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The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Limited, Annual Report 2006

 

Review of the year

The Easter Meet at Tregaron in Wales benefited from unusually good weather, especially given the location. The Elenith area with its three simple youth hostels is popular with members, we sadly learned during the meet that the YHA was selling these hostels. Fortunately two of them have been purchased by a trust which will keep them operating. Our next Easter Meet will be in Whitby.

2006 has been characterised by a return to level of membership loss which appeared to have halted in 2005. Again the issue is new membership recruitment.

 

Membership

Our membership stood at 585 (497 full members) at the year end, 39 down on the previous year. In 2005 we succeeded in maintaining our membership, but the loss of about 39 members in 2006 is very similar to the average over the period 2001 to 2004. Membership renewals have held up better than normal in 2006, indeed we have the same number of  5-year renewals as we had 5 years ago. However recruitment of new members has fallen to about half of the rate in the previous year. Arguably in 2005 recruitment was assisted by the revitalisation of the Lancashire group, and that group is still thriving, but such success is only seen in few areas. The South Lakes Group has also seen greatly increased attendance on its rides, and both groups have a thriving web presence. We have seen such cycles before, as local groups grow and subsequently retreat, often related to the presence of a dedicated area secretary.

 

The Rough-Stuff Journal

The editor has continued to produce six well-appreciated journals per year in very timely fashion, with occasional journals with additional pages. We have managed to contain distribution costs despite the major change in Post Office tariffs. Expenditure is similar to the previous year.

 

Publicity

Having restricted our advertising to the CTC, as we decided last year, our advertising expenditure has fallen considerably. Advertising in other media did not seem to be effective, although  new membership recruitment is now down. On the other hand, we advertised more widely in earlier years and membership still fell. It seems likely that improved recruitment in 2005 was related to local group activity than advertising. Our website www.rsf.org.uk run by John Brewer continues to obtains increasing traffic. The websites run by the Lancashire and South Lakes area groups obtains increasing traffic, and photos rapidly displayed after runs appear to promote group cohesion.

 

Accounts

The Fellowship has lost £309 for the year, in contrast with £593 in 2005. When the one-off cost of our 50th anniversary in 2005 are taken into account, this is about the same. We had expected a larger loss, since income has fallen about £700 with falling membership. But our recurrent costs fell by about the same amount. In particular, the cost of  our associate membership of the CTC, including the public liability insurance, fell from £300 to £75, amount that had already been accrued in the previous year’s accounts in anticipation of larger sum . We also chose to spend less on publicity. We maintained expenditure on the journal to maintain production values.

 

We have restated the 2005 accounts, because the one-off anniversary AGM costs were mistakenly classified as journal costs; and a commuted subscription was mistakenly classified as annual subscriptions. This means that the 2005 loss has slightly increased from that previously stated.

 

Signed

Steven Griffith, Simon C. Preston, Ivan Viehoff (Directors)