There were no matters arising.

5. Officers’ Reports to members

 Chairman

2015/2016 was yet another busy and interesting year for the club. Membership has remained buoyant with new members joining but, unfortunately, some falling away. I suppose this is true of most clubs but I wish we could find the main reasons behind the fall off?

A busy year with varied demonstrations from a number of members and it is good to see new people coming forward offering to demonstrate.

The club championship competition is still bringing in some good entries and it is good to see that overall the standard is getting better. Bryan Jardine is our present club champion with Arthur Young the Beginners champion. Who will knock them of the top spots this year?

Our mid weeks turning evenings are still proving popular with good core of members participating.

The Beginners Courses and Taster Sessions have continued to be popular with 10 people taking them this year both at the Club Workshop and at my Workshop. These courses not only give new turners a help starting a new hobby but also brings in much needed revenue for the club. At present, the next 6 week course is scheduled to begin in November. This year Rolf and myself were assessed by the AWGB (Association of Woodturners of Great Britain) and gained our Certificate as competent woodturning tutors.

This year has seen us hosting 4 Professional Turning Demonstrations: Phil Greenwood, Richard Kennedy, Mick Hanbury and Simon Hope. If you look on our Web Site and see the comments about these demonstrations you would see how good they were and just how much members appreciated and learned from them. It is a great pity that not more of our members took advantage of these opportunities both to increase their knowledge and learn new techniques as the club made a loss of £154 on these events!

Our next demonstration is in December with Nikos Siragas coming over from Crete to visit us again. Tickets for this demonstration are available now.

On the exhibition front this year has seen us participating at the Kirkcudbright Country Fair and Spring Fling at Kirkandrews Kirk; both of which were successes in their own ways.

With the clubs continuing success inevitably this has brought more work on the Committee. Phil Jones again indicated that he would like to stand down as treasurer and, if you look at the amount of work he has put in over the last year you can understand why. As no one has come forward for this position we have looked at other ways of “lightening the load”.

Jimmy Brown has agreed to take more responsibility with the shop. He will be taking on the ordering and monthly accounts, we are also looking at other ways of streamlining the process.

At the AGM last year it was agreed to increase the subscription to £30 – this after it has been held at £25 since 2013. This increase will now come into force for this year.

Next year 2017 sees the 10^th anniversary of our club and the committee are looking at ways to celebrate this. At present we are looking at marking the anniversary with a professional demonstration on a Saturday following by a BBQ and Fun Day for members on the Sunday. We are looking at setting a date in August as this is the date of our 1^st meeting. ~ Other suggestions would be appreciated

Finally, I would like to thank all those who in any way have helped with the smooth running of the club over the last twelve months, particularly the committee who have supported both myself and the club so ably. Particular thanks to Judith Simpson and Jake Twiname as they stand down from the committee after 4 and 2 years respectively, their help and advice has been greatly appreciated.

Roger Cutler

 

Treasurer

 Accounts

The yearly accounts have once again been checked and signed off by David Campbell, a chartered accountant and friend of GW member John Colbeck. David has been doing this free of charge for a good few years now and I’d like to acknowledge his help and advice.

The accounts are not without some problems this year which are discussed below, but they have been signed off by the accountant and accepted by the committee.

Summary

The club has continued to grow over the past year. When I first did the accounts 7 years ago the club had a turnover of about £1000. This year it was ten times as much. The shop turnover in 2014-1025 was about £1000, this past year it has been almost five times as much.

We had £2263.04 at the end of the year which, being almost enough to cover the rent for a year, is satisfactorily healthy. However the club had £831.31 less than it did at the start of the financial year and, with the categorisation issues discussed below, it is difficult to pinpoint an obvious reason or area that we need to address. We therefore need to be careful in the coming year to make sure the accounts remain healthy.

Issues

Unallocated Income

Almost 10% of the income for the year was unallocated. This means that some money came in but we didn’t record what it was for.

Shop Losses

The shop appears to have accrued a deficit of over £1700 in the past year. I don’t believe this is an accurate figure and is likely to be as a result of the following reasons:

• From the record of money going through the shop and of the invoices being paid, it is not clear what the correct classification of items should be. Where unclear, items have been categorised simply as being shop related but we know some of it should actually have been for equipment or consumables used by the club for which we receive no income.
• No account has been recorded of previous and current stock levels and value. It is clear that we have more stock than ever but we don’t know how much of the shop expenditure this accounts for.

Tracking of orders and invoices

Responsibility for making, tracking, categorising, distributing and paying for orders is currently done by different people for different things in different ways.

Club Assets

No account has made of the changing value of assets held by the club.

Actions

At the committee meeting of the 20th September 2016 the following actions were agreed for the purpose of helping to ensure that all money is accurately allocated and accounted for:

• Responsibility for all ordering should be consolidated under the role of the shop keeper.
• Items on invoices passed to the treasurer should be categorised so they can be reflected accurately in the club accounts.
• A new recording sheet should be drawn up so that cash income and expenditure can be easily categorised so they can be reflected accurately in the club accounts.
• An assessment of shop stock and club assets should be made as soon as possible and used as baseline figures for future accounts.
• An assessment of shop stock and club assets should be made at the end of each club financial year (i.e. on or around 31st August) and recorded as part of the year end accounts.

In addition the following were agreed:

• To offset the continued loss on professional demonstrations, ticket prices will be increased from £10 to £12 and lunch will no longer be provided. Tea, coffee and biscuits will remain free for the day and soup may also be provided if available.
• The club agreed at last year’s AGM to increase subs to from £25 to £30 and we will keep the option open to increase it again next year but only if there is seen to be a financial need to do so.

Phil Jones, Treasurer

6. Election of Committee Members

The Officers of the club agreed to serve another year in their posts and Jimmy Brown and Bill McCoskry were elected as members in place of Judith Simpson and Jake Twiname.

The chair thanked Judith & Jake for their service on the committee.

7. Any other business

There being no other business the meeting closed at 7.00pm.