End of Year Reports

Ealing Eagles Running Club – Annual General Meeting (AGM)

(Circulated via weekly newsletter, Facebook and Eagles website)


Date: 30th April 2019

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Venue: To be confirmed.

Committee:

Chair: David Carlin

Coaching: Wei-Hei Kipling

Communications: Sam Royle

Membership: Terena De Abaitua-Hind

Race: Kate Ward

Social: Sonja Knoll

Treasurer: Greg Fernandes-Lawes

Agenda:

Time Item by

7:00 p.m. Welcome Chair
7:05 p.m. Chairman’s report Chair

7:15 p.m. Annual accounts Treasurer

7:25 p.m. Election of committee Chair

7:40 p.m. *Agreement to a second Membership secretary Chair

*Election of 2nd Membership secretary

7:45 p.m. Changing of wording in the Ealing Eagles RC Constitution Chair

*Child Welfare Officer to Designated Safeguarding Officer

7:50 p.m. *Agreement to Ealing Eagles Charitable Trust being the Chair

first charity we support in 2019-2020

*Second charity agreed via members votes and

Committee consideration.

7:55 p.m. Close



 

Chairman's report

It has been an exciting and fast moving 12 months in my role as chair!


At the end of this report there are three items the committee are proposing to the club, on which the club needs a vote of approval. These are;

  • An additional Membership secretary post on the Committee.

  • That we adopt Ealing Eagles Charitable Trust as one of our two charities this year.

  • A change of wording in our club’s Constitution – Child Welfare Officer to Designated Safeguarding Lead.

I’d like to once again thank the outgoing committee from 2017/18 for their help and support to the committee in the changeover of roles and passing on their knowledge and expertise.

Then a big thank you to the current committee for taking up the reins and in Sonja’s case for continuing in post.  Their hard work over the past 12 months has enabled the Ealing Eagles Running Club to run smoothly (no pun it ended!). Please remember all of the committee are ‘volunteers’ and they give their time over the year so we all can run and run and run!


This also leads to a huge thank you for a large number of people who put lots of their own time into the club to ensure our events take place. The following teams, committees and individuals all work extremely hard and have made the following events happen. There are too many individuals to mention and thank, however, as Chair I know their support has been invaluable to both the committee and the club members.


Some examples where club members other than the committee have supported you all to run are;  VLM Mile 23 cheer squad, Green Belt Relay, Welsh Castles Relay, Ealing Eagles 10k, Beginners programmes, Norfolk relay, Richmond Park relay, River relays, Club Championships, Summer League, Cross Country, Socials inc. pub crawls, parties, Birthday quiz, Santa run, Handicap Wednesdays, Club run leaders and tail runners, Grumpy old men runs, track and hill sessions, organising volunteers for external events, Mental Ill Health support, Charity fund raising and not to forget our ‘Kit express’ delivery service. A big thank you to all the club members involved in these activities. My apologies if I have missed any events out!


In order for us all to attend and run in these events there is a growing team of coaches now working (unpaid) to give us all mainly free training sessions and coaching. Yes, we could all go out and run but how easy is it just to turn up and follow a coached planned session. It makes running much easier for us all. Knowing there is a planned session coaxes us out into the sun, rain and wind when we may stay in at home or worse at work. The committee are looking at how we can add further value to the club membership. I believe all members get value for money for their annual subscription.


England Athletics put their costs up a year or so ago which wasn’t passed onto members and there is potentially a new cost to the club from South East Area Athletics (SEAA) who make track events and some other races available to us. There is likely to be a £2 surcharge per member in the near future. So after careful consideration we will be increasing the Annual Subscription from £30 to £35 from 1st April.  The committee have benchmarked the membership fee with other clubs, and this will still make us the cheapest subscription by £10 or more. You will be invoiced by the end of April for 2019-2020 running year. We believe we will be able to hold the annual subscription at this level for the forseeable future.

The committee want to encourage more of our members to take up a coaching badge or two, particularly to support our Junior section, so the committee has decided that from April 1st 2019 we will reimburse 100% of Coaching course fee, once you have completed the course and led or supported the agreed number of coaching sessions. For more information or direction as to what courses you could enrol on, please speak to Wei Hei and we will collate any names for a short meeting or simply direct you to the right course. It would be brilliant if some of our faster runners would consider undertaking these qualifications. Ideally, we would like an additional 10 more coaches, so as the club numbers increase, we can have more coaches available to lead and/or support sessions.

Last year the membership renewals with England Athletics was traumatic as their IT system crashed!  Olivia and then Terena worked exhaustively to get members signed up and registered to run under the EA banner. The club membership continues to grow year by year. We receive regular enquires, most of which transfer into membership, with higher membership requests post Ealing Half Marathon and January ‘three months free’ intake concession.  In January 2019 we met with England Athletics and they have assured us that the membership renewal system will work this year! They are also commissioning a new membership web portal and I’ve asked that Ealing Eagles are involved in the initial consultations, user acceptance testing and their pilot site before it goes live. More on membership at the end of this report.

As we all know, the club has a fast-growing membership base. Feedback from new members is that “EE is a friendly welcoming club”. The welcome at club runs, club socials and our Summer league and cross-country events really do demonstrate the social side of the club. Hills and track are now being seen as great training sessions for all paces and runners and encouragement at these sessions is second to none from both the coaching team and fellow Eagle runners.

To make all of the activities work for us we rely on good and clear communication with you all.  We try to communicate with all members via our weekly newsletter, updating information on the website, Facebook and Twitter. In February we decided to cull all of these mediums to the paid membership of the club only. I make no apologies for any ex-member who hasn’t paid the subscription, however, if you feel you have paid please contact membership@ealingeagles.com and we will research why EA has not confirmed your payment.  The Intranet password on our website will change soon too as many ex-members will have access and should no longer have that right and a recent non running issue has caused us to think about who can access our internal site. The new password will change from ‘EalingFeeling’ to another password which will be communicated in the newsletter and Facebook page soon.

So 2019…what does this mean for the club, our community and the committee?

  1. Club: Most of you know, from kit sales, Ealing Eagles Running Club is 10 years old in October!! We plan a big celebration in the summer - see our events page or weekly newsletter. There are also going to be monthly Social events from May 2019 in addition to the Wednesday socials in the New Inn.

  2. Community: As a club we will no doubt continue to grow in numbers. It is hard but really important we mix at socials and attend Cross Country, Club Champs and Summer League. These can be good opportunities to meet other members and continue our welcoming nature within the club. You don’t need to run every event, unless you’re gunning for a Club Champ medal, but it would be great for as many members could attend as many as they can, accepting family and other commitments are more important, to continue our strong club presence in these events. They are inclusive of all running paces, there are only a few events where a minimum time will be required, so please join in as much as possible…you will enjoy them!

  3. Committee: I have had a good year as chair, in that I have enjoyed attending a great many running events, either running or purely supporting you as club members running in them. We also need to look longer term as we are still a growing membership and we need to ensure all members feel they are part of the club and we are looking after their running needs. Hence ‘Healing Eagles’ was born this year. I hope members who were/are injured have welcomed this Facebook group, but I am aware not all of us use Facebook.

I have enjoyed my year as Chair and wish to stand again for another year. I also asked the committee to all stand again as I’d like a year of stability across the committee.  I am pleased to say all the committee members have expressed a wish to stay on for another year. In saying this, members have a right to nominate themselves for any position on the committee and as a committee we know this.

Committee members only have a one-year term, so each role has to be elected at the AGM.

These roles are:

Committee:

Chair: David Carlin Nominated to stand 2019-20

Coaching: Wei-Hei Kipling Nominated to stand 2019-20

Communications: Sam Royle Nominated to stand 2019-20

Membership: Terena De Abaitua-Hind Nominated to stand 2019-20

Race: Kate Ward Nominated to stand 2019-20

Social: Sonja Knoll Nominated to stand 2019-20

Treasurer: Greg Fernandes-Lawes Nominated to stand 2019-20
 

Although the current committee members have expressed a wish to stay on for another 12 months, I reiterate that this doesn’t exclude any members from nominating themselves for any of the committee roles.  So, if you are interested in any of the positions, please follow the timeline below.

1st April 2019 AGM agenda, together with Chairperson’s report and Financial accounts to date. Followed by a reminder via the newsletter and Facebook up until 5th April 2019.

9th April 2019 Nominations for the Committee places to be sent to membership@ealingeagles.com  By 9th April 2019

(Please supply your name and which role you want to be elected for). If more than one member applies you will be requested to send a short personal statement to  membership@ealingeagles.com on the 12th April 2019.

12th April 2019 Nominations announced. If there are two or more nominations for a role, a personal statement from each nominee will be circulated to inform your vote at the AGM. Only votes at the AGM are accepted. You cannot vote by proxy unless you are 17 years of age!

30th April 2019 AGM – See agenda election.

Members are able to nominate themselves at the AGM, but I would personally prefer the membership to see a transparent election. I feel that it is hard for members at the AGM to make an instant or uninformed decision, so some notice of who wants to be on the Committee and a paragraph about themselves would be welcome.

If you want to speak to me about the roles and expectations and the amount of time you will have to invest in committee activity, please do contact me at chair@ealingeagles.com

After the election of members, the Committee have three proposals for consideration;

  1. We now have c800 members and this will only increase over time. Phil Cairns stepped in last year to support the membership function, initially to process new members as Terena sorted out the EA issues.  As the amount of new membership enquiries has grown it became clear that the Membership secretary role is no longer a one-person job. We would like to propose an additional Membership post on the Committee. I.e. a second Membership secretary. Over the last couple of weeks, we have had 30 applications!

  • Phil Cairns has agreed to be nominated. Again, any club member can nominate themselves for this role. Please adhere to the above guidelines if you want to be nominated for this additional post.

  1. The Committee would like to amend the wording in the Constitution to be in line with most Childcare institutions from Child Welfare Officer to Designated Safeguarding Lead. (Constitution attached)

  2. We currently have two Charities CALM and Shooting Star.  The committee propose we adopt Ealing Eagles Charitable Trust as one of our two charities this year.

Kelvin or Nigel will explain where the Charity is as far as progress and this year’s plan.

(5 minutes). On Facebook and in the weekly email we will be asking for suggestions for our second charity. So please email chair@ealingeagles.com with your suggestions and why you are nominating that particular charity. The committee will review the suggestions and announce the chosen charity at the AGM.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the AGM on 30th April!!

David Carlin

Chairman, Ealing Eagles Running Club

 

End of year accounts
 Ealing Eagles end of year accounts can be viewed at the following location:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-KIrHcUuOzFOXhzb0xuQ0U1UGFJZWREVkJjNktqc1hEVWJz/view?usp=sharing